AMD's A10-5750M Review, Part 1: The APU and Radeon HD 8650G Performance
by Dustin Sklavos on June 28, 2013 12:00 PM ESTConclusion: Surprisingly Potent Refresh
Without getting into the nitty gritty of the MSI GX60 that houses our review APU, AMD's A10-5750M, it seems like AMD's new APU is a net victory...with some caveats.
I imagine at the time of Richland's development, graphics performance wasn't a huge concern. With Haswell, that performance target shifts a little bit, but as long as we're not heavily CPU-bound, AMD continues to offer superior mobile graphics. Richland seems to be most aggressively focused on shoring up the primary weakness of AMD's existing architecture: the CPU itself. Piledriver was a decent improvement on Bulldozer and, ironically, a mild one on Llano, but it's nowhere near enough. Bumped up clock speeds and improved turbo help close the gap at least a little bit, but we're still dealing with 35W AMD APUs struggling to hit the same performance levels at 15-17W Intel chips.
Arguably more impressive is that this refinement was possible at all. AMD was able to take Trinity, tune the silicon ever so slightly, and extract a healthy gain in CPU performance from it. Graphics performance seems to have held flat from Trinity, but an essentially free performance boost on the CPU is welcome.
I am, however, forced to address a few elephants in the room that are getting glossed over. As consumers, we need AMD to succeed. Lack of competition is showing in a major way: desktop Haswell is a joke, Haswell's GT2 IGP is a minor improvement yet promises to be the most common one in Intel's lineup, and Intel seems to be planning to mostly coast on Haswell for two years while focusing on Atom's successor.
Yet the ugly truth about Richland and Trinity before them is that these reviews are covering the fastest models available. A8 chips lose a third of their GPU hardware across the board, and A6 chips lose another third. If you do some quick and dirty math, that means that anything below an A10 is going to be almost directly inferior to Haswell or Ivy Bridge. Graphics performance will at best be slightly above parity, while CPU performance takes a bath.
The other problem is that AMD is still targeting 35W as the mainstream TDP, but that's a target that's actually quietly shifted in the marketplace. This isn't 2008 anymore and Intel isn't charging a fat premium for its low-voltage hardware. The market that needs 35W CPUs is shrinking, being devoured at the low side by tablets and systems with ULV CPUs that still offer enough performance to handle the majority of tasks end users will need them for. And anyone who needs more performance than that can simply make the jump to a system with a quad-core Intel CPU that has more muscle. In this reviewer's opinion, 35W isn't the target, it's the halo. 15W-17W is the target, and while AMD has offerings at those TDPs, they're woefully uncompetitive.
AMD doesn't just need Kaveri. We need Kaveri. We need the Steamroller architecture update, and we need the graphics cores to switch over to GCN from VLIW4. Hopefully AMD will be able to produce a Kaveri part that has a fighting chance against Intel at 15W/17W, since Kabini and Temash are destined for smaller form factors. For now, the Richland A10-5750M is a good option and a solid offering for a refresh, but I don't think anyone can rely on it as a stopgap for too much longer.
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kyuu - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
I'm referring specifically to the GT3e parts, of course, in case it wasn't clear.trisct - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link
AMD won't interest me again until there's a high end APU with GCN cores available. I wouldn't buy a CPU that is about to be surpassed by a game console.Rontalk - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link
"Unlike with Trinity, AMD didn't seed Richland reference notebooks to reviewers"Ha ha, I wonder why!
Shivansps - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link
Why is compared to a ULT Haswell? it shouldt be compared to mainstream mobile Haswell parts?FwFred - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link
To be fair, there are only i5 and i7 mobile Haswells released. The i5s only come in the 15W (GT2/GT3) and 28W (GT3) variety. The GT3 comparison would be very interesting, but I'm not sure Anand has any of these parts.Beenthere - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link
Richland appeals to those who want the best performance/value relationship in a laptop. Few people know or care if a laptop APU is properly rated at 35w or falselty advertised as 17w like Intel does. What most laptop buyers care about is running actual software and reasonable battery life. Richland delivers what the majority of consumers desire and at a price that won't break the bank. When you compare performance based on retail price, Richland is the winner not the $200+ more expensive Intel models.junky77 - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link
thanks for the reviewwhat about power consumption?
Khato - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link
In the many years that I've been reading Anandtech this may well be the first article of genuinely disappointing quality. It's clearly a conscious decision on the part of the author to omit the Haswell GT3 and GT3e benchmarks of previous reviews, apparently justified by the opinion expressed on the third page of, "The only reprieve AMD seems to be getting on this front is the unusual rarity of GT3-enabled parts in the market." And since the Haswell SKUs with faster graphics were omitted from the benchmark results leaving only the low-end 15W GT2 SKU to fight for the title against AMD's top of the line 35W Richland we get the bizarre conclusion of, "AMD continues to offer superior mobile graphics." What's even worse is that the author then acknowledges the fact that AMD has markedly slower graphics in their A8 and A6 lines. (The commentary on desktop Haswell in a mobile review is also a tad bit grating.)Anyway, I've always liked Anandtech as articles typically include all the relevant information along with informed commentary. Hopefully this review is merely a random anomaly.
Vi0cT - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link
I agree with you in the sense that Dustin can/should get higher quality stuff out but are you taking into account the price difference for GT3/GT3e enabled solutions?.The last time I checked, an Iris Pro 5200 enabled SKU was around ~600 USD with the price difference you can get a current gen discrete mobile GPU(from AMD or NVIDIA) then Intel doesn't stand a chance (GPU).
As far as results goes in the HD 4000 <> HD 5000 comparison article the only benchmark we can relate to is Futuremark 3DMark 11.
Resuming for you here:
MSI GX60 (A10 5750M + HD8650G): 1336
AMD Trinity (A10 4600M + 7660G): 1138
Intel HD 5000 ( 2013 13-inch MBA): 1080
So... HD5000 good lower results than Trinity, and considering that the HD5100 just got +0.1Ghz I don't think it's close to Richland.
Then there is Iris Pro 5200, and then we get into HD 8850M /GT 750M territory price-wise.
Not to mention that right now the AMD APU is a better option in the price/performance department (for gaming).
esgreat - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link
I the MacBook Air was power constrained (15W part). Iris 5100 is a better comparison not because of it's +0.1GHz nominal frequency change, but it's ability to operate at higher power (28W). This means it doesn't have to throttle down on power as frequently.