# AMD Elite A-Series A10-6800K APU (Socket FM2)



## cadaveca (Jun 5, 2013)

AMD Richland APUs have been talked about in enthusiast circles for weeks. Rumors have made their rounds and everyone is left wondering. I take a look at AMD's A10-6800K, put it through the paces, and see what's what in the world of Elite A-Series APUs.

*Show full review*


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## dark2099 (Jun 5, 2013)

In your table for power consumption, you have the GPU clocks listed with the volts, and the volts listed with the clocks.


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## Skywalker12345 (Jun 5, 2013)

dark2099 said:


> In your table for power consumption, you have the GPU clocks listed with the volts, and the volts listed with the clocks.



funny i was justs bout to say the same.


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## cadaveca (Jun 5, 2013)

Sorry guys. With the new AIDA64 and PCMark8 launching yesterday or the day before, I finished this late last night after I had redone my benchmarks. Then this morning I had to stay at my son's school to help with his kindergarten class going on a field trip to the Space and Science Center. I had a blast blowing bubbles with those kids, let me tell you.


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## drdeathx (Jun 5, 2013)

I have a dog named bubbles.. LOL


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## newtekie1 (Jun 5, 2013)

On page 5: 





> I also managed to clock the core at slightly over 160 MHz for 1014 MHz



I think you mean GPU Core.

Great review!

I was hoping AMD would actually rework the GPU to use GCN.


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## etayorius (Jun 5, 2013)

Finally! i was waiting for techpowerup review of the A10-6800k, i think it is a decent upgrade to start using an APU, if you plan to upgrade from a A10-5800k i think it`s not worth it... seriously improvements are very small.

Why Haswell is not the review?


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## cadaveca (Jun 5, 2013)

etayorius said:


> Finally! i was waiting for techpowerup review of the A10-6800k, i think it is a decent upgrade to start using an APU, if you plan to upgrade from a A10-5800k i think it`s not worth it... seriously improvements are very small.
> 
> Why Haswell is not the review?



I only have the 4770K. Benching a $379 CPU vs a $145 APU is silly in my books, when the complete APU system costs as much as the Intel chip alone. We should all know by now that AMD is better for 3D, and Intel better for compute, if comparing such chips. If I had an equivalent Intel-based CPU I could have included numbers from, I would have.

Really, when it comes down to including content in reviews, for me, it's ALWAYS down to me not having the hardware.


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## drdeathx (Jun 5, 2013)

etayorius said:


> Finally! i was waiting for techpowerup review of the A10-6800k, i think it is a decent upgrade to start using an APU, if you plan to upgrade from a A10-5800k i think it`s not worth it... seriously improvements are very small.
> 
> Why Haswell is not the review?



Agreed. All it is is an evolution, slightly better GPU and higher memory frequency. I think cause Haswell came out Saturday and a timing issue.


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## Frick (Jun 5, 2013)

Needs Hybrid Crossfire reviews (in depth)!!1! And what settings/resolution did you bench the games in? I mean I realize that is sort of beside the point of this review, but still.


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## rpsgc (Jun 5, 2013)

Do you have the 'Metro: Last Light' and 'Sniper Elite V2' charts switched?


90 fps in Metro would be impressive.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Jun 5, 2013)

cadaveca said:


> I only have the 4770K. Benching a $379 CPU vs a $145 APU is silly in my books, when the complete APU system costs as much as the Intel chip alone. We should all know by now that AMD is better for 3D, and Intel better for compute, if comparing such chips. If I had an equivalent Intel-based CPU I could have included numbers from, I would have.
> 
> Really, when it comes down to including content in reviews, for me, it's ALWAYS down to me not having the hardware.



What you described is exactly what happens all the time and for example semiacurate did just that today ie 6800k v 3770k wherein the four cored apu has half (ish) the performance of a 8logic cored cpu (most sites are just as biased *but not*tpu) , idiots. 
I commend that you did not do that, nice work dave and good review.


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## Suka (Jun 5, 2013)

Looks good to me considering i dont have an apu. Will be looking to get one soon though newegg have a killer A10 5800k bundle that may sway me to get that but either is good for me.
Thnx for the review was really waiting.


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## Crap Daddy (Jun 5, 2013)

cadaveca said:


> I only have the 4770K. Benching a $379 CPU vs a $145 APU is silly in my books, when the complete APU system costs as much as the Intel chip alone. We should all know by now that AMD is better for 3D, and Intel better for compute, if comparing such chips. If I had an equivalent Intel-based CPU I could have included numbers from, I would have.
> 
> Really, when it comes down to including content in reviews, for me, it's ALWAYS down to me not having the hardware.



Intel kind of has the i3s as a competition for these APUs and I don't think Haswell parts have been launched yet. Anyway, nothing new here from previous generation, for new builders might be a choice for cheap DOTA, Starcraft 2 or some browser games machine. As you said, it's great for kids to get into the PC experience although I'm not sure one can convince them with all this mobile brainwashing crap floating everywhere around us.


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## cadaveca (Jun 5, 2013)

rpsgc said:


> Do you have the 'Metro: Last Light' and 'Sniper Elite V2' charts switched?
> 
> 
> 90 fps in Metro would be impressive.



Metro:
lowest settings, 1200x800. Because it's a nastily optimized benchmark, I report maximum FPS. This allows things like memory performance increases to show. The benchmark results are slightly varied, of course but not by that much, surprisingly.







Sniper Elite V2
Automatic benchmark, no settings available. I do have to sit there and capture the screenshot manually, though:








And yes, I keep screenshots of all benchmark results posted. I don't even pay attention to results when collecting them..I watch benchmarks for rendering errors or other issues, not actual performance. If you'd like to see other results because you question them, please ask. I'd love to end such comments forever. I don't care about who wins in my reviews, and I value my integrity.



Frick said:


> Needs Hybrid Crossfire reviews (in depth)!!1! And what settings/resolution did you bench the games in? I mean I realize that is sort of beside the point of this review, but still.



I don't do GPU reviews. Had AMD supplied me with a VGA for testing Dual Graphics, as they should have given to all reviewers if they wanted it featured, I would have included those numbers. I did include those numbers in the last APU review, but I paid for that GPU out of my own pocket, and it cost me $100. Doing reviews should never cost ME money out of pocket. So I sold that GPU and no longer have it. They are lucky I used 2133 MHz memory, even. 




theoneandonlymrk said:


> What you described is exactly what happens all the time and for example semiacurate did just that today ie 6800k v 3770k wherein the four cored apu has half (ish) the performance of a 8logic cored cpu (most sites are just as biased *but not*tpu) , idiots.
> I commend that you did not do that, nice work dave and good review.



