AMD E2-3200 is shipped in HP PCs, New Llano core revision

Initial line-up of budget AMD microprocessors with Llano core consisted of seven A- and E2-Series Accelerated Processing Units (APUs). A-Series models were introduced in the third quarter 2011, although A6-3600 and A8-3800 processors are still not in stock anywhere. Another APU, dual-core E2-Series E2-3200, was planned for the 4th quarter, and at this time it's nowhere to be found. What is interesting, though, that all three models, not available in stores, are shipping in HP TouchSmart 320m Series All-in-One PC. A6-3600 and A8-3800 CPUs are also offered in HP TouchSmart 520z series All-in-One PC, and HP Pavilion p7z and Gateway SX2370 desktop computers.

In somewhat related news, MSI added new "Llano" part numbers to CPU support lists of socket FM1 motherboards. While part numbers of all APUs, launched so far, had the same suffix "GX", many new part numbers have different suffix "HX". The suffix (last two letters) of AMD part numbers indicate core revision, and it's evident that newer APUs have newer revision. However, the CPU support list has B0 core stepping for both "GX" and "HX" parts. This is possible because, as AMD "Revision Guide for AMD Family 12h Processors" states, "In some cases, two or more processor revisions may exist within a stepping of a processor family and are identified by a unique value in D18F4x164 Fixed Errata Register". The D18F4x164 register is used by BIOS to determine the status of errata (internal defects) fixes. Based on this information, we suspect that "HX" is only a minor core revision with defect fixes. At this time it's not clear whether this revision will be used on quad-core processors or not.

Besides the new minor core revision, there are a couple of interesting tidbits of information in the MSI support list. The list includes upcoming A4-3420 microprocessor. This processor has 2 CPU cores, 1 MB L2 cache, and it operates 100 MHz faster than A4-3400 APU. Another interesting CPU from the list is a AD631XOJZ43GX. This quad-core chip has 2.6 GHz clock speed and 4 MB cache, and it's similar to currently produced Athlon II X4 631, except that the AD631XOJZ43GX has lower 65 Watt Thermal Design Power.