14 DAY TRIAL // AMD has recently posted on its YouTube channel a video comparing the performance of an upcoming Llano APU with that of a Sandy Bridge mobile processor, the company claiming that Llano can offer better multi-tasking performance than Intel's CPU while also requiring less power.
The video is narrated by Godfrey Cheng, director of the Client Technology Unit at AMD, and compares a 2GHz Intel Core i7 2630QM powered system with a similar machine that runs a quad-core AMD A8-3510MX CPU.
AMD hasn't provided any specific details regarding the chip, but we do know the A8-3510MX is built on top of the company's Llano architecture and packs an on-die Radeon HD 6620M graphics core.
The motherboard used for the AMD APU is based on the company's upcoming A70M Fusion controller hub, while the Intel system runs on an Asus P8H67-M board.
The rest of the configuration is identical for both machines, as they use a 14-inch screen that displays 1366x768 pixels, 4GB of DDR2 memory run at 1333MHz, a Crucial C300 128GB SSD and the Windows 7 operating system.
Both systems are put through a series of tests which are designed to showcase their multi-tasking experience and performance as well as their power consumption.
From the video, it becomes apparent that the Llano system is much smoother when running these tasks while its power consumption is generally bellow that of Sandy Bridge.
However, before proclaiming the superiority of the Llano platform, one has to keep in mind that the AMD tests run in this video relied heavily on graphics, a scenario where AMD will most certainly prove to be superior to the Intel HD 3000 graphics integrated in the 2630QM.
Furthermore, there's always the question of the drivers used or any additional optimizations that could be run into the background to make the demo look even more impressive.
AMD's Llano APU uses the company's Stars processor architecture (found in Phenom II and Athlon II chips) with a few enhancements, and pairs it together with a DirectX 11 compatible on-die GPU which features six SIMD engines with 80 stream processors each.
The first chips based on this new architecture are expected to arrive as early as May, according to the latest rumors.