Through other reviews available here on TPU, we do have numbers comparing everything, but sometimes you have to read all of the reviews to get the full picture. All of us reviewers cover different content, and different aspects of the same things, even, as with the Haswell launch, but the best information comes from all the stuff combined together.

Intel didn't send me a chip for this review, or for Haswell reviews. I did put in requests to them that went unanswered. I have sponsored retail chips for board and memory reviews.



Crap Daddy said:


> Intel kind of has the i3s as a competition for these APUs and I don't think Haswell parts have been launched yet. Anyway, nothing new here from previous generation, for new builders might be a choice for cheap DOTA, Starcraft 2 or some browser games machine. As you said, it's great for kids to get into the PC experience although I'm not sure one can convince them with all this mobile brainwashing crap floating everywhere around us.



Ha! Yeah ,the mobile stuff definitely does add it's own twist to the market. I do have many ideas how that can be used to any company's advantage, but that's long-term thinking, not the short game. Really that's why I think most companies have no problem with things the way that they are now...they ARE playing the long game, after all.


I mean really...a 5 GHz APU, on AIO watercooling? You guys did catch that, right? I could have lowered CPU clocks, and pushed the GPU further, maybe, or vice versa...


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## Jacez (Jun 5, 2013)

I like the price, but its IPC is about 1/3 that of Haswell. That's pretty depressing.


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## cadaveca (Jun 5, 2013)

Jacez said:


> I like the price, but its IPC is about 1/3 that of Haswell. That's pretty depressing.



in encoding like Handbrake, that uses OpenCL acceleration, AMD Elite A-Series APUs perform pretty well. 

A10-6800K encodes my custom rip of the movie "It Might Get Loud" at 386.7 FPS

i7 4770K encodes my custom rip of the movie "It Might Get Loud" at 595.7 FPS

That's a bit more than 1/3...I think your perspective it what makes it depressing.  That's actually 2/3rds of the performance, for less than half the price.  

For most common tasks, AMD's APUs actually do far better than most give them credit for. Benchmarks don't always tell the full picture.


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## TheLaughingMan (Jun 5, 2013)

cadaveca said:


> For most common tasks, AMD's APUs actually do far better than most give them credit for. Benchmarks don't always tell the full picture.



says the man who just crapped all of it for have "low" but adequate performance.


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## Crap Daddy (Jun 5, 2013)

cadaveca said:


> in encoding like Handbrake, that uses OpenCL acceleration, AMD Elite A-Series APUs perform pretty well.
> 
> A10-6800K encodes my custom rip of the movie "It Might Get Loud" at 386.7 FPS
> 
> ...


 
Good documentary, by the way. The look on The Edge's and Jack's faces when Jimmy plays the openning riff to Whole Lotta Love is priceless.


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## etayorius (Jun 5, 2013)

cadaveca said:


> I only have the 4770K. Benching a $379 CPU vs a $145 APU is silly in my books, when the complete APU system costs as much as the Intel chip alone. We should all know by now that AMD is better for 3D, and Intel better for compute, if comparing such chips. If I had an equivalent Intel-based CPU I could have included numbers from, I would have.
> 
> Really, when it comes down to including content in reviews, for me, it's ALWAYS down to me not having the hardware.



Oh i understand, but i guess most people were expecting to see Haswell included in the reviews, since in the Haswell review Richland benchies were included.



Jacez said:


> I like the price, but its IPC is about 1/3 that of Haswell. That's pretty depressing.



Oh don`t worry too much about it, in the next couple years Single Thread performance will not be as important.


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## Ronnyv1 (Jun 5, 2013)

I was hoping to get an idea of real world snappiness of a typical system using win7/8 mostly for family members but no where seems to offer that kind of perspective.


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## cadaveca (Jun 5, 2013)

etayorius said:


> Oh i understand, but i guess most people were expecting to see Richland included in the reviews, since in the Haswell review Richland benchies were included.



That was a GPU review done by W1zzard, who is on the other side of the planet. He asked AMD for the chip specifically for that review. I get where you are coming from, however. That was an "IGP" review, whereas I am looking at the APU as a platform, not just a GPU. We already know the Haswell platform's performance.

I haven't ever used Haswell's IGP yet, even. I turn THAT crap OFF!!! 



Ronnyv1 said:


> I was hoping to get an idea of real world snappiness of a typical system using win7/8 mostly for family members but no where seems to offer that kind of perspective.



I commented on that, and someone commented about my comment, up above. Scroll up.


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## hardcore_gamer (Jun 5, 2013)

Which is the comparable discrete GPU ?


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## brandonwh64 (Jun 5, 2013)

Great review dave!


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## Frick (Jun 5, 2013)

Ronnyv1 said:


> I was hoping to get an idea of real world snappiness of a typical system using win7/8 mostly for family members but no where seems to offer that kind of perspective.



Isn't that subjective? Besides, if Win7 (im not terribly familiar with 8) is not snappy, as i use the term, on a cpu from 2007 and forward something's wrong. Not counting Atoms and suchlike.


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## suraswami (Jun 5, 2013)

I plan to replace my Family PC to a SFF with one of these APUs.  How would this compare?

Phenom II X3 720BE @ 2.8 stock + 4GB ram+ ATI 4670 to APU 6800K + iTX + 8 GB ram.

Need it to play Age of Empires III or II and occassionally some COD games


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## Fourstaff (Jun 5, 2013)

suraswami said:


> I plan to replace my Family PC to a SFF with one of these APUs.  How would this compare?
> 
> Phenom II X3 720BE @ 2.8 stock + 4GB ram+ ATI 4670 to APU 6800K + iTX + 8 GB ram.
> 
> Need it to play Age of Empires III or II and occassionally some COD games



You are better off dropping in a new graphics card and more ram, get a cooler and overclock the 720BE (if your motherboard allows).


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Jun 5, 2013)

suraswami said:


> I plan to replace my Family PC to a SFF with one of these APUs.  How would this compare?
> 
> Phenom II X3 720BE @ 2.8 stock + 4GB ram+ ATI 4670 to APU 6800K + iTX + 8 GB ram.
> 
> Need it to play Age of Empires III or II and occassionally some COD games


Very well in reality from your perspective, yeah you could have way way more performance with an fx or intel but ive used a lano 3870k and a 5870k in person and they roock for the money.


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## Ronnyv1 (Jun 5, 2013)

Frick said:


> Isn't that subjective? Besides, if Win7 (im not terribly familiar with 8) is not snappy, as i use the term, on a cpu from 2007 and forward something's wrong. Not counting Atoms and suchlike.



Think of it more along the lines of something like a VIA C7 1.8 ghz single core on the low end and an i3-2120/3225 for a more typical setup most oems do, @2gb memory each the difference is staggering..  Our administrator is considering buying apus for the next batch of office systems.


