Building an AMD A8-3870K Llano APU System For Under $300

Test Systems, PCMark05, 3DMark06

Pictured above are the two systems that we will be comparing the performance of. On the left is the AMD Llano APU system that we just built and on the right is a custom built system from 2004.

The system from 2004 is running an Intel Celeron single core 2GHz ‘Northwood’ processor with 2GB of Mushkin DDR 266MHz memory. The graphics are being handled by the Intel 845G chipset, so we have integrated graphics. We updated all the drivers on this system and applied all the updates available for Windows SP3.

We just showed you all the parts to our sub $300 AMD LLano system, so we won’t cover them again. Everything registered correctly in Hardware Info (HWiNFO) and can be seen in the image above.

Intel Celeron System From 2004:

AMD Llano System From 2012:

PCMark05 is a great benchmark to use for overall system performance on Windows XP and we found some big differences between the two systems. The system from 2004 scored 1161 PCMarks and the AMD Llano system that we just built today scores 9183 PCMarks. It’s a bit ironic that there are 8 years that separate these two systems and there just happens to be an 8x performance difference between the two!

If you look at the advanced test details you’ll see even bigger performance differences. For example the AMD Llano system has 15 times better graphics performance! The HDD score was up nearly 5x, which is also pretty darn impressive.

Intel Celeron System From 2004:

AMD Llano System From 2012:

Benchmark Results: The Intel Celeron 2GHz with Intel 845G graphics was unable to run 3DMark06 since that GPU is unable to support pixel shader 2.0 applications. The AMD Llano APU packs a full DX11 supporting GPU inside, to is had no problems with 3DMark06 and turned in an impressive score of 3422 3DMarks. Not bad for integrated graphics!