AMD A10-5800K & A8-5600K Review: Trinity on the Desktop, Part 1
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 27, 2012 12:00 AM ESTStarcraft 2
Our next game is Starcraft II, Blizzard's 2010 RTS megahit. Starcraft II is a DX9 game that is designed to run on a wide range of hardware, and given the growth in GPU performance over the years it's often CPU limited before it's GPU limited on higher-end cards.
Despite being heavily influenced by CPU performance, Starcraft 2 shows big gains when moving to Trinity. The improvement over Llano ranges from 16 - 27% in our tests. The performance advantage over Ivy Bridge is huge.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Bethesda's epic sword & magic game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is our RPG of choice for benchmarking. It's altogether a good CPU benchmark thanks to its complex scripting and AI, but it also can end up pushing a large number of fairly complex models and effects at once. This is a DX9 game so it isn't utilizing any new DX11 functionality, but it can still be a demanding game.
We see some mild improvements over Llano in our Skyrim tests, and even Intel is able to catch up a bit. Trinity still does quite well, only NVIDIA's GeForce GT 640 can really deliver better performance than the top-end A10-5800K SKU.
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mczak - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
If early listings at merchants are any indication, they should be available. I think though the problem is that the top 65W parts seem to cost as much as the top 100W parts (so a A10-5800k costs the same as A10-5700, same story for the A8), which probably makes them a hard sell at retail (quite similar to intel, and I don't think the low power parts exactly fly off the retail desks there neither).But I agree the 65W parts are nice. On the cpu side you lose around 10% but the gpu actually has the same clocks. Of course if you tinker with it manually it should be easily possible to undervolt/underclock the 100W parts to the same level as the 65W parts.
medi01 - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Oh yeah. Comparing it to nVidia 640 makes so much more sense...Of course nobody would think about Anand finding yet another way to piss on AMDs cookies...
dawp - Friday, September 28, 2012 - link
I believe that was included for a comparison to a low end discreet card. it could have just as easily been an hd7750 or hd7770.Aone - Friday, September 28, 2012 - link
Good point. I've reached the same conclusion.shin0bi272 - Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - link
its a 100 dollar gpu beating the pants off of amd's latest and greatest APU.You could buy an intel celeron g530 for 48 dollars (with free shipping) and an asus gt640 (or galaxy 650 with MiR for the same price) and beat the living snot out of AMD's amazing new APU that everyone just has to love because its brand new from AMD and all the fan boys have to fall all over themselves to get it... sounds like apple. Hell if you hate nvidia so much you can get an amd 7750 for 99 bucks on newegg.
Either way you go the price is between 30 and 50 dollars more than the APU and it will get about twice the FPS... who's going to buy an APU with stats like that? Oh yeah fanboys...
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, October 11, 2012 - link
They never respond when the truth hurts too much.Just think, without them, amd is double epic fail and already gone. I bet that statement made their hearts so warm, and feel so heady, they "saved competition".
But you know what they really saved ? Saved the world from real innovation and forward movement, as all those resources and programmers and engineers were wasted on amd crap. Saved us all from the truth and reality. Saved us from sanity and believing fellow human beings had a clue.
I'm going to go find a trinity w discrete bench so I can LMAO as soon as the overlord control freak in fear of their own life amd releases the death grip on the nda bench rules.
You just know all the little pliable as ruibber amd fanboys gonna get their new squeeze trinity - they're looking in the mirror now saying "My name is not Mr. Anderson!"
Watch we'll get an HTPC article now, or maybe it's already posted. Hope I don't have to laugh and shake my head about how cracked and crap and functionless and problematic it turns out to be. Flash will probably rip it a new one. LMAO
Devo2007 - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
That article was dated yesterday....just like the Anandtech one.Wolfpup - Friday, September 28, 2012 - link
Yeah, I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. They're giving performance data for a product that hasn't launched yet and they're three months late?chowmanga - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Same could have been said about Tom's when Anandtech had the Sandy Bridge preview before anyone else.r3loaded - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Really? No other site does such in-depth analysis of new chip architectures and such rigorous testing and benchmarking (though Ars comes close). This is the wrong site if you want tech tabloid journalism.