AMD Fusion A8-3850 APU "Llano" On Linux

Late last month there were the first Radeon HD 6550D graphics benchmarks under Linux that were published on Phoronix. There has also been a stream of A8-3850 benchmark result uploads -- among other AMD Fusion APUs -- to OpenBenchmarking.org. In this review we are providing a set of computational benchmarks from this "Llano" Fusion APU compared to a handful of other systems in our labs.

This was just a set of Linux tests carried out prior to my departure to the Phoronix Oslo meet-up and then partaking in the Berlin Desktop Summit, but now that I am back (well, then there's LinuxCon Vancouver next week), the results will be extended in the coming days. There are also other areas of this high-end APU to look at under Linux like OpenCL and whether or not the latest open-source Linux driver code is working yet for this hardware.

The tested hardware for this mini comparison included:

AMD Fusion E-350: Processor: AMD E-350 @ 1.60GHz (2 Cores), Motherboard: ASUS E35M1-M PRO, Chipset: AMD Pavilion DM1Z-3000, Memory: 4096MB, Disk: 64GB OCZ VERTEX, Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6300 384MB

AMD Fusion A8-3850: Processor: AMD A8-3850 APU with Radeon HD @ 2.90GHz (4 Cores), Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-A75M-UD2H, Chipset: AMD Device 1705, Memory: 4096MB, Disk: 60GB OCZ VERTEX2, Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6550D 512MB (600/667MHz)

Intel Core 2 Duo P7350: Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo P7350 @ 2.00GHz (2 Cores), Motherboard: Apple Mac-F22C86C8 v1.0, Chipset: NVIDIA MCP79, Memory: 1024MB, Disk: 120GB FUJITSU MHZ2120B, Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 9400 512MB (450/1064MHz)

Intel Core i3 2100: Processor: Intel Core i3-2100 @ 3.10GHz (4 Cores), Motherboard: ASRock Z68 Pro3, Chipset: Intel 2nd Generation Core Family, Memory: 4096MB, Disk: 60GB OCZ VERTEX2, Graphics: Intel 2nd Generation Core Family IGP

Intel Core i5 2500K: Processor: Intel Core i5-2500K @ 3.30GHz (4 Cores), Motherboard: ASRock Z68 Pro3, Chipset: Intel 2nd Generation Core Family, Memory: 4096MB, Disk: 60GB OCZ VERTEX2, Graphics: Intel 2nd Generation Core Family IGP

All systems were running Ubuntu 11.04 x86_64. The systems with AMD graphics were using the fglrx 8.86.5 (Catalyst 11.6) driver while the NVIDIA system was using the 270.41.06 proprietary driver. The Intel systems, of course, only have their open-source Linux driver of which we pulled in xf86-video-intel 2.15.0 and Mesa 7.12-devel. GCC 4.5.2 was the compiler used during testing.

Via the Phoronix Test Suite and OpenBenchmarking.org infrastructure the following tests were used for this article: Nexuiz, C-Ray, Smallpt, 7-Zip compression, x264, OpenSSL, John The Ripper, and CLOMP.

For those interested in the /proc/cpuinfo output for the AMD Fusion A8-3850 Llano, it's included below.

processor : 3
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 18
model : 1
model name : AMD A8-3850 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics
stepping : 0
cpu MHz : 800.000
cache size : 1024 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 4
core id : 1
cpu cores : 4
apicid : 3
initial apicid : 1
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 6
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow constant_tsc rep_good nopl nonstop_tsc extd_apicid aperfmperf pni monitor cx16 popcnt lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs skinit wdt npt lbrv svm_lock nrip_save pausefilter
bogomips : 5800.20
TLB size : 1536 4K pages
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps hwpstate