AMD A4-3320M vs Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 vs Intel Core 2 Duo T9800

The AMD A4-3320M (Codename Llano) is a dual-core processor for entry level laptops. It is part of the Fusion family of APUs (=Accelerated Processing Units) and features an integrated Radeon HD 6480G graphics card. The processor core is clocked at 2 GHz base clock speed and is able to automatically overclock up to 2.6GHz (TurboCore, depending on temperature and used cores). 

The processor core is based on the Husky familiy 12h. Compared to the older Phenom II mobile processors, the Husky core is very similar but features an additional hardware divider. However, the performance per clock should be similar to the old Turion II, Athlon II, Phenom II mobile processors (as the Llano APU they did not feature a Level 3 cache).

The performance of the processor part should be comparable to a previous AMD Athlon II M340. Due to TurboCore the single threaded performance should be slightly better and the multithreaded slightly slower. Therefore, the performance is clearly worse than similar clocked Sandy Bridge based processors (e.g. Core i3-2310M).

The Llano APUs feature an integrated DirectX 11 capable graphics card with a maximum of 400 cores. The AMD Radeon HD 6480G called version in the A4-Series however offers only 240 cores at 444MHz. It has no dedicated memory and also is not able to use the integrated cache (in difference to the Intel HD 3000). Furthermore the APU also features an integrated UVD3 video processor to fully decode most used HD videos (like H.264, VC-1, MPEG4).

The A4-3320M also features an integrated dual-channel memory controller with support for DDR3(L)-1333 memory and a PCIe 2.0 controller.

The TDP of 35 Watt for the APU (including graphics card and memory controller) makes it best suited for 14 to 15-inch laptops.

The Intel Core 2 Duo T9800 was the top dual core CPU for laptops at the time of introduction. Later it was topped by the Core 2 Duo T9900 / X9100. Still the T9800 is a high end laptop CPU which is well suited for single and dual threaded applications.

Due to the high clock speed, the T9800 offers enough performance for demanding games (in 2009) and applications. On average, only faster dual cores (like the T9900 or fast Core i7) or Core i7 quad cores can be faster than the T9800.

The T9800 uses a Penryn (Montevina Update) core that features 2 integer units, 1 floating point unit, 1 load unit, and 1 store unit in a 14-stages long pipeline. Due to the Wide Dynamic Execution Technology, the core is able to simultaneously execute up to four instructions.

The integrated Enhanced Speedstep is able to downclock the core dynamically as low as 800 MHz to save power (in idle mode).

The Core 2 Duo T9800 can be used in a Socket P socket with 479 pins: Socket P / Micro Flip-Chip Pin Grid Array (Micro-FCPGA) requires 479-pin surface mount Zero Insertion Force (ZIF) socket (mPGA479M socket) or Micro Flip-Chip Ball Grid Array (Micro-FCBGA) for surface mount (479-ball)