AMD Fusion: A8-3500M A-Series Llano APU Review

Name: AMD Fusion: A8-3500M A-Series Llano APU Review - Page 5
Brand: AMD

by Dave Altavilla — Tuesday, June 14, 2011, 12:00 AM EDT

Test Systems and PCMark Vantage

Page 5: Test Systems and PCMark Vantage

For this article, we were presented with a bit of a challenge with respect to providing relevant and reasonably balanced reference numbers for benchmark comparisons. The Compal Llano mobile reference platform is more of a mainstream configuration, rather than a high-performance or gaming-targeted model. As such, for productivity, content creation and multimedia testing, we wanted to compare it to other machines in its class, based on Intel's current architectures. These test machines are listed in detail below.

Primary Test System

PROCESSOR	AMD A-3500M APU (1.5GHz, 2.4GHz Turbo)
SYSTEM	Compal Referenace Platform
INTEGRATED GPU	Radeon HD 6620
GRAPHICS CARD	Radeon HD 6700 Series
DISPLAY	15" LED Display - 1366 x 768
MEMORY	4 GB Samsung DDR3-1333
HARD DRIVE	Hitachi 250GB 5400RPM
OPERATING SYSTEM	Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

HotHardware's Reference Test Systems

A wide spread of technologies

Packard Bell Whitebook
Intel Core i7-2820QM
(2.3GHz - Quad-Core)
4GB DDR3
Intel HD Graphics 3000
On-Board Ethernet
On-board Audio
Seagate Momentus 640GB HD
Windows 7
Ultimate (64-bit)
15.6" LED LCD
(native 1366x768)

ASUS K53E
Intel Core i5-2520M
(2.5 GHz - Dual-Core)
4GB DDR3
Intel HD Graphics 3000
Onboard Ethernet
Onboard Audio
Seagate Momentus 640GB HD
Windows 7
Ultimate (64-bit)
15" LED LCD
(native 1366x768)

Dell XPS 15z
Intel Core i7-2620M
(2.70GHz - Dual-Core)
8GB DDR3
Intel HD w/ GeForce GT 525M
nboard Ethernet
Onboard Audio
Seagate Momentus 750GB HD
Windows 7
Home Premium (64-bit)
15.6" LED LCD
(native 1920x1080)

Asus K42F
Intel Core i5-540M
(2.53GHz - Dual-Core)
4GB DDR3
Intel GMA HD
On-Board Ethernet
On-board Audio
Seagate Momentus 640GB HD
Windows 7
Ultimate (64-bit)
14" LED LCD
(native 1366x768)

First, we our test systems through Futuremark’s latest system performance metric, PCMark Vantage. PCMark Vantage runs through a host of different usage scenarios to simulate different types of workloads including HD TV and movie playback and video manipulation, gaming, image editing and manipulation, music compression, communications, and productivity. Most of the tests are multi-threaded as well, so the tests can exploit the additional resources offered by multi-core CPUs.

For general purpose compute tasks and lighter duty everyday work loads, Llano shows itself mostly competitive versus Intel's Core i5 dual cores with HyperThreading, but no match for the quad-core Core i7 2820QM. An area where Llano trails significantly is the Communications test, where Intel's latest security instruction set support and the on-board IPSec processing engine in Sandy Bridge, take this test up a notch or three.