The APU has a TDP of 45W, which is comparable with AMD's current top end CPU, but below Intel's flagship 55W Core i7 Extreme. Considering the Phenom II X940 BE, AMD's current flagship, is clocked at 2.4 GHz, one may wonder how optimizations and a 32nm shrink resulted in a sharp 500 MHz downclock. If at all, the opposite would make more sense. The catch is that the A8 APU integrates a full fledged GPU, and 45W is actually a very power efficient result for a quad core CPU and a 400SP GPU at full load.
Of course, AMD will introduce Turbo Core 2 with Llano, and we may see the CPU part boosting to as high as 2.6 GHz if the GPU is idling.
One of the major bottlenecks identified for the Fusion GPU has always been the memory. A derivative of the HD 5500 series, the A8-3530MX is powered by 1600 MHz DDR3 which is higher than Intel's 1333 MHz support. Still, this is a fraction of the 3600 MHz GDDR5 memory in the HD 5570. The sharp difference in performance between the HD 5570 GDDR3 edition and the GDDR5 edition suggests why upping the memory clocks is important for the Llano APU. As part of the Sabine platform, the A8 APU will occupy the FS1 socket, paired up with the A70M chipset.
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