AMD A10-5800K & A8-5600K Review: Trinity on the Desktop, Part 2
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 2, 2012 1:45 AM ESTContent Creation Performance
Adobe Photoshop CS4
To measure performance under Photoshop CS4 we turn to the Retouch Artists’ Speed Test. The test does basic photo editing; there are a couple of color space conversions, many layer creations, color curve adjustment, image and canvas size adjustment, unsharp mask, and finally a gaussian blur performed on the entire image.
The whole process is timed and thanks to the use of Intel's X25-M SSD as our test bed hard drive, performance is far more predictable than back when we used to test on mechanical disks.
Time is reported in seconds and the lower numbers mean better performance. The test is multithreaded and can hit all four cores in a quad-core machine.
Our Photoshop workload still runs better on Intel hardware, but the gap in performance between the 5800K and 3220 is smaller than it was between the FX-8150 and 2500K last year. While Bulldozer was pretty much unrecommendable, Trinity approaches tradeoff territory.
3dsmax 9 & POV-ray
Today's desktop processors are more than fast enough to do professional level 3D rendering at home. To look at performance under 3dsmax we ran the SPECapc 3dsmax 8 benchmark (only the CPU rendering tests) under 3dsmax 9 SP1. The results reported are the rendering composite scores.
Once again in a heavily threaded FP benchmark, the A10 and Core i3 perform very similarly. POV-Ray is another example of this below:
File Compression/Decompression Performance
Par2 is an application used for reconstructing downloaded archives. It can generate parity data from a given archive and later use it to recover the archive
Chuchusoft took the source code of par2cmdline 0.4 and parallelized it using Intel’s Threading Building Blocks 2.1. The result is a version of par2cmdline that can spawn multiple threads to repair par2 archives. For this test we took a 708MB archive, corrupted nearly 60MB of it, and used the multithreaded par2cmdline to recover it. The scores reported are the repair and recover time in seconds.
Our multithreaded Par2 recovery test shows AMD with a small advantage over the Core i3 3220, although it obviously can't touch any of the more expensive quad-core parts.
Excel Math Performance
Not all heavily threaded FP applications are easy wins for AMD. In our Monte Carlo simulation benchmark the 3220 manages a decent lead over the A10-5800K.
Our old Sorenson Squeeze test is one area where we see a slight regression compared to Llano. Like I mentioned earlier, this isn't super common but it does happen from time to time given the dramatic architecture difference between Llano and Trinity.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
178 Comments
View All Comments
Jamahl - Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - link
According to kitguru, the 5800K + 7970 GHz edition beats the i3 2105 in every single game at 1080p.mikato - Wednesday, October 3, 2012 - link
lolwut? is that using i3's integrated graphics? Please extend your comment a little more to the point it makes sense.CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
AMSheep fanboys tell themselves and everyone else lies, then they go buy the crap and the live the life of a slow and still poor dullard.Next chance they get they rinse and repeat.
kshong - Thursday, October 11, 2012 - link
Your comments add nothing to the conversation and take up space. I wish people could ban trolls like you.bill4 - Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - link
Just looked on newegg and the G850 is $70. The 5800 is supposed to MSRP for $122. I realize Obama is destroying our schools but where is 70 half of 122? Also, that leaves $50, what dedicated GPU worth a crap costs 50 dollars? Even a $100+ 7750 would not be much improvement I'm assuming.Somehow I knew before I checked the prices your comment would be an exaggeration, as I've seen the same type of wrong pricing on other comments like this already. Fanboys, get your facts straight.
Plus, I dont know the exact motherboard situation, but typically AMD motherboards are cheaper as well.
Oh and you pick out one single benchmark, what's the point of that? Looking at all the benches, what do you know, 5800 is faster than G850 easily the vast majority of times. Many times it's not even close, or 5800 can close to double G850 speed (3DSmax39, page 4 lol).
Usually the way it works in computers is, better performing parts cost more.
Usually the Trinity parts compare well with the similar priced Intel part, which is the i3 3220. Case closed.
I dont even necessarily disagree with you, that it might do better to spend a few more bucks on a g850+discrete card combo if you're a gamer (and, I'd need to see actual benchmarks with that combo to be sure) just pointing out a few things. Then again, if you're a gamer you really shouldn't spend less than 700 on a rig anyway, anything less you're buying outside the sweet spot and you just bought a piece of crap. Way PC gaming works, very well defined "sweet spot", buying above or below that spot is usually stupid for gaming.
ac2 - Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - link
Well I guess the reading comprehension is no better...I said "the G850 costs a little more than HALF the A10 suggested price"
69.90 is a little more than half of 122, i.e. 61
Unless we start quibbling how much a 'little more' is...
Lets look at the 3dsmax scores on pg 4 you talk about:
A10 - 11.5
A8 - 11.1
Pentium - 8.6 (double of which is 17.2 but anyway)
My elementary maths tells me its a 33% gain, which is generally the A10's gain over a CPU that costs 42% less... And that too only on the embarassingly parallel tasks..
ac2 - Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - link
Oh and Anand has benched G850 + discrete cards, see here:http://www.anandtech.com/show/4524/the-sandy-bridg...
Looks 'good enough' for me...
And I guess I'm just frustrated with AMD for completely dropping the value for money ball here, except for some highly threaded integer tasks...
eanazag - Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - link
Remember that once you add a discrete part for GPU the power benefits disappear.Roland00Address - Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - link
If you are adding a discrete card do not get the a10, get the Athlon X4 750K (remember it is unlocked) for $81 dollars. It is the trinity fm2 processor but it does not have the iGpu (which you don't care about since you are adding dedicated).It runs 600 mhz less on stock, and 400 mhz less on turbo but guess what you have an unlocked multiplier so you can easily set it at the same frequency as the a10.
It does cost 15 dollars more (g850 goes for 66 the Athlon X4 750k goes for $81) but you will get much better multithread performance than the pentium (in exchange for higher load power consumption)
Some games are going 4 cores (such as Battlefield 3) so the Athlon X4 750k will be better for gaming.
rarson - Wednesday, October 3, 2012 - link
Yeah, because single-threaded performance is so forward-thinking. Intel excels at what everyone is trying to move away from, great.