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## suraswami (Jun 5, 2013)

Fourstaff said:


> You are better off dropping in a new graphics card and more ram, get a cooler and overclock the 720BE (if your motherboard allows).



The machine is in Ultra Aluminus tower taking up lot of space, need to shrink and thats the reason I need a small form factor capable machine.

Yeah, I have a spare 5870 that I can throw it in if I really want to make it a decent gaming machine.

I was hoping the 6800K APU will be much better than the ATI 4670 in graphics power?


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Jun 5, 2013)

suraswami said:


> The machine is in Ultra Aluminus tower taking up lot of space, need to shrink and thats the reason I need a small form factor capable machine.
> 
> Yeah, I have a spare 5870 that I can throw it in if I really want to make it a decent gaming machine.
> 
> I was hoping the 6800K APU will be much better than the ATI 4670 in graphics power?



It is and the cpu bit is pretty much an fx43## that may do 5ghZ


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## NC37 (Jun 5, 2013)

Fourstaff said:


> You are better off dropping in a new graphics card and more ram, get a cooler and overclock the 720BE (if your motherboard allows).



With Piledriver it is safe for old Phenom II owners to finally upgrade. But I wouldn't go anything less than the 6 core models on FX line. Piledriver just seems really crappy in quads and under, same as Bulldozer. There was an article somewhere which shows why this is. Think part of the reason APUs have rather sucked since going to Bulldozer based designs. That and their lack of caches compared to their FX counterparts.

Think what I'd like to see in APU tech is AMD implementing some eSRAM into the designs. Like what they use in console designs. Help get rid of that big DDR3 bottleneck. But I doubt AMD will as long as they got the IGP lead. We'll probably see Intel do something like that eventually.


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## drdeathx (Jun 5, 2013)

NC37 said:


> With Piledriver it is safe for old Phenom II owners to finally upgrade. But I wouldn't go anything less than the 6 core models on FX line. Piledriver just seems really crappy in quads and under, same as Bulldozer. There was an article somewhere which shows why this is. Think part of the reason APUs have rather sucked since going to Bulldozer based designs. That and their lack of caches compared to their FX counterparts.
> 
> Think what I'd like to see in APU tech is AMD implementing some eSRAM into the designs. Like what they use in console designs. Help get rid of that big DDR3 bottleneck. But I doubt AMD will as long as they got the IGP lead. We'll probably see Intel do something like that eventually.



The New APU's perform about the same as Phenom II's CPU wise. FX quad core processors perform fine, not much difference than 3570K and in some instances, the instruction set performs better. I am still trying to see your DDR3 bottleneck, DDR3 and Piledriver has plenty of bandwith


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Jun 5, 2013)

drdeathx said:


> The New APU's perform about the same as Phenom II's CPU wise. FX quad core processors perform fine, not much difference than 3570K and in some instances, the instruction set performs better. I am still trying to see your DDR3 bottleneck, DDR3 and Piledriver has plenty of bandwith



That bottleneck will be more apparent when they Do have a lvl4 ram cache and I don't think it's far off


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## Nihilus (Jun 5, 2013)

*nothing to see here*

With only a 5-10% improvement over the 5800 k, this chip is a huge disappointment.  An i-3 with a cheap gpu is still a better future-proof solution for slightly more money.  I would like to see a review on the 6400k, as it would make for a mighty itx combo.


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## Naito (Jun 6, 2013)

Performance ain't great... but it is hard to argue value for money


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## drdeathx (Jun 6, 2013)

Nihilus said:


> With only a 5-10% improvement over the 5800 k, this chip is a huge disappointment.  An i-3 with a cheap gpu is still a better future-proof solution for slightly more money.  I would like to see a review on the 6400k, as it would make for a mighty itx combo.



It is not a dissapointment......It is he same architecture in Piledriver. The chip is an evolution not new architecture. Upgrade in GPU and IMC at a higher core speed. There is no such thing as "Futureproof". AMD's APU's compete well against i3's and actually beat them even with a dedicated GPU. Overclocked, they stomp i3's. Heck, Haswell is only a 5% increase over Ivy. To me, that's failure...


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## xorbe (Jun 6, 2013)

Ronnyv1 said:


> I was hoping to get an idea of real world snappiness of a typical system using win7/8 mostly for family members but no where seems to offer that kind of perspective.



Win7 general usage will be plenty snappy.  This is not an Atom / E-series / netbook cpu.  If you like snappy, don't forget the SSD (and matched dual channel memory).


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## Jacez (Jun 6, 2013)

cadaveca said:


> in encoding like Handbrake, that uses OpenCL acceleration, AMD Elite A-Series APUs perform pretty well.
> 
> A10-6800K encodes my custom rip of the movie "It Might Get Loud" at 386.7 FPS
> 
> i7 4770K encodes my custom rip of the movie "It Might Get Loud" at 595.7 FPS



Well, how about Cinebench 11.5?

i7-2600k @ 5.0Ghz scores 10 pts.

A10-6800k @ 5.0Ghz scores 4 pts.

Since Haswell is more powerful, it's around 1/3, not 2/3.

Don't get me wrong.. I'm always rooting for AMD, but I consider Cinebench a much more reliable way of deriving performance differences.


EDIT: Guru3D did a Handbrake test with both 4770k and 6800k and they agree with me.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_a10_6800k_review_apu,14.html

4770k - 27 fps
6800k - 13 fps

That's 50%.

But, if you take into account that the 6800k is clocked 33% higher, it comes down to almost exactly 33% as fast at the same clock speed.


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## cadaveca (Jun 6, 2013)

Jacez said:


> Well, how about Cinebench 11.5?
> 
> i7-2600k @ 5.0Ghz scores 10 pts.
> 
> ...



Sure. in performance in that aspect, that is true. It depends on what your needs are, whether these APUs have any relevance. They aren't for my uses either, but they work fine for my kids.


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## suraswami (Jun 6, 2013)

Jacez said:


> Well, how about Cinebench 11.5?
> 
> i7-2600k @ 5.0Ghz scores 10 pts.
> 
> ...



Why are we comparing a budget processor ($140) with mid high end processor ($280)?


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## Jacez (Jun 6, 2013)

cadaveca said:


> Sure. in performance in that aspect, that is true. It depends on what your needs are, whether these APUs have any relevance. They aren't for my uses either, but they work fine for my kids.



I'm sorry. I must have posted this after you 



> Guru3D did a Handbrake test with both 4770k and 6800k and they agree with me.
> 
> http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_a10_6800k_review_apu,14.html
> 
> ...


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## Jacez (Jun 6, 2013)

suraswami said:


> Why are we comparing a budget processor ($140) with mid high end processor ($280)?



