Thread: AMD Avi-3650

AMD's new A-serials processors, codenamed 'Llano', have available DirectX 11 3D graphics and are a exact rival for Intel's new 'Sandy Bridge' chips.

The range-topping A8-3850's 3D ability and reasonable cost increased it a Best purchase award in June, so we were interested to see how the less-end A6-3650 equated.Similar to the A8-3850, the A6-3650 has 4 AMD 'Stars' cores, which are informed edition of the K10 cores found in AMD's Phenom II.

The K10 core plan is more than a pair of years former, but the Llano editions are founded on a 32nm instead than 45nm process, so function cooler and utilize without power - the A6-3650 has a TDP of 100W, which equated favorably to a Sandy Bridge Core i5-2500K's 95W and is importantly without than the 125W of top-end Phenom IIs.



While the comparatively low TDP means you can utilize standard socket AM2 processor coolers, Llano processors need a fresh socket kind - FM1. We have reviewed the FM1-based Asrock A75 Pro4 and Asus F1A75-V Pro, together of which increased good ratings and are reasonably priced, so it is not a specially onerous promote.

The A6-3650's processor cores function at 2.6GHz equated to the A8-3850's 2.9GHz. This creates few difference in our benchmarks - the picture-editing try was near identical, but the A6-3650 was importantly slower in our video-encoding and multitasking tries, and its entire score of 60 depicts it to be around 12% slower than the top-end chip in 2D tasks.

Regarding the A6-3650 is about 22% cheaper than the A8-3850, it offers good 2D function for its cost.However, the chief difference among the processors is in their graphics chip sets. Rather of 400 stream processors functioning at 600MHz, the A6-3650 has 320 functioning at 443MHz.

This created a important difference in our Dirt 3 benchmark - where the A8-3850 handled a smooth 35fps at 1,280x720 with 4xAA and High detail, the A6-3650 could just make a somewhat jerky 28.6.

Despite this, the chip's lower power did not create much difference when we included a Radeon HD 6450 in CrossFire mode - we looked a smooth 50.3fps in Dirt 3, which is just 2fps without than the A8-3850 / Radeon HD 6450 combination.