Soldato
- Joined
- 26 Apr 2004
- Posts
- 9,542
- Location
- Milton Keynes
To be fair, with (at least lower-end) Llano, I'm a little concerned you could run into CPU power limitations, especially with emulation as part of the game, Tom'sHardware for example only rates the Llano 3500 on par, if not a bit slower, than a Athlon/Phenom x4 at 1.5Ghz. Now from experience, a modern Athlon/Phenom x3 chip@3Ghz will run virtually anything out there reasonably well at about 50-60%, even 10bit H264 with karaoke subs, I'm just a little concerned that may leave Llano borderline depending on how wide your media tastes run, which chip you went for, and what other uses you decide to throw at the system, although it's no doubt most media will run fine, indeed the vast majority should happily handle via hardware decoding instead of relying on the CPU, but by comparison the CPU is the weak link.
If you do decide to go Llano, rather than going for the weaker 3500 (which I have seen people comment elsewhere struggles with CPU decoding at times), I'd fully recommend you spend the extra to get the 3870k which has an additional core and higher clock speeds (the GPU is marginally stronger but thats not the focus here), which will really give the system a boost moving forward, from a few reviews I've gone through, the reviewers seem far more comfortable with the power afforded by the chip in terms of CPU, as its approaching Sandybridge with the additional core and higher clocks (although as per Llano across the board, it's GPU is faster than Intels). Although the 3870K is quite a bit more than the 3500, the performance improvement for your range of needs seems worth it (3 to 4 core, 2.4Ghz to 3Ghz, faster onboard GPU, plus the K is unlocked and may net a moderate overclock. Hothardware put the 3870k, overclocked to 3.5Ghz, in the PhenomX4 980 potency range, which sounds much more robust).
Personally, especially as it seems you might need more oomph at times if emulation is of interest (will you be looking at Wii?), I'd feel happier recommending you the higher performing platform, be it Sandybridge, or the new, more expensive Llano.
In desktop terms, the 5870m is somewhere between a 5750 and 5770
The Llano onboard chips are not this fast, they have half the shaders of a 5770 and a lower core speed. A Sandybridge/decent GPU combo would be the fastest option, but obviously will cost that much more. If you were to go for the Llano, you could pretty much take my i3 spec above, drop the I3, 6670 and motherboard, and replace with a FM1 motherboard and 3870k, and take a look at a GPU once you've evaluated the performance of the onboard. Without the GPU this would be cheaper, as there seem to be some decent value FM1 motherboards, and you're dropping the cost of the GPU.
If you do decide to go Llano, rather than going for the weaker 3500 (which I have seen people comment elsewhere struggles with CPU decoding at times), I'd fully recommend you spend the extra to get the 3870k which has an additional core and higher clock speeds (the GPU is marginally stronger but thats not the focus here), which will really give the system a boost moving forward, from a few reviews I've gone through, the reviewers seem far more comfortable with the power afforded by the chip in terms of CPU, as its approaching Sandybridge with the additional core and higher clocks (although as per Llano across the board, it's GPU is faster than Intels). Although the 3870K is quite a bit more than the 3500, the performance improvement for your range of needs seems worth it (3 to 4 core, 2.4Ghz to 3Ghz, faster onboard GPU, plus the K is unlocked and may net a moderate overclock. Hothardware put the 3870k, overclocked to 3.5Ghz, in the PhenomX4 980 potency range, which sounds much more robust).
Personally, especially as it seems you might need more oomph at times if emulation is of interest (will you be looking at Wii?), I'd feel happier recommending you the higher performing platform, be it Sandybridge, or the new, more expensive Llano.
In desktop terms, the 5870m is somewhere between a 5750 and 5770
The Llano onboard chips are not this fast, they have half the shaders of a 5770 and a lower core speed. A Sandybridge/decent GPU combo would be the fastest option, but obviously will cost that much more. If you were to go for the Llano, you could pretty much take my i3 spec above, drop the I3, 6670 and motherboard, and replace with a FM1 motherboard and 3870k, and take a look at a GPU once you've evaluated the performance of the onboard. Without the GPU this would be cheaper, as there seem to be some decent value FM1 motherboards, and you're dropping the cost of the GPU.
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