My LLano A4-3300 Review [Old thread - necro]

[sm625]

The A4 system that I built could run league of legends at decent enough settings, but there's no way it could run bandicam at the same time and get decent framerates on the recordings. That's the problem in a nutshell. Not enough cpu power, and shared memory. An intel + discrete is a lot faster for the same money, even before adjusting for the "required" ram premium on the llano.

I suspect its pretty much the same case for games like Sims 3, which make up a huge portion of the pc gaming user base. It could run the game, but not much else in the background.

 

[laputan machine]

The A4 system that I built could run league of legends at decent enough settings, but there's no way it could run bandicam at the same time and get decent framerates on the recordings. That's the problem in a nutshell. Not enough cpu power, and shared memory. An intel + discrete is a lot faster for the same money, even before adjusting for the "required" ram premium on the llano.

I suspect its pretty much the same case for games like Sims 3, which make up a huge portion of the pc gaming user base. It could run the game, but not much else in the background.

What intel cpu + discrete gpu would you get for the 70$ that the a4-3400 costs?

 

[Vesku]

Trying to game (no farmville) and run useful (moderately demanding) tasks in the background on a bottom tier dual core with integrated graphics? I think we are another year or two away from that sort of scenario.

 

[sm625]

What intel cpu + discrete gpu would you get for the 70$ that the a4-3400 costs?

I see HD6670 on slickdeals all the time for $50. And a celeron G530 is at MC for $35. This is $85. It is pretty much the same price bracket, but more performance and better price/performance ratio.

 

[laputan machine]

I see HD6670 on slickdeals all the time for $50. And a celeron G530 is at MC for $35. This is $85. It is pretty much the same price bracket, but more performance and better price/performance ratio.

That's 35 if you have a MC nearby, and the lowest price I can see for a hd 6670 right now on pricegrabber is 72.
Lowest for the a4-3400 is 65. You should compare it to the price that you ordinary get the parts for, not super special offers that might show up every blue moon or that very few people can take advantage of. After all the 3400 might just as soon get one of those.

 

[cytg111]

I've got the eeepc 1215B wich sports the E450 .. wich will actually run WOW at decent performance.
But the real killer is, it is dirt friggin cheap AND it lasts 8h+ on battery.. I actually got it for the battery time and the 1366 resolution, rest is flavour.

edit : so point being, these apu's : dirt cheap, low wattage, decent performance = winning

 

[waltchan]

That's 35 if you have a MC nearby, and the lowest price I can see for a hd 6670 right now on pricegrabber is 72.
Lowest for the a4-3400 is 65. You should compare it to the price that you ordinary get the parts for, not super special offers that might show up every blue moon or that very few people can take advantage of. After all the 3400 might just as soon get one of those.

Sorry for hijacking a 4-year old thread, but I'm AMAZED to hear A4-3300 sold for $65 back then while Celeron G530 was only $35 at Micro Center.

Today for 2016, a new A4-3300 severely depreciated down to only $11.50 shipped (or $10 with best offer), and I just bought three today for $10 each. WOW...

<link to ebay sale removed -Admin DrPizza>
http://www.ebay.com/itm/291675010408
CPUs do depreciate, but this one is worse by percentage, and I'm so blessed not to join the FM1 high-prices game back in early-2012.

Getting to know better with this $10 A4-3300, who still owns one today, and how's the performance?

 

[Burpo]

First sentence of the op.. 4 yrs 4 months ago? Of course they depreciate! You bought junk..

"Short version: It is junk. Far worse than the review sites have told us."

 

[waltchan]

First sentence of the op.. 4 yrs 4 months ago? Of course they depreciate! You bought junk..

"Short version: It is junk. Far worse than the review sites have told us."

It's not junk anymore. For $10 shipped, I can't complain, and I treat it as a cheaper solution of A4-4000 FM2. Plus, you can bus-overclock it. Looks like I don't need to depend too much on AM3 Athlon X2s anymore. Some FM1 boards as refurb are still available for purchase for $27.99 shipped. Not too bad.

Llano FM1s were based on Athlon II Regor cores (or Phenom II). While benchmark score for A4-3300 is lower than A4-5300, I read some reviews stating A4-3300 is a real true dual-core, while A4-5300 is based on Bulldozer with one core and two threads, meaning A4-3300 wins on multi-tasking. Which one I read correctly?

 

[VirtualLarry]

First sentence of the op.. 4 yrs 4 months ago? Of course they depreciate! You bought junk..

"Short version: It is junk. Far worse than the review sites have told us."

Wow, buying junk indeed.

Better off buying E8400 CPUs for same money.

