AMD A10-5800K & A8-5600K Review: Trinity on the Desktop, Part 1
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 27, 2012 12:00 AM ESTFinal Words
On average, Trinity's high-end 384-core GPU manages to be around 16% faster than the fastest Llano GPU, while consuming around 7% more power when active. Given that Trinity is built on the same process node at Llano, I'd call that a relatively good step forward for AMD's equivalent of a "tick". From AMD's perspective, the fact that it can continue to deliver a tangible GPU performance advantage over Intel's latest and greatest even with its die harvested APU (256-core Trinity) is good news. For anyone looking to build a good entry level gaming PC, the Trinity platform easily delivers the best processor graphics performance on the market today. If you're able to spend an extra $100 on a discrete GPU you'll get better performance, but below that Trinity rules. The trick, as always, will be selling the GPU performance advantage alongside the presumably lower x86 CPU performance. We'll have to wait another week to find out the full story on that of course, but if you're mostly concerned about GPU gaming performance, Trinity delivers.
Ivy Bridge was a good step forward for Intel, the problem is that only the high-end Ivy Bridge graphics configuration borders on acceptable. The HD 2500's performance is really bad unfortunately. It's easy to appreciate how far Intel has come when we look at improvements from one generation to the next, but when you start running benchmarks on Trinity it really compresses the progress Intel has made. When Haswell shows up it may be a different game entirely, but until then if you're interested in a platform with processor graphics (with an emphasis on the graphics part), Trinity is as good as it gets.
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ganeshts - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Yes, they can be used simutaneouslymikato - Monday, October 1, 2012 - link
Eyefinity!MrSpadge - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Seeing how the A10-something has 1.5 times the raw GPU horse power than the A8-something it seems obvious that the A10 is badly choked for memory bandwidth, even at DDR3-1866. Since even DDR3-2400 ist rather cheap these days it would be interesting to see performance scaling with memory speed. I expect the value the A10 provides can be considerably increased.rscoot - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Wondering if the IMC is rated for DDR3-2400 though. And yeah it's patently obvious that the APU on these chips are starved for memory bandwidth.wwwcd - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Intel HD 4000, looks like a wrist of gay, against the presentation of graphics controllers set in Trinity ;)formulav8 - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
This preview showed me how pathetic Intels junk is. Doesn't even come close overall.Aone - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Would you say what cpu you used for GT 640?wheeqo - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
AMD please take Trinity to Windows 8 Tablet!Roland00Address - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
but is it possible for you to add these three cards before the final review next week1) 6670 1gb gddr5
2) 6570 ddr3 or 6670 ddr3
3) 7750 1gb gddr5
I ask for these are new cards that trinity will be competing against in a similar price bracket. You can't find a 5570 on neweeg right now since it has been discontinued and replaced with 6000 and 7000 series part. The only 5570 on newegg right now is a proprietary one from visiontek with a custom output that has a dongle that allows it to do 4 monitors in a low profile slot.
Thank You
herrdoktor330 - Friday, September 28, 2012 - link
To add on to this one, can you test the APU with those cards IN CROSSFIRE?I seriously think that you could get decent enough HD gaming from this setup with some eye candy with a little help from a discrete GPU. I've been waiting on this platform for a while and, while the CPU performance will be similar to the mobile variant (thus underwhelming), this APU is going to be awesome for the HTPC that's also gaming capable.