AMD Carrizo Part 2: A Generational Deep Dive into the Athlon X4 845 at $70
by Ian Cutress on July 14, 2016 9:00 AM ESTMiddle-Earth: Shadows of Mordor
The final title in our testing is another battle of system performance with the open world action-adventure title, Shadows of Mordor. Produced by Monolith using the LithTech Jupiter EX engine and numerous detail add-ons, SoM goes for detail and complexity to a large extent, despite having to be cut down from the original plans. The main story itself was written by the same writer as Red Dead Redemption, and it received Zero Punctuation’s Game of The Year in 2014.
For testing purposes, SoM gives a dynamic screen resolution setting, allowing us to render at high resolutions that are then scaled down to the monitor. As a result, we get several tests using the in-game benchmark, taking results as the average and minimum frame rates.
For this test we used the following settings with our graphics cards:
| Shadow of Mordor Settings | |||
| Resolution | Quality | ||
| Low GPU | Integrated Graphics | 1280x720 | Low |
| ASUS R7 240 1GB DDR3 | |||
| Medium GPU | MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB | 1920x1080 | Ultra |
| MSI R9 285 Gaming 2G | |||
| High GPU | ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB | 1920x1080 3840x2160 |
Ultra Ultra |
| MSI R9 290X Gaming 4G | |||
Shadow of Mordor, in all cases except the GTX 770, puts the Pentium ahead of the Carrizo part. In a couple of circumstances, this doesn't matter much, particularly at 4K resolutions with the R9 290X and GTX 980, however at 1080p the Pentium comes out ahead.
![Shadow of Mordor on ASUS R7 240 DDR3 2GB ($70) [Minimum FPS]](https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph10436/82717.png)
![Shadow of Mordor on MSI R9 285 Gaming 2GB ($240) [Minimum FPS]](https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph10436/82725.png)
![Shadow of Mordor on MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB ($245) [Minimum FPS]](https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph10436/82735.png)
![Shadow of Mordor on MSI R9 290X Gaming LE 4GB ($380) [Minimum FPS]](https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph10436/82745.png)
![Shadow of Mordor on MSI R9 290X Gaming LE 4GB ($380) [Minimum FPS]](https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph10436/82747.png)
![Shadow of Mordor on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB ($560) [Minimum FPS]](https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph10436/82755.png)
![Shadow of Mordor on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB ($560) [Minimum FPS]](https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph10436/82757.png)
Minimum frame rates for Shadow of Mordor are even more in favor of the Pentium here, and with the low-to-mid range graphics cards (R7 240, R9 285, GTX 770) the effect can be up to double the minimum frame rate over the Athlon.
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coder111 - Friday, July 15, 2016 - link
Wow, another Asus A6 user. I still use my K73TA daily. Quite happy with it. Never tried overclocking, but now that you mention it I will.How does the cooling hold up? I have had my laptop shutdown several times due to temperature getting too high after heavy APU+dGPU use.
I just wish there was a way to replace 6550M with something faster...
TheinsanegamerN - Friday, July 15, 2016 - link
Repaste the parts. The paste on that thing is half a decade old.Also, undervolt the chips. You can cut a ton of voltage off of the CPU with k10stat.
If you really want to go DIY, there are those like me that cut a hole in the bottom of the laptop and put a grill over the fan, that lowered temps by about 20C for me.
coder111 - Friday, July 15, 2016 - link
Hi,Thanks for ideas! I'm on Linux, so I'll see if there are k10stat alternatives on Linux. I'll definitely repaste the parts. And I'll see if I can do the grill on the bottom as well...
--Coder
coder111 - Friday, July 15, 2016 - link
Could you post the pics of your grill on the bottom somewhere?Thanks
TheinsanegamerN - Friday, July 15, 2016 - link
That laptop is long gone, im afraid. The chassis did not hold up very well to my constant moving.There was a forum on notebookreview about doing said mod, but the pictures are no longer available. the waybackmachine might be able to provide pics.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/k53ta-bbr6...
TheinsanegamerN - Friday, July 15, 2016 - link
I had the exact same laptop! I went with an a4 to force the dGPU, since AMD kept screwing up the ability to choose which GPU you wanted to use. 3.2 GHz dual core was amazing.Sushisamurai - Thursday, July 14, 2016 - link
I like this pseudo-new review format. Very clean, and the shout out to manufacture/companies was a nice touch. I think u should include if the SSD's are MLC or TLC In that brief summary for those who forget.keg504 - Thursday, July 14, 2016 - link
What does OCCT mean? It doesn't seem to be explained in the articleArnulf - Thursday, July 14, 2016 - link
http://www.ocbase.com/ ?keg504 - Friday, July 15, 2016 - link
Ah, thanks. A cursory search of google gave me many different results for OCCT