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AMD A10-5800K - Taking Has To Newer Heights

5/7/2013 9:14:54 AM

In October last year, AMD officially launched its new desktop A-Series APUs, top billed by the flagship A10-5800K Black Edition APU. The new APU makes use of Socket FM2, which is not compatible with Socket FM1 motherboards. Hence, potential buyers of the A10-5800K will have to buy a new board as well.

AMD A10-5800K

AMD A10-5800K

The A10-5800K is a Quadcore processor that operates at 3.8GHz with a maximum turbo frequency of 4.2GHz and boasts a 4MB L2 cache. Its GPU is the Radeon HD 7660D, which features 384 cores and operates at 800MHz. The Trinity integrated GPUs are actually based on the old Cayman architecture of the Northern Islands GPUs, featuring AMD Eyefinity Technology for up to four displays. The flagship A10-5800K comes unlocked for easier overclocking, and is denoted by the “K” demarcation at the end of the model number (similar to Intel’s “K” series of CPUs).

The A10-5800K, along with other Trinity APUs, holds special appeal to upgraders who don’t intend to get a discrete graphics card. With integrated graphics that is more powerful than Intel’s HD Graphics 2500/4000 brought about by its third-generation Core CPUs, the A10-5800K will cater to the needs of casual gamers.

The new Trinity desktop APU uses Socket FM2, which is not backward compatible with Socket FM1 motherboards.

The new Trinity desktop APU uses Socket FM2, which is not backward compatible with Socket FM1 motherboards.

From a performance standpoint, the report card of the A10-5800K is a mixed bag of gains over the previous generation Llano APUs, especially in tasks that require more CPU processing power. However, in certain multithreaded tasks, it still loses out to the Llano, though we had expected it to pull ahead. It appears that the Pile driver cores have allowed the Trinity APU to pull ahead in terms of operating at much higher clock speeds, but they don’t necessarily translate to improved performance all around. Even against the low-end Intel Core i3-3220, the A10-5800K was, for the most part, slower.

One test in which the A10-5800K did pull ahead of Intel by a notable degree was in Battlefield Bad Company 2 where it distanced itself by nearly a 25% lead and this was when all the platforms used an identical discrete GPU. In terms of power consumption, the A10-5800K consumed a minimum of 77W and a maximum of 187W, lower than the numbers that we got when we tested the A8-3850 Llano APU (94W and 206W).

Overall, the A10-5800K is a decent mainstream “quad-core” APU that can balance the needs of work and play in a very simple platform. It doesn’t excel in very compute-intensive tasks, but when you consider the integrated GPU quotient, it more than makes up for its losses.

The APU uses the Radeon HD 7660D as its GPU, which supports AMD Eyefinity Technology for multiple display setups.

The APU uses the Radeon HD 7660D as its GPU, which supports AMD Eyefinity Technology for multiple display setups.

Benchmark

Processor AMD A10-5800K

§  Futuremark: 3014

§  Futuremark 3DMark Vantage: 11702

§  Battlefield Bad Company 2 (Average Framerate, In FPS): 79.8

Processor AMD FX-8150

§  Futuremark: 2981

§  Futuremark 3DMark Vantage: 11699

§  Battlefield Bad Company 2 (Average Framerate, In FPS): 87.5

Processor Intel Core i3-3220

§  Futuremark: 3067

§  Futuremark 3DMark Vantage: 11517

§  Battlefield Bad Company 2 (Average Framerate, In FPS): 64.1

Processor Intel Core i5-3470

§  Futuremark: 3473

§  Futuremark 3DMark Vantage: 11805

§  Battlefield Bad Company 2 (Average Framerate, In FPS): 85.3

Processor Intel Core i5-2600K

§  Futuremark: 3517

§  Futuremark 3DMark Vantage: 11988

§  Battlefield Bad Company 2 (Average Framerate, In FPS): 87.9

Integrated graphics is one of the key strengths of the Trinity-based AMD A10-5800K APU. The new APU showed an advantage over other CPUs in benchmarks where graphics testing is a priority.

Specifications

§  Processor: codename Trinity

§  Fab process: 32nm

§  Base clock: 100MHz

§  L1 Cache: 128KB (64KB + 64KB)

§  L2 Cache: 4MB

§  Memory Controller: Integrated Dual Channel (Up to DDR3-1866)

§  PCIe Controller: Support for PCIe 2.0

§  TDP: 100W

§  Website: www.amd.com

At a glance

§  Frequency: 3.8GHz (Rated), 4.2GHz (Max)

§  Packaging: Socket FM2

§  Number of Cores: Four

§  Bus speed: 2GB/s

§  Price: $135

Verdict: 8.0

§  Performance: 7.5

§  Features: 9.5

§  Value: 8.5

 

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