So far most of the news surrounding AMD’s launch of its new Llano accelerated processing units (APUs) has been related to laptop chips, like those in soon-to-be-shipping notebooks from HP. But Fudzilla has unearthed some preliminary pricing for the first Llano desktop parts — and they look to give Intel’s Core i3 processors a run for your money.
That’s because the two Llanos listed — the A6-3650 and A8-3850 — are quad-core chips that are priced in the same ballpark as the dual-core Core i3-2100 and i3-2120, respectively. The A6-3650’s CPU cores run at 2.6GHz, while it integrates the Radeon HD 6530D GPU. It reportedly will cost just $126.
For $150, the A8-3850’s four CPU cores run at 2.9GHz, and it packs a Radeon HD 6550D graphics core. If you don’t require a discrete graphics card, this should provide enough graphics horsepower for light gaming and other multimedia tasks, and you may be able to make use of those two extra cores the Core i3s lack.
Fudzilla points out that these are preliminary prices, and we still don’t have any firm release date for desktop Llano parts, though it may be sometime next month. But the pricing seems to be aggressive enough to give system builders on a budget reason to wait to see if the A-series can offer superior performance to the Core i3 series.
Do you think you’ll be in the market for one of these Llano chips for your next desktop? Let us know in the Comments section.