Well, the 2500k has around the same performance and you can find one for around 150$ now.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Core-...nly-/200930522524?pt=CPUs&hash=item2ec864759c

But no, I was talking about performance as a whole, not bang for the buck.


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## suraswami (Jun 6, 2013)

Jacez said:


> Well, the 2500k has around the same performance and you can find one for around 150$ now.
> 
> http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Core-...nly-/200930522524?pt=CPUs&hash=item2ec864759c
> 
> But no, I was talking about performance as a whole, not bang for the buck.



2500K is history


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## cadaveca (Jun 6, 2013)

Jacez said:


> I'm sorry. I must have posted this after you



Funny, they get two-digit FPS numbers, while I get numbers in the hundreds. They report in seconds, I report the actual work done. It's funny, because Handbrake not only reports FPS when it's done. It DOES report time. My test runs for 6 minutes with the APU, and around 4 minutes with the 4770K.



Guru3D]This measurement is in seconds needed for the process said:


> But no, I was talking about performance as a whole, not bang for the buck.



Nobody cares, really, about performance, without the cost involved. what if the slower chip cost MORE? Cost is very important.


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## drdeathx (Jun 6, 2013)

Jacez said:


> Well, the 2500k has around the same performance and you can find one for around 150$ now.
> 
> http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Core-...nly-/200930522524?pt=CPUs&hash=item2ec864759c
> 
> But no, I was talking about performance as a whole, not bang for the buck.



It is called cost/performance. The 2500K will be not available and the comparable cost Intel product ATM is the 13 3220 and the A10-6800K stomps it. Haswell will have the comparable i3 4220... Also consider Intel motherboards for the platform are more expensive than a A85 AMD board.Your not comparing apples to apples with the 2500K. the comparable AMD chip is a FX processor


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## Jacez (Jun 6, 2013)

drdeathx said:


> The 2500K will be not available and the comparable cost Intel product ATM is the 13 3220 and the A10-6800K stomps it.



No, it doesn't.

The 6800k is slightly faster (10-15%), and costs about equally more.

Well, all I know is that if I were building a system, it would have a 2500k, not a 6800k.. unless I needed something really small that could only house an APU.


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## Fourstaff (Jun 6, 2013)

drdeathx said:


> It is called cost/performance. The 2500K will be not available and the comparable cost Intel product ATM is the 13 3220 and the A10-6800K stomps it. Haswell will have the comparable i3 4220... Also consider Intel motherboards for the platform are more expensive than a A85 AMD board.Your not comparing apples to apples with the 2500K. the comparable AMD chip is a FX processor



Its just the market segment. Anything below 3570/4670 Intel is pretty uncompetitive when it comes to multithreaded, and that is where AMD's offering shines. Things even up again when considering singlethreaded stuff, especially games like Skyrim. The power saved can usually account for the price difference in motherboard (itself not so great if you start considering H77 and B75 boards). Given my workload patterns (large amounts of idling/low load time with occasional Dota 2 and low load games like that) I would pick 3220+discrete over 6800K+discrete. People who spend more time on other things might pick 6800K instead (I think the majority will benefit more from the 6800K)


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Jun 6, 2013)

Jacez said:


> No, it doesn't.
> 
> The 6800k is slightly faster (10-15%), and costs about equally more.
> 
> Well, all I know is that if I were building a system, it would have a 2500k, not a 6800k.. unless I needed something really small that could only house an APU.



You haven't used One, with an ssd and decent ram you would be hard pressed to pick a difference in everday use v an i7 benches and games aside you wouldn't know. Whixh was which.


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## HTC (Jun 6, 2013)

Thank you for this review.

Too bad you didn't include Llano in the review. Personally, i would like to see how the APUs have matured since their inception.


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## tacosRcool (Jun 6, 2013)

Awesome!


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## drdeathx (Jun 6, 2013)

Jacez said:


> No, it doesn't.
> 
> The 6800k is slightly faster (10-15%), and costs about equally more.
> 
> Well, all I know is that if I were building a system, it would have a 2500k, not a 6800k.. unless I needed something really small that could only house an APU.




Your wrong. I did a head to head 5800K vs 3220K and the 5800K beats the 3220, Seeing the 6800K is 10-15% faster than the 5800k, the 6800K will own the 3220.


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## a_ump (Jun 6, 2013)

well done on the effort and all the info...but no comparison to intel? would've been much easier to see the info there than go back and forth between reviews


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## TRWOV (Jun 6, 2013)

hardcore_gamer said:


> Which is the comparable discrete GPU ?



6570 DDR3 more or less


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## Ravenas (Jun 6, 2013)

Great product from AMD for a sector of the market that desires performance on a budget (i.e.; the business sector).

Can you explain to me the justification for running the AIDA memory benchmarks?


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## bear jesus (Jun 6, 2013)

I was hoping the A10-6700 would support 2133 MHz by default but now i am left wondering if the extra heat produced by an A10-6800 would be worth the faster memory as a major reason i bought a second APU is low heat summer gaming.

The overclocking results make me wonder if i would be better off with an A10-6800 and a set of 2400 MHz RAM, although an 1866 MHz or 2133 MHz set i would get are 1.5v and the 2400 MHz sets are 1.65v thus i assume higher heat output from the memory its self and possibly the memory controller but i have no clue if it would be anything more than a minor increase.


Am i over thinking the difference in heat output between an A10-6700 with 1.5v 1866 MHz RAM and an A10-6800 with 1.5v 2133 MHz or 1.65v 2400 MHz RAM?
Any advice would be much appreciated.


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## drdeathx (Jun 6, 2013)

a_ump said:


> well done on the effort and all the info...but no comparison to intel? would've been much easier to see the info there than go back and forth between reviews



This is the best TPU has 5800K vs 3220. 6800K is better so take it from there

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=182099



bear jesus said:


> I was hoping the A10-6700 would support 2133 MHz by default but now i am left wondering if the extra heat produced by an A10-6800 would be worth the faster memory as a major reason i bought a second APU is low heat summer gaming.
> 
> The overclocking results make me wonder if i would be better off with an A10-6800 and a set of 2400 MHz RAM, although an 1866 MHz or 2133 MHz set i would get are 1.5v and the 2400 MHz sets are 1.65v thus i assume higher heat output from the memory its self and possibly the memory controller but i have no clue if it would be anything more than a minor increase.
> 
> ...



There will be no real world performance gains in 2400MHz vs 2133Mhz and very little at 1866 and 1600MHz


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## bear jesus (Jun 6, 2013)

drdeathx said:


> There will be no real world performance gains in 2400MHz vs 2133Mhz and very little at 1866 and 1600MHz



I know it's an AMD marketing slide but surely it suggests gaming wise that if it continued to scale then the more memory bandwidth the better?







