AMD quietly releases new mobile Llano CPUs

Current AMD mobile "Sabine" platform was launched in June of this year, and, as we reported in October, was due for refresh this quarter. Today AMD quietly added details on seven new SKUs to Sabine platform specifications, and to notebook APU product information pages. That usually means that processors are either officially released, or will be released within days. Newly introduced A-Series microprocessors are a mix of dual-core and quad-core models, targeting either higher performance on "MX" chips, or power consumption on "M" parts.

Six out of seven new Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) are incremental upgrades of existing chips, and they feature increased by 100 MHz base and turbo core frequencies over first generation of mobile Llanos. Specifically, A8-Series 3520M and 3550MX superseded A8-A3500M and A8-3530MX, A6-Series 3420M and 3430MX replaced A6-3400M and A6-3410MX, and A4-Series 3320M and 3330MX took place of A4-3300M and A4-3310MX. The fastest new quad-core is A8-3550MX with 45 Watt TDP. This part is clocked at 2 GHz, and can temporarily boost frequency up to 2.7 GHz when required. The best performing quad-core Llano with 35 Watt TDP is A8-3520, and this one is clocked lower, at 1.6 GHz base and up to 2.5 GHz when Turbo Core is activated. Dual-core Llano from mobile A4-series are generally clocked higher than quad-cores, up to 2.2 GHz on A4-3330MX, although their maximum Turbo core speed is lower than on A6- and A8-Series APUs. Integrated GPU on dual-core A4s also has fewer shader units, which leads to lower graphics performance. Remaining features of these 6 CPUs are identical to other products from the same series.

Seventh released processor, A4-3305M, is quite different from the rest. It's a dual-core CPU with 1.9 GHz clock speed and only 1 MB L2 cache. The number of shader units on AMD 3305M GPU was reduced from 240 to 160, although they are clocked higher than on the rest of the A4-series. Despite of the differences, the GPU on A4-3305M is still branded as HD 6480G.

All mobile Llanos, even the entry level ones, support Virtualization, and fit into socket FS1. The newly released processors stayed on the same core stepping, which is a good news for those willing to upgrade their Sabine notebooks. We suspect that new chips may be supported by majority of existing laptops without BIOS upgrade.

Detailed specifications of all microprocessors are provided in the table below:

Model	Cores	Frequency	Turbo Frequency	L2 cache	Graphics	GPU cores / freq	TDP
A4-3305M	2	1.9 GHz	2.5 GHz	1 MB	HD 6480G	160 / 593 MHz	35 Watt
A4-3320M	2	2 GHz	2.6 GHz	2 MB	HD 6480G	240 / 444 MHz	35 Watt
A4-3330MX	2	2.2 GHz	2.6 GHz	2 MB	HD 6480G	240 / 444 MHz	45 Watt
A6-3420M	4	1.5 GHz	2.4 GHz	4 MB	HD 6520G	320 / 400 MHz	35 Watt
A6-3430MX	4	1.7 GHz	2.4 GHz	4 MB	HD 6520G	320 / 400 MHz	45 Watt
A8-3520M	4	1.6 GHz	2.5 GHz	4 MB	HD 6620G	400 / 444 MHz	35 Watt
A8-3550MX	4	2 GHz	2.7 GHz	4 MB	HD 6620G	400 / 444 MHz	45 Watt