AMD A10-5800K & A8-5600K Review: Trinity on the Desktop, Part 1
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 27, 2012 12:00 AM ESTDiRT 3
DiRT 3 is our next DX11 game. Developer Codemasters Southam added DX11 functionality to their EGO 2.0 engine back in 2009 with DiRT 2, and while it doesn't make extensive use of DX11 it does use it to good effect in order to apply tessellation to certain environmental models along with utilizing a better ambient occlusion lighting model. As a result DX11 functionality is very cheap from a performance standpoint, meaning it doesn't require a GPU that excels at DX11 feature performance.
DiRT 3 shows a relatively small performance advantage compared to Llano - only about 12 - 15% when comparing the two top end parts. More exciting from AMD's perspective is that it can deliver performance similar to the 3870K's 400-core GPU with the 256-core GPU in the A8-5600K.
The advantage over Intel's HD 4000/2500 remains significant.
Total War: Shogun 2
Total War: Shogun 2 is the latest installment of the long-running Total War series of turn based strategy games, and alongside Civilization V is notable for just how many units it can put on a screen at once. Adding to the load is the use of DX11 features such as tessellation and high definition ambient occlusion, which means it can give any GPU a run for its money.
We see similar scaling to DiRT 3 in Shogun: about a 15% improvement over Llano, or flat performance if you compare to the 2nd fastest Trinity GPU configuration.
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ananduser - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
ARS ? Please... it's insulting to Anand to compare it to Ars. You're also insulting of Tom's. Techreport is better than them all as they've "innovated" in the benchmark area via microstuttering tests. You should read more and stop being so high strung about your fav sites.coder543 - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
don't know what side of the Internet you're from, but Ars Technica has some of the highest quality reviews of anywhere on the net. Anandtech is good, but they're heavily biased against both Linux and OpenGL, so that bothers me about them.Please, show me some of this low quality Ars material you speak of. I would also have you note that Ars and Techreport cross-post on occasion... so, praising one and not the other is a strange concept.
Tom's does *okay* reviews... but compared to Anandtech, their stuff is usually lacking.
ananduser - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Oh please...Ars only knows mainstream. They cite more than they review. The only exception is Siracusa's yearly 100 pages OSX review which every Apple fan reads religiously and extensive Apple related coverage. Anand's, Tom's and Techreport are in a league of their own. Techreport recently impressed me with their "into the second" approach to benchmarking.Wolfpup - Friday, September 28, 2012 - link
Biased against Linux and OpenGL? How so? There's not much stuff USING OpenGL anymore, but that doesn't mean they're biased, and most people, even enthusiasts like most people here, aren't running Linux, sooo again doesn't mean they're baised against it.rarson - Wednesday, October 3, 2012 - link
Ars Technica is a freaking joke in everything that they do.medi01 - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
No other site uses 1000 Watt power supplies when testing HTPC CPUs either....damianrobertjones - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
...Unless it's Apple hardwaremattlach - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
I don't trust Tom's Hardware as far as I can throw them.After they were caught taking kick backs from hardware vendors for better reviews, and caught stealing content for their articles from other review sites, anyone who still reads that website is either a moron or ignorant.
Tomshardware wasn't bad back when Tom Pabst still ran it in the late 90s, but these days its a shell of its former self and completely and totally unreliable.
For me it's all HardOCP and Anandtech.
Homeles - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
You're going to have a very biased view of hardware if you only check two sources. I personally don't care for [H]ardOCP (I don't like their site design and the way they present their data), but AnandTech does try to keep things objective.Still, you can't pretend that AT is infallible and 100% trustworthy. If you do, then you deserve to be misled.
Like all media, it's best to check as many sources as possible before developing an opinion of something.
mikato - Monday, October 1, 2012 - link
Please link for the kickbacks! After reading this, I just searched Google for "tom's hardware kickbacks" and your comment was 3rd and the most relevant, lol. Need the info.