KitGuru – Desktop Llano Review

 

Today we are going to examine the top-end ‘Lynx’ APU, the A8-3850, and compare it to Intel’s i3-2105 CPU.  The Lynx platform has a completely redesigned socket, named FM1, meaning the APUs aren’t backwards compatible with existing motherboards.  So we will also be looking at one of the first Lynx motherboards to market, the Asus F1A75-M Pro. This is a Micro-ATX model that is perfect for a small-form factor PC and should let us achieve a reasonable overclock.

 

Hexus – AMD Llano A8-3500M APU notebook review: redefining mainstream computing

The aggregation of a CPU and GPU is a clever feat that's also been achieved by Intel with its equivalent Sandy Bridge chips. But neither firms' integration extends to pulling all the necessary inputs and outputs on to one chunk of silicon, and this is why a separate chip, referred to as the Fusion Controller Hub, co-exists with the A-Series APU. Future iterations of the APU will doubtless pull everything together, but for now, both x86 companies use a two-chip mindset.

 

Phoronix - Llano Graphics / Radeon HD 6620G On Linux

 

If you wish to run AMD Llano Fusion APUs on the open-source driver, you must be building everything from source as the necessary Linux kernel / Mesa / DDX components do not have Llano in released form. With that said, this initial Llano support is likely buggy. The open-source Llano support could not be tested as we only had remote access to the A8-3500M system and could not monitor the process for OpenGL rendering issues or other problems along with it being more difficult to remotely handle system hangs and other problems. The open-source Llano Linux support will not be tested until we have our hands physically on the Llano systems.

I'm hard at work at our review of AMD's new Llano.   Don't expect it today however.  I've had as usual plenty of things to suck away my time.  Here's a shot of the CPU.

I'm looking for a good news editor to do the bulk of the news postings.  In return they will earn 1/2 of the advertising revenue that the news section brings in.  A good news poster should be able to bring in a nice chunk of change.  This way I can put more of my time into doing more reviews.  If you are interested email me at chris.tom at amdzone.com.  

I hate Ebay.  It is impossible to ship things, their shipping manager is broken on Paypal, and Ebay, and since they made the bright move of not allowing negative feedback for buyers any idiot can buy things.  Here's a warning to Ebay sellers.  Do not sell anything to italiano-37914.  He will not communicate with you, and file complaints, and bad feedback for made up reasons.  You have been warned.  

Back on April 20th I ordered a copy of Windows XP Pro from Tek-Micro.com because Newegg was no longer carrying XP.  Almost 40 days later I have not received my order.  Tek-Micro has lied to me several times on the phone, and has not given me any tracking information, nor offered to refund me.  I've just filed a dispute which is actually the first dispute I have ever had to do.  I used to use 9Software, but they are not longer in existence, and the domain forwarded me to Tek-Micro.com.  I should have paid more attention, and checked out Reseller Ratings. As you can see I'm not the only one without their copy of XP.