AMD A10-5800K & A8-5600K Review: Trinity on the Desktop, Part 1
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 27, 2012 12:00 AM ESTDiRT 3
DiRT 3 is our next DX11 game. Developer Codemasters Southam added DX11 functionality to their EGO 2.0 engine back in 2009 with DiRT 2, and while it doesn't make extensive use of DX11 it does use it to good effect in order to apply tessellation to certain environmental models along with utilizing a better ambient occlusion lighting model. As a result DX11 functionality is very cheap from a performance standpoint, meaning it doesn't require a GPU that excels at DX11 feature performance.
DiRT 3 shows a relatively small performance advantage compared to Llano - only about 12 - 15% when comparing the two top end parts. More exciting from AMD's perspective is that it can deliver performance similar to the 3870K's 400-core GPU with the 256-core GPU in the A8-5600K.
The advantage over Intel's HD 4000/2500 remains significant.
Total War: Shogun 2
Total War: Shogun 2 is the latest installment of the long-running Total War series of turn based strategy games, and alongside Civilization V is notable for just how many units it can put on a screen at once. Adding to the load is the use of DX11 features such as tessellation and high definition ambient occlusion, which means it can give any GPU a run for its money.
We see similar scaling to DiRT 3 in Shogun: about a 15% improvement over Llano, or flat performance if you compare to the 2nd fastest Trinity GPU configuration.
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mczak - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
If early listings at merchants are any indication, they should be available. I think though the problem is that the top 65W parts seem to cost as much as the top 100W parts (so a A10-5800k costs the same as A10-5700, same story for the A8), which probably makes them a hard sell at retail (quite similar to intel, and I don't think the low power parts exactly fly off the retail desks there neither).But I agree the 65W parts are nice. On the cpu side you lose around 10% but the gpu actually has the same clocks. Of course if you tinker with it manually it should be easily possible to undervolt/underclock the 100W parts to the same level as the 65W parts.
medi01 - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Oh yeah. Comparing it to nVidia 640 makes so much more sense...Of course nobody would think about Anand finding yet another way to piss on AMDs cookies...
dawp - Friday, September 28, 2012 - link
I believe that was included for a comparison to a low end discreet card. it could have just as easily been an hd7750 or hd7770.Aone - Friday, September 28, 2012 - link
Good point. I've reached the same conclusion.shin0bi272 - Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - link
its a 100 dollar gpu beating the pants off of amd's latest and greatest APU.You could buy an intel celeron g530 for 48 dollars (with free shipping) and an asus gt640 (or galaxy 650 with MiR for the same price) and beat the living snot out of AMD's amazing new APU that everyone just has to love because its brand new from AMD and all the fan boys have to fall all over themselves to get it... sounds like apple. Hell if you hate nvidia so much you can get an amd 7750 for 99 bucks on newegg.
Either way you go the price is between 30 and 50 dollars more than the APU and it will get about twice the FPS... who's going to buy an APU with stats like that? Oh yeah fanboys...
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, October 11, 2012 - link
They never respond when the truth hurts too much.Just think, without them, amd is double epic fail and already gone. I bet that statement made their hearts so warm, and feel so heady, they "saved competition".
But you know what they really saved ? Saved the world from real innovation and forward movement, as all those resources and programmers and engineers were wasted on amd crap. Saved us all from the truth and reality. Saved us from sanity and believing fellow human beings had a clue.
I'm going to go find a trinity w discrete bench so I can LMAO as soon as the overlord control freak in fear of their own life amd releases the death grip on the nda bench rules.
You just know all the little pliable as ruibber amd fanboys gonna get their new squeeze trinity - they're looking in the mirror now saying "My name is not Mr. Anderson!"
Watch we'll get an HTPC article now, or maybe it's already posted. Hope I don't have to laugh and shake my head about how cracked and crap and functionless and problematic it turns out to be. Flash will probably rip it a new one. LMAO
Devo2007 - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
That article was dated yesterday....just like the Anandtech one.Wolfpup - Friday, September 28, 2012 - link
Yeah, I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. They're giving performance data for a product that hasn't launched yet and they're three months late?chowmanga - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Same could have been said about Tom's when Anandtech had the Sandy Bridge preview before anyone else.r3loaded - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Really? No other site does such in-depth analysis of new chip architectures and such rigorous testing and benchmarking (though Ars comes close). This is the wrong site if you want tech tabloid journalism.