AMD Llano APU Review - Slow CPU, Fast GPU

Vigile writes "Though we did see the fruits of AMD's Fusion labor in the form of the Brazos platform late in 2010, Llano is the first mainstream part to be released that combines traditional x86 CPU cores with Radeon-based SIMD arrays for a heterogeneous computing environment. The A-series of APUs reviewed over at PC Perspective starts with the A8-3850 that is a combination of a true quad-core processor and 400 shader processors similar to those found in AMD's Radeon HD 5000 series of GPUs. The good news for the first desktop APU is that the integrated graphics blows past the best Intel has to offer on the Sandy Bridge platform by a factor of 2-4x in terms of gaming. The bad news is the CPU performance: running at only 2.9 GHz the Phenom-based x86 portion often finds itself behind even the dual-core Intel Core i3-2100. On the bright side you can pick one up next month for only $135."