Llano is the first processor architecture from AMD made with 32nm technology and we had hoped for good overclocking potential. Our tests of the flagship AMD A8-3850 did not show the potential we had been hoping for, though not bad. A Polish overclocker has now shown that Llano is capable of good frequencies by overclocking A8-3850 to more than 5 GHz.
AMD has with its powerful and transistor packed GPU been forced to keep clock frequencies down and the top model debuts at 2.9 GHz on all four cores. Our own overclocking tests took us over 3.8 GHz with 1.65V, up from 1.42V.
_mat_ has now pushed his sample of the same processor to 1.76V with help from liquid nitrogen and got it stable at 5 GHz long enough to get a screenshot. The final result was 5046 MHz. The motherboard was a Gigabyte GA-A75-UD4H.
This is a pretty nice clock frequency, but can be compared to the AMD Phenom II family where overclockers often reach 6 GHz on quad-core models and even 7 GHz in extreme cases, which does give us a hint of what the Llano architecture with its integrated GPU is a lot more complicated, despite the more efficient 32nm technology and otherwise similar CPU architecture.
With its locked multiplier at x29 _mat_ was forced to push the bus to 348 MHz, which pressures more than just the CPU. There should be potential for AMD’s A series to reach even higher clock frequencies with unlocked models, which are due this year.
