AMD A10-5800K & A8-5600K Review: Trinity on the Desktop, Part 1
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 27, 2012 12:00 AM ESTCrysis: Warhead
Our first graphics test is Crysis: Warhead, which in spite of its relatively high system requirements is the oldest game in our test suite. Crysis was the first game to really make use of DX10, and set a very high bar for modern games that still hasn't been completely cleared. And while its age means it's not heavily played these days, it's a great reference for how far GPU performance has come since 2008. For an iGPU to even run Crysis at a playable framerate is a significant accomplishment, and even more so if it can do so at better than performance (low) quality settings.
Crysis sets the tone for a lot of what we'll see in this performance review. The Radeon HD 7660D on AMD's A10-5800K boosts performance by around 15 - 26% over the top end Llano part. The smaller, Radeon HD 7560D GPU manages a small increase over the top-end Llano at worst, and at best pulls ahead by 18%.
Compared to Ivy Bridge, well, there's no comparison. Trinity is significantly faster than Intel's HD 4000, and compared to HD 2500 the advantage is tremendous.
Metro 2033
Our next graphics test is Metro 2033, another graphically challenging game. Like Crysis this is a game that is traditionally unplayable on many integrated GPUs, even in DX9 mode.
Metro 2033 shows us a 6 - 13% performance advantage for the top end Trinity part compared to Llano. The advantage over Intel's HD 4000 ranges from 20 - 40% depending on the resolution/quality settings. In general AMD is able to either deliver the same performance at much better quality or better performance at the same quality as Ivy Bridge.
The more important comparison is looking at the A8-5600K vs. Intel's HD 4000 and 2500. AMD is still able to hold onto a significant advantage there, even with its core-reduced GPU.
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ganeshts - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Yes, they can be used simutaneouslymikato - Monday, October 1, 2012 - link
Eyefinity!MrSpadge - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Seeing how the A10-something has 1.5 times the raw GPU horse power than the A8-something it seems obvious that the A10 is badly choked for memory bandwidth, even at DDR3-1866. Since even DDR3-2400 ist rather cheap these days it would be interesting to see performance scaling with memory speed. I expect the value the A10 provides can be considerably increased.rscoot - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Wondering if the IMC is rated for DDR3-2400 though. And yeah it's patently obvious that the APU on these chips are starved for memory bandwidth.wwwcd - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Intel HD 4000, looks like a wrist of gay, against the presentation of graphics controllers set in Trinity ;)formulav8 - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
This preview showed me how pathetic Intels junk is. Doesn't even come close overall.Aone - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Would you say what cpu you used for GT 640?wheeqo - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
AMD please take Trinity to Windows 8 Tablet!Roland00Address - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
but is it possible for you to add these three cards before the final review next week1) 6670 1gb gddr5
2) 6570 ddr3 or 6670 ddr3
3) 7750 1gb gddr5
I ask for these are new cards that trinity will be competing against in a similar price bracket. You can't find a 5570 on neweeg right now since it has been discontinued and replaced with 6000 and 7000 series part. The only 5570 on newegg right now is a proprietary one from visiontek with a custom output that has a dongle that allows it to do 4 monitors in a low profile slot.
Thank You
herrdoktor330 - Friday, September 28, 2012 - link
To add on to this one, can you test the APU with those cards IN CROSSFIRE?I seriously think that you could get decent enough HD gaming from this setup with some eye candy with a little help from a discrete GPU. I've been waiting on this platform for a while and, while the CPU performance will be similar to the mobile variant (thus underwhelming), this APU is going to be awesome for the HTPC that's also gaming capable.