It is on the features page of the review and Dave added underneath "AMD gave me some slides that depict the performance increase offered by using 2133 MHz memory. I've included these for you to take a look at, and *general testing does show the increases to net a noticeably gain.*"



I am assuming this is all about the GPU as the bandwidth is so limited compared to dedicated cards.


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## Recus (Jun 6, 2013)

> Not a true new technology—just clock bumps



So now AMD rebrands APU. : D How about that?


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## SIGSEGV (Jun 6, 2013)

nice review dave.
i would consider to wait the steamroller and gcn 2.0 in fusion.


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## NeoXF (Jun 6, 2013)

Jacez said:


> Well, how about Cinebench 11.5?
> 
> i7-2600k @ 5.0Ghz scores 10 pts.
> 
> ...



1. Cinebench is a well known Intel optimized/compiled piece of software, as a consequence, it's biased towards Intel hardware IDs to begin with, maybe even made to use Intel tech, while ignoring AMD ones.

2.
i7-2600K @ 5GHz scores ~9,5 points, not 10.
A10-6800K @ 5GHz scores at least 4,1 points, not 4 (A10-5800K @ 4,6-4,8GHz scores 4 points).
Don't rounds stuff up just for the sake of making an argument.

3. i7-2600K is 8 threads, A10-6800K is 4 threads(cores), i5-2500K would have been a much more fitting comparison, but seeing as how you're talking about pure x86 performance, I can't stress enough how wrong the place where you're looking for it is.

4. i7-2600K's can't do 5GHz all that easy, by a preliminary sight, the A10-6800K CAN do 5GHz a tad more often. Hell, I've seen benches on air/closed-loop @ 5,2 and boot to windows at 5,4GHz already.

5. Remind me again, what's the price gap between them again? 320$ (maybe less now, IF you can still find one that is, I can't where I live) vs 140$... or am I wrong?

Your whole reasoning is just broken. If this was a 200$+ APU, I might be inclined to abstract the price bit of the equation, but it's not. Not to mention they are made for different markets, sure AMD want's to mainstream-ise (or even ethusiast-ise, LOL) the APUs, but at the moment, they're still in a pretty different market segment than your average CPU.




SIGSEGV said:


> nice review dave.
> i would consider to wait the steamroller and gcn 2.0 in fusion.



If you're on Llano or thinking of building a compact system... or simply on a budget for an all-around system, it still a worthwhile buy. But yeah, Kaveri... GCN, Steamroller... HSA... sounds way better... especially if programmers will take HSA seriously (and they should). I'm eagerly waiting for a HSA version of a ray-tracing graphics engine, should be quite possible to see a 30fps 720p smart ray-tracing game...


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## drdeathx (Jun 6, 2013)

bear jesus said:


> I know it's an AMD marketing slide but surely it suggests gaming wise that if it continued to scale then the more memory bandwidth the better?
> 
> http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/A10-6800K/images/mem_gains.jpg
> 
> ...




I used to review memory on Intel platform and there were very little gains with higher frequencies. IMF, most benchmarks had a sweet spot with the Z77 platform at 2133MHz due to lower timings. 2133MHz at cas 8 did better than 2400MHz at cas 11 on most. This could be AMD's marketing. The only way to get a truthfull reading is have CalDave run some benchmarks with the 6800K. I only have a 5800K but will be happy to run a few benchies at different frequencies. problem is, 5800K has a lower memory spec than 6800K so I probably will not be able to pull 2400MHz.


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## cadaveca (Jun 6, 2013)

drdeathx said:


> This could be AMD's marketing.



It IS part of AMD's marketing, but it's one that actually relates truth. Memory speeds matter big-time on an APU's GPU portion. The lack of L3 compared to Intel's IVB/SNB/HWL is what makes it matter with AMD compared to Intel. Intel's L3 adds a buffer that negates the usefulness of high-speed ram, but there are still effects to be noticed with Intel chips, too.


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## drdeathx (Jun 6, 2013)

cadaveca said:


> It IS part of AMD's marketing, but it's one that actually relates truth. Memory speeds matter big-time on an APU's GPU portion. The lack of L3 compared to Intel's IVB/SNB/HWL is what makes it matter with AMD compared to Intel. Intel's L3 adds a buffer that negates the usefulness of high-speed ram, but there are still effects to be noticed with Intel chips, too.



Thanks Dave


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## NeoXF (Jun 7, 2013)

bear jesus said:


> I know it's an AMD marketing slide but surely it suggests gaming wise that if it continued to scale then the more memory bandwidth the better?
> 
> http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/A10-6800K/images/mem_gains.jpg
> 
> ...



Here's a better example of how much memory speed matters, especially if you increase the iGPU's core clock (as they're obviously dependent on eachother and you need to boost both if you want the most fruitful gains). The framerates are at 1920x1080 w/ max settings 0xAA for AvP, max settings for Deus Ex 3, "Ballanced" preset for TW: Shogun II, medium + FXAA for Skyrim, DIRT SD medium 2xAA and Sleeping Dogs medium.


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## Dent1 (Jun 7, 2013)

Jacez said:


> Well, how about Cinebench 11.5?
> 
> i7-2600k @ 5.0Ghz scores 10 pts.
> 
> ...



Lets be honest the people whom buy the 6800K are not looking heavy rendering and encoding.  They are looking for good general multimedia performance and some light gaming, in this domain AMDs APU outperform Intel's at almost half the price.

The 4770K should really be pitted against the Piledriver FX 8350 if you're talking Cinebench and Handbrake.


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## Asuka26x (Jun 7, 2013)

nice. amd really building some momentum. 
fingers crossed with the vishera 2.0!!!


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## Fourstaff (Jun 7, 2013)

Asuka26x said:


> nice. amd really building some momentum.
> fingers crossed with the vishera 2.0!!!



This just an upclock rebrand, not sure what momentum you are talking about


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## Asuka26x (Jun 7, 2013)

Fourstaff said:


> This just an upclock rebrand, not sure what momentum you are talking about



Well a10-6800k is not very good but i meant it has has good potential and it shows amds efforts& Momentum to bring up good cpu's. btw when is steamroller comin??? wai+ing for it with a jar of salt, not gonna buy it but i enjoy amd beat up intel


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## NeoXF (Jun 7, 2013)

Fourstaff said:


> This just an upclock rebrand, not sure what momentum you are talking about



Oh, so in your vision, AMD should just keep sitting duck and stop being relevant to the PC market just because they don't have a real new product to sell.
And as far as I know, it's more than just a "overclock".

Keeping in topic, I'm realy curious what people will say about the 2014 Haswell refresh, since in case people don't know, Broadwell has been moved to 2015, would people put it down just for the sake of it or praise it just because it's Intel and they have a lot of momentum to levrege by default.


