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
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.
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.
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.
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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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