AMD Expects Fusion Llano to Offer Three Times Graphics than Sandy Bridge

From X-bit Labs: Advanced Micro Devices pins a lot of hopes onto performance of the integrated graphics cores of code-named Llano A-series accelerated processing units (APUs). Besides, the company believes that other performance-boosting technologies will make its A-series APUs even more competitive on the market.

According to AMD internal documents seen by X-bit labs, which describe performance of AMD's new products, AMD A8-3550 APU (quad-core, 4MB cache, 400 stream processors, Radeon HD 6550 graphics core at 594MHz) delivers three times higher performance in 3DMark Vantage test compared to Intel Core i5-2300 (quad-core, 2.80GHz/3.10GHz clock-speed, 6MB cache, Intel HD graphics core at 850MHz/1100MHz): P3335 versus P1007 marks. Besides offering more performance, the graphics core from AMD also supports DirectX 11 capabilities, whereas Intel's graphics engine features only DirectX 10.1.

The new AMD A-series APUs will also support Turbo Core technology, which will be able to overclock two out of four cores by 300MHz while disabling another couple of them. Unfortunately, the actual resulting clock-speeds are unclear and therefore it is unknown how completive will performance of Llano be against Intel Core i-series "Sandy Bridge" microprocessors.

Besides integrating high-performance graphics engine and Turbo Core technology, AMD will also promote so-called Dual Graphics technology, which will essentially be a CrossFireX capability for low-cost discrete and integrated graphics. Certain combinations of standalone graphics cards (code-named Whistler and Seymour) with integrated solutions will add up to 75% of graphics performance to systems. One of the messages that AMD wants to send is that while its discrete graphics cards provide additive performance with its platforms, Nvidia Corp.'s GeForce graphics cards do not provide additive performance on either AMD or Intel platforms.

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