Also, anyone know of any news on Vishera FX refresh? FX-44xx/64xx/84xx I'm guessing..


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## Fourstaff (Jun 7, 2013)

NeoXF said:


> Oh, so in your vision, AMD should just keep sitting duck and stop being relevant to the PC market just because they don't have a real new product to sell.
> And as far as I know, it's more than just a "overclock".
> 
> Keeping in topic, I'm realy curious what people will say about the 2014 Haswell refresh, since in case people don't know, Broadwell has been moved to 2015, would people put it down just for the sake of it or praise it just because it's Intel and they have a lot of momentum to levrege by default.
> ...



GTX680 -> GTX770 = upclocked GTX680 = Nvidia rebrand 
5800K -> 6800K = upclocked 5800K = AMD new product

I prefer to be consistent, either both GTX770 and 6800K are new products, or both of them are just rebrand upclocked old parts (albeit refined). At the moment my position is that both of them are optimised rebrands, therefore "no new tech", that is, no momentum to speak of.


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## drdeathx (Jun 7, 2013)

Asuka26x said:


> Well a10-6800k is not very good but i meant it has has good potential and it shows amds efforts& Momentum to bring up good cpu's. btw when is steamroller comin??? wai+ing for it with a jar of salt, not gonna buy it but i enjoy amd beat up intel



No clue what your talking about not very good. It is NOT apples to apples with top end processors and not meant to be. It is one of the best mainstream APU's and beats Intel's core i3's. That is where it is positioned.



Fourstaff said:


> This just an upclock rebrand, not sure what momentum you are talking about


 It is not a rebrand more of an evolution. 6800K moves to AMD's 8000 graphics from 7660D.


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## NeoXF (Jun 8, 2013)

Fourstaff said:


> GTX680 -> GTX770 = upclocked GTX680 = Nvidia rebrand
> 5800K -> 6800K = upclocked 5800K = AMD new product
> 
> I prefer to be consistent, either both GTX770 and 6800K are new products, or both of them are just rebrand upclocked old parts (albeit refined). At the moment my position is that both of them are optimised rebrands, therefore "no new tech", that is, no momentum to speak of.



Well, I never said anything bad like that about GTX770 either, it's a great card for it's price, GK104 still has plenty of life in it and a revision was welcome, new GDDR chips as well. It might be a new card with old tech, but it does what it's supposed to very well and the pricing is good. GTX780 however is a bit overpriced tho, for what it can do (don't even get me started with TITAN), but I know why nVidia do it. Either way I suspect some price cuts not long after after E3, when AMD will unvail/launch the HD8000 series w/ those brand spanking new cooler they've been talking about.

Speaking which, Richlands will probably be getting price cuts themselves in about 3-4 months anyway, either when i3 Haswells launch/settles in the market (remember all of them will come with HD 4600 graphics) or when more conclusive info on Kaveri starts to appear.


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## Fourstaff (Jun 8, 2013)

drdeathx said:


> It is not a rebrand more of an evolution. 6800K moves to AMD's 8000 graphics from 7660D.



Well 6800K still uses the same VLIW configuration as the 5800K (no change other than clockspeed bump and name change), I saw the old gen 945->955BE->965BE as evolution as the manufacturing process matured, its the same here except that instead of naming it with the 5xxxK they chose to name it 6xxxK hence rebrand.  If they have changed the graphics to GCN I would have labelled it as "a new product"



NeoXF said:


> Well, I never said anything bad like that about GTX770 either, it's a great card for it's price, GK104 still has plenty of life in it and a revision was welcome, new GDDR chips as well. It might be a new card with old tech, but it does what it's supposed to very well and the pricing is good. GTX780 however is a bit overpriced tho, for what it can do (don't even get me started with TITAN), but I know why nVidia do it. Either way I suspect some price cuts not long after after E3, when AMD will unvail/launch the HD8000 series w/ those brand spanking new cooler they've been talking about.



No you didn't said anything bad about GTX770, I was just explaining my rationale behind my decisions to name 6800K a rebrand rather than a new product. People called for blood when Nvidia rebranded 8800->9800->GTS250, so I decided that unless they bring something significantly new (die shrink, increase in core count, massive power optimisation etc.) everything less than that will be labelled as rebrand if they "move on to the next numbering scheme usually reserved for new gen".


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## cadaveca (Jun 8, 2013)

Fourstaff said:


> (no change other than clockspeed bump and name change),



AMD made a change to the memory controller and to the power delivery in the chip. AMD's Overdrive for APUs got updated so that the GPU and CPU each have different power supply, allowing AMD to clock one down and the other up, depending on load.

THAT change is part of what allows for the higher OCs we've been seeing with these chips. I've seen many @ over 5 GHz on air.


But yes, the CPU cores and GPU cores are the same. Everything else was changed. 

I'm sorry I didn't cover this is the review, but that info was not provided to me by AMD. Through some research the past week, however, that was what I have found out.


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## Fourstaff (Jun 8, 2013)

cadaveca said:


> AMD made a change to the memory controller and to the power delivery in the chip. AMD's Overdrive for APUs got updated so that the GPU and CPU each have different power supply, allowing AMD to clock one down and the other up, depending on load.
> 
> THAT change is part of what allows for the higher OCs we've been seeing with these chips. I've seen many @ over 5 GHz on air.
> 
> ...



I have been digging around the internets for a changelog between the 5xxx and the 6xxx, and almost everyone else either said "clockspeed bump + minor improvements here and there", or nothing at all. Perhaps AMD has been doing their homework without telling anyone :<


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## TheLaughingMan (Jul 9, 2013)

I think they are using this chip as test platform for the memory controller and temperature controller. I think they are planning something much bigger with the next generation and I mean an actual generational change which I guess would be Steamroller. The A-Series Elite just seems to scream "We have to make sure the rest of the chip is ready for core improvement."


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## Tatty_One (Jul 9, 2013)

Fourstaff said:


> I have been digging around the internets for a changelog between the 5xxx and the 6xxx, and almost everyone else either said "clockspeed bump + minor improvements here and there", or nothing at all. Perhaps AMD has been doing their homework without telling anyone :<



Your right.... not a lot.  The 6XXX is Richland, the 5XXX is Trinity, major differences..... as Dave said, memory controller, Trinity "officially" supports 1866mhz memory, Richland 2133mhz (6800 only) officially, upgraded APU (all) to the HD 8XXX and a few minor tweaks, but to be fair, that lot can amount to near 10% with the clockspeed hike you mentioned which is reasonably competitive in upgrade terms to recent Intel upgrades.