Edit: Not to mention, the IGPs of those APUs are "unsupported" nowadays. Good luck with Windows 10.

 

[Yuriman]

It's not junk anymore. For $10 shipped, I can't complain, and I treat it as a cheaper solution of A4-4000 FM2. Plus, you can bus-overclock it. Looks like I don't need to depend too much on AM3 Athlon X2s anymore. Some FM1 boards as refurb are still available for purchase for $27.99 shipped. Not too bad.

Llano FM1s were based on Athlon II Regor cores (or Phenom II). While benchmark score for A4-3300 is lower than A4-5300, I read some reviews stating A4-3300 is a real true dual-core, while A4-5300 is based on Bulldozer with one core and two threads, meaning A4-3300 wins on multi-tasking. Which one I read correctly?

Who would want one of these though? I live in a rural area with a LOT of poverty, and I see people bringing much faster systems than this to be recycled on a daily basis.

 

[waltchan]

Edit: Not to mention, the IGPs of those APUs are "unsupported" nowadays. Good luck with Windows 10.

They're in the same boat with Richland FM2s, including A10-6800K. None gets the official Crimson drivers.

 

[VirtualLarry]

They're in the same boat with Richland FM2s, including A10-6800K. None gets the official Crimson drivers.

Exactly.

Of course, I don't agree with AMD throwing their Trinity / Richland customers under the bus (and to a lesser extent, Llano). But they did.

 

[waltchan]

Who would want one of these though? I live in a rural area with a LOT of poverty, and I see people bringing much faster systems than this to be recycled on a daily basis.

Do you see a lot of Sandy Bridge or Wolfdale PCs? I just don't see enough Sandy Bridge CPUs listed on eBay to supply all the demands for budget builders, which indicates insufficient amounts in recycling center. But the amount of Wolfdale CPUs are five times higher.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Hey, waltchan, I was looking at Microcenter, and they had Pentium 4 775 CPUs, for $0.99! Go get em!

 

[NTMBK]

Exactly.

Of course, I don't agree with AMD throwing their Trinity / Richland customers under the bus (and to a lesser extent, Llano). But they did.

Oh, they threw Llano customers under the bus years ago, when they dropped support for the FM1 socket after a single generation.

Waltchan, stop building crap systems. I don't know who you're building them for, but just stop. If it's for yourself, then you have a hoarding problem. If it's for other people, you're giving them a terrible experience with junk components which are likely to have technical problems very soon.

 

[Burpo]

Yeap..

 

[Vortex6700]

Waltchan, I did the same as you a few months back. Entire system cost was $89.

After MUCH fiddling, I was able to get insurgency running at > 30fps on a custom linux install.

If you have windows on yours, do you mind seeing what fps you get in the game (if you have it)?

 

[sm625]

The point that I tried to make with this thread is that there was somethign seriously "wrong" with this chip. Its not just a matter of it being slow. I was comparing to an E6600 with a PCIe X1 Ion card, not exactly a screaming beast! But the E6600 system with the X1 card performed sooooo much better that it left me scratching my head wondering if there wasnt some sort of serious hardware problem.

 

[bigboxes]

I got an A4-3300 in my file server. I rarely have to look at the desktop and that is only for maintenance. Of course, I bought that in March 2013 for $35. I didn't care about performance as I was only serving up files to my home network. Using a 120GB Sammy SSD for the OS drive it is quite zippy for that task. For anything else I would hate it.

 

[SPBHM]

Wow, buying junk indeed.

Better off buying E8400 CPUs for same money.

Edit: Not to mention, the IGPs of those APUs are "unsupported" nowadays. Good luck with Windows 10.

do you mean less support than the HD 5000 series, or the same? because if it's the same, it's usable, d3d/OGL works fine and also video decoding, the A4 video decoder should handle well 1080P30 or 720P60 h264 youtube.

 

[waltchan]

Hey, waltchan, I was looking at Microcenter, and they had Pentium 4 775 CPUs, for $0.99! Go get em!

Where can I find boards as new with HDMI output? NONE except for one ECS FM1.

 

[USER8000]

The IGPs are supported out of the box with Windows 10 and the IGPs are quite old now,so I doubt there are any more performance optimisations to be had and they cannot support DX12.

 

[waltchan]

Turns out the FM1s won't let me install the latest Crimson Beta driver, which FM2 can, and only the older one max.

 

[waltchan]

Now the FM2 A4-5300s are selling for $19.99 shipped on eBay, more than 10 available. Who needs a $37 Celeron G1820. Never knew AMD APUs depreciate badly. Let the war begin...