So, sceptical, intrigued, or not remotely interested?

The latest blog post on it seems to indicate the mobile parts will be launching on Tuesday and could give Intel something to worry about on battery life AND performance, they also have native USB3.

I'm intrigued. Anybody else?

Got a link, please buddy?

Sure:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-llano-amd-apu-llano-apu-cpu-gpu,12918.html

http://blogs.amd.com/fusion/2011/06/09/amd-platform-innovations/

Looks interesting to me...

It will be interesting to see if they have an answer to Intel's HD graphics chipset, with its QuickSync technology.

That runs rings round the current AMD graphics card technology.

Tom's Hardware
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sandy-bridge-c
ore-i7-2600k-core-i5-2500k,2833-5.html

Here you can see it very clearly.

449MB 4 minute clip encoding in MediaEspresso

No acceleration: 2m 52s
AMD Radeon 6870 APP : 1m 26s
nVidia GTX570 CUDA: 1m 23s
Intel QuickSync: 0m 22s

That is a hell of a lot faster!

The HD3000 graphics in the i-2000 series Core processors might not be good at 3D gaming, but for video encoding / decoding, they are very potent.

For a majority of users, the Core graphics are more than fast enough for everything they need. It isn't a surprise that Intel has the majority market share for graphics chipsets. Their deliveries dwarfed AMD and nVidia, even before they started integrating the graphics into the processor.

intrigued, currently making plans for a PC for my girlfriend, she wants to play games on it but i doubt it will be anything more stressful than Minecraft, this sounds like it could be just the ticket. we can always upgrade it with my spare 9600GT if the IGP doesnt quite cut it. any word on when the desktop parts are released?

My new i3-2100 at work only gets 18fps at the rather tiny default resolution, worse than my 5 year old Intel on-board graphics at home. I think the HD3000 is twice as fast but I've not had a chance to try it.

Safe to say, I wasn't impressed. I think I'll be upgrading with a cheap new GFX to see me through the next few years rather than buying an expensive Mobo/CPU.

wow, the G945 (or whatever) in her laptop gets around 20fps with tiny render distance and fast graphics, are these parts really slower than 5 year old IGPs? looks like we will be using the 9600GT instead then, that gets around 300fps minimum with everything turned up to the max, and no vsync

Well the word from the major reviewers is that the CPU part is basically a tweaked and shrunk Phenom (in other words, quick enough for most people but quite a way behind Intel for CPU focussed tasks). But the GPU part absolutely destroys HD3000 in acceleration and gaming. Also the battery life claims seem to hold some water.

Problem is, there haven't been enough mainstream laptop releases yet...

Yeah, cpu performance is below some old Core 2 Duo parts, let alone a Core i3 Sandy Bridge!

But the gpu is better, if not really up to gaming.

For my needs, it doesn't even enter the ballpark. The integrated graphics on the Core i chips is overkill and I need processing power.

I think to say that performance is below C2D is probably not true and even if it is, it's harsh. Either way, would you agree that the concept of an APU is definitely interesting to the vast majority of the market?

c't has a benchmark table in the current issue. The A8 comes in somewhere mid-field (compared to old C2D, C2Q, Core i first gen, Core i Sandy Bridge, Phenom, Turion and mobile Celeron processors.

There are a couple of top end Core 2 chips which are faster than low end Core i chips and the A8 came in below the bottom end Core i Sandy Bridge and 2 Core 2 chips (admittedly they were the high end dual core chips of the last Core 2 generation).