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## mgrandy (Jul 25, 2013)

*my a10 680k need help*

pc stats are follows 
amd a-10 680k
hd radion vtx 6670 2gb ddr3
h100 corsair cooling
8 gbs patriot ram 1600 mhz 9-9-9
mb is fm2a55m-dgs has bios rev 2.6-7
case nzxt phantom gaming tower
psu 650 watt
running window 7 64bit

right ive cross-fired the on-board graphics with the hd 6670 but its only giving me 512 mbs of ram for my graphics which when i set to ultra, max resolution gives me a nasty blue glitch across ma screen.
 ive been told by the motherboard manufacture that to recognise the graphics card i need to set my bios at 512 mb ram (the auto feature ) which is causing this blue rubbish. because of this my windows experiance rating went from being 6.8 to 5.8 on the areo and even worse on 3d performance. 
do you think getting the a85 chipset will let me dedicate more to the on-board graphics? as i may as well take the card out im sure there must be a way to get a better rating and performance. ive got a vid of the nasty blue line if any 1 need to see

https://www.facebook.com/andrew.oconnor.7127?ref=tn_tnmn
cinebeanck test marks http://s23.postimg.org/n424hvxbf/cinebench_results.png
grid2 temps max resolution ultra settings http://s24.postimg.org/wdicumddh/grid_2_temps_after_an_hour.png

any help would be mucho gratitude overlecking it takes the core too 5.0ghz at a cool 73'c tried adjusting to performance mode and no good
managed to get apu to 2gb took 3 times for the mb to recognise then finnialy booted with right display but its still only gave me .1 on experience increase and no help with blue line so i now have 4gbs graphic ram tested with just 6670 get 6.8 same as apu

right so im thinking this must be a cable issues (or the usual onboard rubbish glithcy poop ive seen with amd am3+ on-board graphics) as im running thorough dvi to hdmi or it could be my 32" telly just sucks or because amd don't release the new graphics drivers till 30th of july the only reason i don't get higher than a 5.0 ghz core is because ma ram speed is poop if i had 2400 would get much higher

managed to get grid 2 running at 48fps but still the blue lines o well have managed to nail it down to ma ram, driver ,or motherboard chip-set or could be the grid2 engine i know skyrim has numerous problems with jitter but ive no way to test yet sigh!

*As a Review* for this apu ill do a price vs power coz its about the only thing i can do bang for buck i paid £110 for cpu, £25 for the card and probs £50 for the ram £40 for the board this was £220 total. sold mas old pentium d 3.4 for almost £110 on ebay. With stock cooling this thing aint great was blue screening, shutting down fullscreen from in-games. add a cooler and its a lot of fun for just over £200. stock amd cooler was mostly 120 degrees c. fps this thing does really well its just a bit slow at getting there etc game loading times (easly cured with clock controls) when its stock but this is hardly ever in stock mode my gf could overclock this thing to 5.0 ghz its that easy so when she plays sims 3 she dont have to suffer the loading times which really helps when theres like 1 million expansions to load.

conclusion:- if you have the money gofor i7 skt 2011 if price is for you then ull not be disappointed this thing does really well considering the huge price difference fps get good rates on most games, tbh if i had then money to burn i would go straight out n get an i7 but i dont.  
price 5/5 
fps 3/5 
overall fun with clock features 4/5
i7 would be all 5/5 but its like an extra £200 gbp = insane especially how stuff drops in price all the time. if this chip last 3 years and drops by half price then tbh ive had a good 3 years for £60 where as an i7 will drop significantly in price from £300 to £150 that £150 loss is as soon as you buy as it becomes second hand now will it hold value. who knows but for £120 who really cares. when i evidently sell i will not be at a bigger loss than if i bought an i7. power wise this uses less power than my pentium d 3.4 so my electric meter tells me so its all good

 Personally i sat and watched an a10 680k go for £97 on ebay 2nd hand a few days ago loss of £17 yep 2 packets of fags lol compare to i5 or low end i7 would rather have this all day long but give me the cash to buy the top end i7 ill take it every time

if any 1 wants me to benchmark certain games give me a fb message n ill do for ya supposedly this core does really well for batman but have yet to try

*UPDATE*just installed crysis 3 max settings on graphics. fps on fraps with a 512 + 2bg crossfire is 40-45 which aint that bad and o does it look sweet guess its the grid 2 engine out the window then too, as no blue crappy stuff on this game run sweet as a nut


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## msroadkill612 (Sep 26, 2014)

I give up!!!

What is it with AMD APU reviews? Its not just you guys, its all over.

The one thing AMD APUs are not good at is gaming, yet they are fabulous balance for almost all other respects.

To a one, reviews of APUs seem to immediately focus on gaming - 10 pages of stating the obvious.

A great shame. It puts AMD on the defensive. I think they have it pretty right for all but gamers. Conceptually its awesome. Good GPU(s) etched onto the main processor & using system memory (now 2133 - a big jump). Its the future & it may wither on the vine with all this confusing nonsense & crap AMD marketing.

you wanna game, get a discrete GPU (for now) - simple.


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## Tatty_One (Sep 26, 2014)

msroadkill612 said:


> I give up!!!
> 
> What is it with AMD APU reviews? Its not just you guys, its all over.
> 
> ...


Don't give up..... elaborate please......  Your referring to a 15 month old review of a previous generation of APU from a previous generation socket that was scored 8.8/10 and a "Highly recommended" that made absolutely no mention in the conclusion under "cons" of gaming performance so what is frustrating you so?


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## Dent1 (Sep 27, 2014)

Tatty_One said:


> Don't give up..... elaborate please......  Your referring to a 15 month old review of a previous generation of APU from a previous generation socket that was scored 8.8/10 and a "Highly recommended" that made absolutely no mention in the conclusion under "cons" of gaming performance so what is frustrating you so?



My suspicion is msroadkill612 won't return to elaborate.

BTW. Lock this thread!


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## cadaveca (Sep 27, 2014)

Dent1 said:


> BTW. Lock this thread!




No. 

It's roughly valid feedback. This poster just didn't take the review form the direction it was posed... to meet the audience here, who are mostly interested in gaming. APUs are awesome for what they are, although I do fault the power consumption a bit in today's market since an Intel 1150 CPU is just as good for daily usage, uses less power, but doesn't offer the same 3D capabilities. So if you don't need those 3D capabilities, why do you need an APU?


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## OneMoar (Sep 28, 2014)

AMD needs to get on quad channel DDR4 before the APU's will have any sort of gaming relevancy


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## Steevo (Sep 28, 2014)

OneMoar said:


> AMD needs to get on quad channel DDR4 before the APU's will have any sort of gaming relevancy


The new variants coming out will feature the delta compression making 50% better use of memory bandwidth. 


Still, I love me some APU in a laptop, still overall better than Intel for everything buy heavy lifting, and if you need that why are you using a laptop? Wish I had one instead of what they got me.


