What does everyone think of the AMD's apu's?

I've been out of the hardware loop for a while now and didn't really get to hear what people thought of them when they were released. I'm went on newegg and found a bunch of Laptops that have a quad core apu with either a 6520 or 6620. From what I've read these chips run most modern games at medium to high settings with a decent frame-rate. Back when I bought my old Asus (see sig) in the days of the dx9 cards you had to pay at least 800 or 900 to get a computer that could play the latest games with that kind of performance.

They may not be the best thing out there, but it seems like they offer a s*** ton of bang for the buck, no?

 

6620G can play *SOME* games on high. But a lot of games is too demanding for this APU so you have to settle with medium and low settings. And it cannot play all games either.

But if you are in the marked for a cheap laptop where you play some games now and then, this is probably good enough for you. Better than Intels HD 3000 IGP.

I would personally pick a laptop with Sandy Bridge and a discrete GPU like GT 540M though because they are very cheap too and blows Llano out of the water.

 

The nice thing about the A-Series APU is that it can be pretty easily overclocked and undervolted. Locked at a speed of 2.2-2.3 GHz for the mid-range AMD A6 gives performance between the Core i3 and i5. When used in a notebook that has a separate discreet GPU (noted by Radeon 6xxxG2 in a spec chart), performance is quite good. You won't be able to run newer titles at 1080p with max AA, but games such as Bioshock, Batman: AA, and others run fluently on my system at 1366x768 and high details.

 

Right. The A-Series APU fills the gap nicely for users that desire/require a quad core but somewhere between i3 and i5. If you run a lot of single or dual threaded apps, the i3 or i5 would probably be better suited, but if you run three or four threads, the A6 or A8 is a great CPU. I'm impressed with its performance in games so far.