Intel-beating gaming power helps to
make Trinity superb value for money
Price: $60
AMD’s Fusion technology was mooted when AMD
bought ATI Technologies in 2006, but it took until last year for the plans to
fully come to fruition. By teaming a CPU with capable integrated graphics, AMD
finally had something that it could say it did better than Intel.
Trinity, the successor to last year’s Llano
chips, doesn’t stray too far from this winning formula. This year, AMD has
spent time improving both the performance and efficiency of its processor and
graphics cores.
The
Trinity APUs offer improved performance and efficiency
The processing cores used in the Trinity
chips are based on the 32nm Piledriver architecture, which is an upgraded
version of the Bulldozer technology that underpinned first-generation FX
processors. It’s a big improvement on Llano those parts were based on the
creaking architecture that was used in Phenom II-based processors, among
others.
There are six desktop Trinity chips in this
year’s range, each of which include two or four cores clocked between
3.4GHz and 3.8GHz. We were sent the high-end A10-5800K and mid-range A8-5600K
for testing.
While many of last year’s chips didn’t use
Turbo Core at all, the entire range can now dynamically increase the clock
speed between 200MHz and 600MHz. Despite the speed increases, efficiency
improvements mean that the TDPs remain at either 65W or 100W.
The HD 7000 Series GPUs that accompany
these CPUs are based on the 40nm Cayman architecture, which formed last year’s
Radeon HD 6930, HD 6950 and HD 6970 desktop graphics cards.
The decision to use the Cayman architecture
rather than 28nm HD 7000 Series technology means that Trinity misses out on the
more efficient VLIW5 instruction set that was introduced with the Radeon HD
7970. However, AMD counters this by updating Trinity with DisplayPort 1.2
support and four-screen Eyefinity compatibility, plus support for 7.1 channel
audio over HDMI.
Top of the Trinity pile is the A10-5800K.
It’s an unlocked quad-core part clocked at 3.8GHz with a Turbo Core limit of
4.2GHz, and it includes Radeon HD 7660D graphics. Despite the stock speed bump
of 800MHz over last year’s top-end A8-3870K, our benchmarks show it isn’t that
much faster, with an overall score of 0.76 compared to 0.7 in our application
tests.
Meanwhile, the mid-range 3.6GHz A8-5600K
scored 0.74. Both still have a little way to go to catch up with Intel, whose
Ivy Bridge upgrade saw its low-end Core i3-3240 scoring 0.83.
Trinity takes a convincing lead in games
tests. In DiRT 3’s Low quality benchmark at 1,366 x 768, the A10-5800K with its
Radeon HD 7660D scored 78fps, almost double the 43fps scored by Intel’s best
integrated GPU – HD Graphics 4000.
The AMD chip even scored a playable 33fps
in DiRT 3’s High quality test running at 1,920 x 1,080. It averaged 48fps in
Just Cause 2’s Low quality benchmark, 11fps ahead of Intel, and the A8-5600K
wasn’t far behind. It scored 74fps in DiRT 3 and 40fps in Just Cause 2.
The move to the Piledriver architecture has
seen AMD improve power consumption over last year’s chips, but Intel still
takes the efficiency crown. While the A10-5800K’s peak power draw of 131W
represents a 13% improvement over last year’s top-end APU, it can’t match the
87W top draw of the i3-3240.
AMD
Trinity A10-4600M Mobile APU
There’s another caveat. If you already have
an APU, you won’t be able to upgrade to a new chip, since AMD has moved to a
new socket FM2. It brings nothing significantly new to the table other than the
promise of support for at least two generation of APUs.
The new A58X chipset does offer additional
features, although these are mainly aimed at enthusiasts. It boasts the ability
to run two PCI Express x16 sockets at x8 speed, and supports up to eight SATA
6Gbits/sec ports and USB 3 all of which are improvements over the previous generation
chipsets.
Trinity takes aim at Intel’s Core i3 CPUs,
and that means pricing is extremely competitive. The A10-5800K comes in at $144
– $28.5 cheaper than an Intel Core i3-3240 and the A8-5600K is more
palatable at $144.
With application performance that isn’t far
behind Core i3 CPUs and gaming grunt that trounces anything inside a Core i3,
AMD’s latest chips are certainly an enticing proposition.
The new socket undermines the value for
money slightly, but if you’re building or buying a budget machine, then we
heartily recommend an A10-5800K or A8-5600K.
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Rating
·
Overall: 10/10
·
Performance: 10/10
·
Features & Design: 10/10
·
Value for money: 10/10
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