AMD A10-5800K & A8-5600K Review: Trinity on the Desktop, Part 2
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 2, 2012 1:45 AM ESTOverclocking
With Sandy Bridge Intel killed budget overclocking by completely clock locking all CPUs without turbo boost enabled. While you used to be able to buy an entry level CPU and overclock it quite nicely, Intel moved all overclocking to its higher priced parts. As a gift to the overclocking community, Intel ramped up the presence of its fully unlocked K-series parts. Anything with a K at the end shipped with a fully unlocked clock multiplier, at a small price premium. Given that Intel hadn't shipped unlocked CPUs since the days of the original Pentium, this was a welcome move on its part. What would really be nice is the addition of some lower priced K SKUs, unfortunatley we won't get that unless there's significant competitive pressure from AMD.
Trinity doesn't have what it takes to really force Intel into doing such a thing, but that doesn't mean AMD won't try. The Trinity lineup includes AMD's own K-series SKUs that, like their Intel counterparts, ship fully unlocked. From $67 all the way up to $122, AMD is offering unlocked Trinity APUs. The value of these parts really depends on just how overclockable Trinity is to begin with. The Bulldozer/Piledriver architecture is designed to push frequency, however AMD is already shipping these things at very close to 4GHz to begin with. Take AMD's turbo frequencies into account and you're already at 4.2GHz with the A10-5800K. How much additional headroom is there?
With a stock cooler and not a ton of additional voltage, it looks like there's another 5 - 15% depending on whether you're comparing base clocks or max turbo clocks. With an extra 0.125V (above the 1.45V standard core voltage setting) I was able to hit 4.4GHz on the A10-5800K. I could boot into Windows at 4.5GHz however the system wasn't stable. Although I could post at 4.6GHz, Windows was highly unstable at that frequency. With more exotic cooling I do believe I could probably make 4.5 work on the A10-5800K.
The extra frequency isn't enough to erase the single threaded performance gap between the A10 and Intel's Core i3 3220 however:
The only way AMD is going to close this gap is through a serious focus on improving single threaded performance in future architectures.
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silverblue - Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - link
They are going to.http://www.anandtech.com/show/6201/amd-details-its...
Origin64 - Wednesday, October 3, 2012 - link
That's what they said about Trinity last year. I'm not buying it, not since Bulldozer.CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
Yep, it's always the future, the next one, for the amd fanboysean.crees - Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - link
I agree, the best case scenario for AMD is the A10-5700 with 65 watt TDP in a SFF ITX enclosure utilizing the integrated GPU.ac2 - Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - link
Oops that last line should read "That puts a $50 saving towards..." not $70So:
- Pentium G850: $70 (HD2000 less Quicksync)
- Gigabyte GA-B75M-D3V: $70 (with PCIe 3.0 and USB 3.0 onboard)
Can easily upgrade to a more powerful GPU/ CPU down the line..
cyrusfox - Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - link
Correction to your commentThe G850 will only support PCIe 2.0, you would need to wait for Ivy refresh of celeron/pentium.
If it was me and I was going cheap/Intel, I would just buy a Celeron G530 for $40, why bother with the G850, its just as handicapped with a little more CPU freq.
But trinity would be a whole lot more fun to play with then those chips even though it may be slower doing a lot of the same task. Some of us just enjoy overclocking while undervolting while rooting for the perpetual underdog.
CaptainDoug - Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - link
The G850 has Intel HD 2000 graphics. Big step up. Also as far as motherboard compatibility, if you go with a celeron, your choices for boards that are also compatible with i3, i5, i7 boards is slim pickin's. Going with a pentium gives you more advanced motherboard options. I agree that the G530 is a great CPU for cheap but it's just a little harder to upgrade to anything amazing. Trinity is quite interesting though. Would be great in a small desktop for the wife.wwwcd - Wednesday, October 3, 2012 - link
HD 2000 is a scrap ;)rarson - Wednesday, October 3, 2012 - link
Having Intel graphics is not, in any way, a plus. Especially a turd like HD2000.delirious7 - Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - link
how is the ivy bridge pentiums or celerons going to have pci express 3.0 when even the core i-3 processors don't? intel decided to omit pci express 3.0 from everything under an core i5.the only thing besides a slightly better clock for clock that ivy gives you with the ivy bridge pentiums is memory support up to speeds of 1600 instead of 1333 like sandy bridge.