AMD's First Dual-Core Llano APUs: A4-3400 & A4-3300 Launched
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 7, 2011 12:55 PM ESTToday AMD introduced its first dual-core Llano APUs: the A4-3400 and A4-3300. These APUs have only 758M active transistors, a bit over half of the transistors in the bigger quad-core alternatives. AMD originally indicated that it would have a separate die for the dual-core APUs but it's unclear whether or not the first A4s will be on the new die or simply used a fused off quad-core Llano. TDP is kept at 65W and there's no Turbo Core supported on either A4 model. These GPUs only have 160 Radeon cores, which should still result in performance competitive with Intel's Sandy Bridge Pentiums based on what we've seen from the 320 core version of the GPU. If we assume linear scaling with core count there shouldn't be many (any?) areas where the Radeon HD 6410 is slower than the SNB Pentium's HD Graphics GPU.
These A4s will work in all existing Socket-FM1 motherboards. Although not listed in the table above, only the A6 and above officially support DDR3-1866. The A4s only support up to DDR3-1600. This isn't too big of a deal as we found in our investigation: DDR3-1600 is the sweet spot for Llano APU performance.
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yankeeDDL - Thursday, September 8, 2011 - link
Let's see how these CPUs perform in real benchmarks, but at $70, it seems to me these should kill completely the "Pentium", from the G850 down and including, of course, the G620.silverblue - Thursday, September 8, 2011 - link
With the lower Pentiums, it's going to be a case of what matters most, CPU speed or GPU power. At 160 shaders, it's not going to be a strong Radeon IGP, and the Pentium will undoubtedly have an edge in performance, so it's possible that motherboard pricing might be the determining factor. As you go up in price, Llano's case does seem to get stronger as the competition is still mainly dual-core and you're getting not only a triple- or quad-core CPU for your money, but a much stronger GPU.Horses for courses.
silverblue - Thursday, September 8, 2011 - link
Sorry, I meant the Pentium's CPU cores would have an edge in performance.yankeeDDL - Thursday, September 8, 2011 - link
Very true, however, given the target of ultra-low budget PCs, I think the following applies:- if you need to run CPU-intensive applications you probably should not be looking at low budget PCs.
- normally, a low budget PC is intended for email, web browsing, light use of Office-type of applications, minimal image and video editing. For most of the above, the superior GPU of the A4 will take over the "heavy duty" work making comfortably up for the CPU shortcomings. And you will have a cheap and dirty speed bump if, once the costs go down, you replace the A4 with an A8, for example.
- having very high CPU requirements while being absolutely cash-strapped, I would think, is not the average-Joe scenario (well, the cash-strapped yes, but not the high CPU power requirements). This said, 2 cores, even if not too efficient, are quite fine for the vast majority of consumer application.