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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deontologist - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Anand - always 3 months late to the party.Devo2007 - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
What are you talking about? AMD is just now lifting the NDA on the Trinity A10-5800K & A8-5600K desktop CPUs (and even then, sites can only talk about GPU performance).If any site had reviewed a Trinity APU several months ago, it was the mobile version (A10-4600M). Anandtech even reviewed it here:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5831/amd-trinity-rev...
karasaj - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
I believe he was referring to this:http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/a10-5800k-a8-5...
Samus - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
None of those numbers compare Trinity to the competition. They're mostly worthless.Samus - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Engadget has word the A10 is aiming at i3 prices and i5 performance on the CPU side. We've already seen A8 and A10 cream the i3 and i5 in GPU. I'm excited. I haven't built an AMD system in years, and the A8 65w might be a perfect HTPC CPU.jwcalla - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Tom's has benchmarks against a Core i3-2100 if you'd like to see how it stacks up.Samus - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
i can't find any of tom's benchmarks showing a comparison of THESE chips against any Intel chips. They all compare the A10 and A8 to eachother.GazP172 - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
If its anything like the Lano, the top end 65w's will basically only be released to the OEM's. Which to me are the only ones worth having.Taft12 - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
That was because of AMD's lousy yields and contracts which prioritized access of the supply to the likes of HP and Acer over the retail channel.OEMs still have first dibs, but yield issues are apparently better now. I have high hopes for the 65W parts (which includes actually being able to buy them on Newegg!) The A10-5700 could be the best of all worlds.
mikato - Monday, October 1, 2012 - link
Agree! I want to A10-5700 probably. No brainer.