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## OneMoar (Sep 28, 2014)

delta compression isn't gonna net 50% more like 20%


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## Tatty_One (Sep 28, 2014)

Dent1 said:


> My suspicion is msroadkill612 won't return to elaborate.
> 
> BTW. Lock this thread!


Suspicion fail..... He has been back and thanked your post  although you were right in part..... he didn't elaborate.


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## Frick (Sep 28, 2014)

msroadkill612 said:


> The one thing AMD APUs are not good at is gaming, yet they are fabulous balance for almost all other respects.



This depends on your definition of gaming. I play games a fair bit, just not the stuff that requires a fast PC, and even if I would buy a 1920x1080 monitor I would still be happy to game at a 1280x1024 monitor (because dual monitors) ... and depending on the game I'd say around 30fps is playable. For me it would make an excellent gaming machine. The only drawback is you can get more performance if buying used components. 

If hybrid crossfire would work better it would be awesome though.


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## msroadkill612 (Sep 28, 2014)

Tatty_One said:


> Don't give up..... elaborate please......  Your referring to a 15 month old review of a previous generation of APU from a previous generation socket that was scored 8.8/10 and a "Highly recommended" that made absolutely no mention in the conclusion under "cons" of gaming performance so what is frustrating you so?





Dent1 said:


> My suspicion is msroadkill612 won't return to elaborate.
> 
> BTW. Lock this thread!





Tatty_One said:


> Don't give up..... elaborate please......  Your referring to a 15 month old review of a previous generation of APU from a previous generation socket that was scored 8.8/10 and a "Highly recommended" that made absolutely no mention in the conclusion under "cons" of gaming performance so what is frustrating you so?



Thanks to the positive responders. Shame on the negative "lock thread " censor guy

Perhaps i vented my frustration on the least guilty review. In fact I know it now, sorry guys. I almost apologised pre-emptively but was too tired.

I dont pretend to be technical but from the mouths of babes ...?

I have read many apu reviews over some time & the gaming focus is certainly my impression - damning them with faint praise. Quite so IF u buy the gaming red herring..

System memory cant compete with discrete GPU ram for a long while yet

I am not a gamer, along with many others, but intel have shifted the debate confusingly to gaming - they cannot compete if an adequate cpu & an adequate igp are adequate (& they often are - compared to what many are upgrading from - awesome) unless u can scare the guy into thinking gaming is a general measure of adequacy.

For many, it isnt (few over 45 game methinks). , but we do value; multimedia, quiet, simple, cool & frugal. I love no add in cards & drivers.

I cant see where my future proofing is wrong. FM2 sockets seem with us for a while & tomorrows rubbish beats todays top end stuff easily. A year is a lot for APUs.

My hobby (am retired & have space & cash so the dog & i dont HAVE to be cheap or minimalist), has for some time been...

To source & set up my "model train set" using APUs & some day, playing with it.

It doesnt have to make sense. It has to amuse me. (I also have 10x bicycles from ebikes to racing road bikes - silly right?)

Its all been vicarious & on paper for some time so far. Am serious but each answer seems to raise 2 or more questions i find fun to research.
simply put, my order will be ~

3 x top end asus fm2+ full atx moboS - the one with with display port (which seems to be the future & i think is relevant re multi monitor) - hang the expense on the mobo - nice to know its got the lot ~$120

3 x 8gb 2400 ram, or 2133 if too dear - running it at even 1866 on a A6 seems fine, but I wish I could be positive? I hate returns. Any confirmation?

3 x apu

2 x samsung 256gb ssd - only a bit dearer & seem to have the reputation.

I forget the name but ssdS which let u use some as a drive & some as a HDD cache sound v interesting - say180gb as a boot drive & 64gb as a cache (maybe 2x also)

Mavens often cant see the forrest for the trees. Some simple fundamentals I have gleaned from seemingly reliable sources u may have missed:

a mid august 2014 Toms review of the A10 found little benefit on an overclocked a10 to 2400 ram over 2133 ram, tho it should help heaps for the IGP. Perhaps the much maligned AMD memory controller is maxed out at 2133?

Dual channel ram has little effect EXCEPT for the IGP.

The VGA Dsub is to be phased out soonish - under 2 years?

It bears re-stating, the biggest recent advance by a country mile is affordable & reliable SSDs

2 x seagate 1TB single platter HDD - i have 6x sata 2 160GB drives already

1 x compatible radeon discrete gpu to play with multi monitor - not crossfire

SO

put 1 in a case & use it

put 2 on bench & play with them - raid arrays using SSDs eg. - no waiting hours for formats etc. a chore becomes fun

1 x win 8 & recycle 2 x win 98xp copies

I may even get  a6 6800kS (absurdly cheap) APUs & use them as seat warmers till better or cheaper a10S come along

maybe split an 8gb 2 x 4gb set between the two bench mobos to save $ - get more later if needed

makes sense to me - doubt i would spend $2k for my toy & working pc - a trifle compared to my recently canned drinking hobby.

can be avant guard on bench PCs w/o angst

easy redundancy if main PC fails - i hate downtime

my options are very open



msroadkill612 said:


> I give up!!!
> 
> What is it with AMD APU reviews? Its not just you guys, its all over.
> 
> ...



put simply - system memory cant compete with discrete GPU memory.



msroadkill612 said:


> I give up!!!
> 
> What is it with AMD APU reviews? Its not just you guys, its all over.
> 
> ...



also put simply (what is often lacking), it seems a good general rule re good APU rigs (A10, 8gb dual channel 2133 ram, ssd boot drive) & gaming is - i reiterate, I am not a gamer or technical - the numbers are a guess but u see where I am coming from

given TV is 25FPS? & we live with that - 25 FPS play rate seems pretty good.

HD TV is 1080dpi?

on a good APU rig - 720P, most games,  no problem

1080 dpi - some games - not all

I cant help it. I hate to do it as would like to see amd do well.

but i cannot escape the notion of getting the best of everything - except the apu itself

the A6 is quite a chip & only $50~ if that - thats a packet of tobacco here

toss them when when an amd apu takes your fancy a bit down the track - simply swap the APU.

I like the a10, but dear given I want 3x APUs & they seem to improve by leaps and bounds

I would hate to toss a $170 apu.


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## Tatty_One (Sep 28, 2014)

I think your point is made, my keyboard needs a break now from merging your posts..... thanks!


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## msroadkill612 (Sep 28, 2014)

Tatty_One said:


> I think your point is made, my keyboard needs a break now from merging your posts..... thanks!


agree - sorry - i warmed to my theme too much. Got a bit random.


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## Steevo (Sep 30, 2014)

OneMoar said:


> delta compression isn't gonna net 50% more like 20%




With such a low bandwidth available any increase is huge, and both AMD/Nvidia show about 33% on modern cards.


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