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The AMD Llano A4 3400 isn't going to appeal to the high performance audience, but for those people who want a basic, cost effective processor with graphics acceleration then we feel it has a lot to offer.
Ultimately it has been designed for those on a strict budget, and enthusiast users who desire a system with very low power consumption. The A4 3400 is a very tempting proposition due to the incredibly low power drain and efficiency under load.
Additionally, the A4 3400 is it well suited for a home server environment as it delivers solid all-round performance and produces minimal heat. For a farm of low cost machines, it really does have advantages, especially as the asking price is only £49.98 in the United Kingdom today. It is significantly more powerful than the Intel ATOM quad core processors we have reviewed in the last year.
Sadly, our system build did not show any appreciable performance gain by the addition of a Radeon 6450 in Hybrid Crossfire, to support the A4 3400 APU. Future driver updates from AMD may improve the performance of the APU/GPU Hybrid Crossfire combination however.
We wouldn't imagine many people buying an A4 3400 would demand substantial graphical processing power. For those that do, then there is always the option to add a higher performance discrete card at a later date. We feel a HD7750 would make a capable, relatively low cost upgrade if you wanted to smooth out the frame rates a little at 720p. The VTX3D HD7750 for instance is less than £80, and will assuredly bump overall gaming performance to the next level.
AMD are currently pushing the new A4 range hard and some stores have dedicated pages to supporting compatible components. This page over at DABS for instance highlights a wide range of motherboards to suit the A4 APU, some of which cost less than £50 inc vat. £100 for a new processor including the motherboard really is hard to ignore, especially when you factor in the very low power consumption.
This is clearly the ultimate ‘green' system setup.
Pros:
- Low power consumption.
- Cool and quiet.
- Very competitive pricing.
- Good ‘all-rounder'.
- Less than £50.
Cons:
- Not the ideal solution for playing games at High definition resolutions.
- Hybrid Crossfire performance is currently disappointing.
Kitguru says: It may not set the performance charts alight, but the extremely competitive price point, miserly power consumption and low heat output means it will be ideal for a huge variety of tasks. Highly recommended.
£50 for the cpu and £50 for the gigabyte mobo is pretty good isnt it ? id always been put off bying a system like this for my tv as the motherboards were often well over £100 even if the processors were cheap.
im tempted now. shall try and talk my credit card into accepting the charge.
Nice setup on Dabs for these, makes it easier to work out where to get the bits,
only thing is, they should have made some complete systems with memory, power supply etc, took a few quid from them. would have worked a lot better. seems a bit ‘half assed’ having a page with the A4’s and motherboards and nothing else. these are ideal for students who maybe need the help
Hybrid crossfire has always sucked, glad to see it hasnt gotten better all of a sudden.
not a bad deal for the price, but its probably slow as molasses for a work machine. Adding a cheap SSD might help.
Im curious, can it be overclocked?
its pretty good value for money. Not sure id want one, but would be good for a server system
I have that proc. and Gigabyte MB and i am very satisfied with that. Plus i got Ati Saphyre graphic card with 1 GB. As it was said, it is really good for lite gaming, and very cheap. And @Brian, yes it can be overclocked! 🙂
Is there such a thing as an intel atom quad core? The 6450 is pretty puny so really adds not very much except heat and cost. A 6670 or better would kick things up a notch/