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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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.