AMD Fusion A8-3850 APU "Llano" On Linux

[crispy]

The series is new, somebody all have something soon. The way I look at AMD has almost hit a home run with Llano. It is by far the best highly integrated chip you can buy if you need strong GPU performance.

For your application heat is an issue, but you are still farther ahead today with AMD. The only way to beat heat is to under clock or wait for the next die shrink. Do realize though that all that power is in one place, it isn't like you have separate GPUs to cool.

Yes, i agree. I am now closer than ever. The A6-3800 I think its called is clocked slighty lower at 65W TPD which is listed as the max the case I have in mind can take, so maybe Im already there!

[Ex-Cyber]

The main problem for me isn't the heat itself, it's just that the stock cooler is a whiny little thing. I might be able to ignore it once the box is actually on the shelf ~10 feet away, though. Either way, it's nothing a larger/lower-RPM aftermarket cooler can't fix.

[wizard69]

Nothing is impossible, if reasonable

Please do report

.....
I know I know, demanding the impossible

The series is new, somebody all have something soon. The way I look at AMD has almost hit a home run with Llano. It is by far the best highly integrated chip you can buy if you need strong GPU performance.

For your application heat is an issue, but you are still farther ahead today with AMD. The only way to beat heat is to under clock or wait for the next die shrink. Do realize though that all that power is in one place, it isn't like you have separate GPUs to cool.

[crispy]

Please do report

What im actually looking for is a box that will be able to play a few games. Not the newest title, 2008 titles are fine on low settings. But I really want a small case, but so far all cases that could sport a pcie card have been too big in my opinion. I want something where the ITX board just fits in with no extra room except for a 2.5" drive. This Llano business seems to fit that demand, however just a wee bit too high tpd it seems :/

I know I know, demanding the impossible

[Ex-Cyber]

I saw the same HTPC potential as others and put together a box with an A8 a few days ago. The stock cooler looks like it could barely handle 65W, and the fan sounds like it's working quite hard; definitely not HTPC-friendly. I'll see how Gentoo plays with it over the next few days, since I expect that's the straightest path to new enough bits and doubles as a burn-in.

[crispy]

Nice device!

I'd really like this in a tiny mini-itx cabinet, just worried about cooling. Got the feeling that these 100w on one die might require some good ventilation...

[ChrisXY]

Now, if only AMD/ATI Graphics drivers will match the quality of Nvidia(Linux) driver's, then we're all set.
But, from the Linux games here, it looks like things are workin' pretty good so far (for august accrding to this review).

Soon...

I have read that Unigine Heaven would nearly run with Open Source drivers. So I started it and to my surprise it worked on my mobile HD 6550 (= HD 5650) with mesa git and xorg 7.11. It is not fast and it had some rendering problems. The good thing is that it run at all (= all OpenGL extensions it needs finally implemented) and it didn't crash X.

Then I tried Half Life 2 episode 1 in wine. The rendering is perfectly fine, but with HDR it is very slow. Without HDR it's still not 100% fluent but is actually quite playable with no rendering glitches I saw. This has always crashed my X in the past.

It won't be long now until the Open Source radeon driver it is a good alternative to the nvidia closed source driver.

[scjet]

Catalyst Drivers, Gallium 3D ?

Now, if only AMD/ATI Graphics drivers will match the quality of Nvidia(Linux) driver's, then we're all set.
But, from the Linux games here, it looks like things are workin' pretty good so far (for august accrding to this review).
Yep, a nice cheap and powerful all-in-one desktop, with the thickness of a closed Laptop. PC Tower cases are out, flat desktop's are back IN.
Also, being that Arch's Linux kernels are always light-years ahead of Ubuntu's, this all looks very promising indeed.
HTPC lovers' rejoice !

btw, thx for the review/article.

Am I an AMD fanboy or what ?!
Lol.

[scjet]

future Laptop's

I think 2012 will be the year Laptops will finally catch up to the performance of PC/Desktops at near equal prices,
Thanks of course, to AMD's Fusion apu/gpu's.
Intel of course has nuthin' to really answer amd's gpu.

[Luke_Wolf]

Yup, and my Macbook Pro is an i7 but dual core. Call it an i3 + Hyperthreading + 4 megs cache and more turbo... or something....

The initial complainer should have done his research about desktop i5s, which I believe are all quad cores, before setting Michael straight.

Yes particularly since both CPU companies go to all the trouble of setting up sites just for this purpose

Here's the relevant one for the i5 2500k

http://ark.intel.com/products/52210