Llano Quad Versus Trinity Dual

[thrawn503]

I would like to know which of these AMD APUs are better: The Llano-based A6-3420 1.5Ghz, or the Trinity-based A6-4400 2.7Ghz? The Llano part is a quad core boasting 4MB L2, while the Trinity part is a dual core with only 1MB L2. The conditions under which these two processors would be running would be very similar - 6GB RAM, Radeon HD7670, 768p.

I'm going to primarily use these for general tasks and for gaming - which one performs better overall?

 

[Pinhedd]

Neither one of those would be particularly good for gaming, they're both quite anaemic. The new trinity APUs are a huge step up over Llano but they're still only any good at the high end. The new Trinity A10-5800 is the only one that I think is actually worth using on a gaming platform. Everything else is having an identity crisis and the APU sales numbers show it. If you're a serious gamer, a discrete CPU and GPU is still a necessity.

If you pair an A10-5800 with an HD 7670 you may be able to get some reasonable crossfire gains, but I'm not sure how well that works with APUs.

 

[airanp]

Neither one of those would be particularly good for gaming, they're both quite anaemic. The new trinity APUs are a huge step up over Llano but they're still only any good at the high end. The new Trinity A10-5800 is the only one that I think is actually worth using on a gaming platform. Everything else is having an identity crisis and the APU sales numbers show it. If you're a serious gamer, a discrete CPU and GPU is still a necessity.

If you pair an A10-5800 with an HD 7670 you may be able to get some reasonable crossfire gains, but I'm not sure how well that works with APUs.

@pinhedd - I think you meant the new A10-4600m since that is the newest mobile processor, the 5xxx APU's are desktop variants.

@thrawn503 - If you can afford to I would shop around for a laptop with a new trinity APU vs the old Llano. Try to combine either an A8-4500m or an A10-4600m with a 7670m dedicated graphics card. The drivers for the hybrid are still in their infancy and there are quite a few games that do not support the hybrid crossfire but the 7670m is a more than capable card for the times it is all you can use and the drivers will only get better as AMD tries to make their new hybrid crossfire more main stream.

On a side note, none of the new trinity APU's have a clock speed over 2.3Ghz. If you see any site advertising it as such they are mislabeling the processor and instead of putting its clock speed they are advertising its turbo clock speed. The processor, unless over clocked and locked to its turbo speed will not constantly run at that speed.

 

[Pinhedd]

@pinhedd - I think you meant the new A10-4600m since that is the newest mobile processor, the 5xxx APU's are desktop variants.

@thrawn503 - If you can afford to I would shop around for a laptop with a new trinity APU vs the old Llano. Try to combine either an A8-4500m or an A10-4600m with a 7670m dedicated graphics card. The drivers for the hybrid are still in their infancy and there are quite a few games that do not support the hybrid crossfire but the 7670m is a more than capable card for the times it is all you can use and the drivers will only get better as AMD tries to make their new hybrid crossfire more main stream.

Oh, um ya. You're right, I got them crossed. What he said ^