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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coder543 - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
It's just a marketing strategy. The CPU performance is fine -- and look at the Starcraft 2 benchmarks in this very article if you want further confirmation of that. Anandtech was subtly hinting that the CPU performance is a step in the right direction.ganeshts - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
The HTPC oriented review is coming up at 11:00 AM ESTjwcalla - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Hopefully there will be some commentary on Linux driver support for those of us who take an interest in XBMC as an HTPC platform. :)In particular, hardware-accelerated video decoding.
Taft12 - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Linux driver support will be the same as it always has been for brand new platforms. Non-existant. Give it a few months.coder543 - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
that's simply not true. The proprietary graphics drivers for Linux use the same code that their Windows brethren do. Open source drivers? yeah, that's months away... but Linux does have support.coder543 - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Check Phoronix -- they'll be posting some stuff soon.coder543 - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
I'm also with jwcalla -- can we see some Linux stuff?MrSpadge - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Did you see the frame rates at low resolution and detail? Game performance will absolutely tank at 1080p, no need to test this. And other HTPC duties haven't been tested here anyway.JNo - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
+11080p benchmarks are essential for a desktop part.
Also, whilst you're at it, you may as well make quality a minimum of 'medium' for 1377 and poss also include medium for 1680.
juampavalverde - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Well maybe im biased by the view of Scott, but read by yourself:http://techreport.com/blog/23638/amd-attempts-to-s...
AMD is telling what can be shown and what not... F off AMD, this aint a review, its a preview tailored by AMD Marketing, far of a whole fully product review, and the tailoring its exactly to offer a biased view of the product. Please make it clear Anand, the quality of your site is better than this AMD marketing bs.