AMD A6 and A4 for SC2 net cafe?

On June 29 2011 09:38 mav451 wrote:
Llano's are more designed for HTPC's or laptops. On the desktop, it's somewhat of an afterthought since the performance is basically equal to the Athlon II X4. Also, the i3 SB's only come with the HD 2000 IGP, not the 3000 IGP. The HD 2000 IGP's are significantly weaker b/c they only have half the EU's of the HD 3000 (6 vs. 12).

You can see a direct comparison of them from the SB article here:
+ Show Spoiler +
and compared to the Llano A8's 6550D IGP here:
+ Show Spoiler +

Another thing to note is the reviews are concentrating on the highest performing Llano's...which again, are a bit misplaced on the desktop. The A4 and A6, which vary from dual/tri/quad-cores, also differ with cache (specifically the A4's with only 1MB vs. the 3MB and 4MB models found in the A6 and A8's). The IGPs, on the lower A4 and A6 models, are similarly castrated...so be wary that performance may be significantly different than the 6550D found in the top-line A8's.
+ Show Spoiler [A4,A6,A8 models] +

The bigger issue to me, IMO, is that Llano's scales very well with performance RAM as the IGP is severely memory starved. You can see what happens with the RAM speed is increased from stock 1333Mhz to 1866Mhz.
+ Show Spoiler +*I know - it's not an SC2 benchmark. Why did AT fail to benchmark SC2 with the 1866 RAM speeds? Beats me lol.

Bottom line is that with low quality settings across the board, this reduces the Llano's IGP advantage; AMD's biggest advantage. But we need to look at cost in its totality here. Pair the SB with any non-IGP GPU and you have an infinitely longer-lasting solution.

The major difference between mobile Sandy Bridge and its desktop countpart is all mobile SB launch SKUs have two graphics cores (12 EUs), while only some desktop parts have 12 EUs (it looks like the high-end K SKUs will have it). The base GPU clock is lower but it can turbo up to 1.3GHz, higher than most desktop Sandy Bridge CPUs. Note that the GPU we tested in Friday's preview had 6 EUs, so mobile Sandy Bridge should be noticeably quicker as long as we don't run into memory bandwidth issues. Update: Our preview article may have actually used a 12 EU part, we're still trying to confirm!

On June 29 2011 09:58 jacosajh wrote:
Is the budget $300 for the PC only? Or including screen, keyboard, mouse?

On June 29 2011 13:49 cannedrice wrote:


No, just the tower itself.

I was originally thinking of doing Athlon II X3 boxes paired with Radeon 5450s. Not sure if waiting for the A6 makes sense.

On June 29 2011 14:11 Womwomwom wrote:
I'm not sure but I don't believe AMD's turbo core, which is basically Intel's turbo boost, works on the desktop processors, so its basically an Athlon II with a huge IGP component. I think Ananadtech mentioned it in their review but don't count me on it.