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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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.