APU A8-5600 vs Starcraft II + HotS

kei0520

Honorable
Apr 8, 2012
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10,510
Hi guys,

I recently built a secondary desktop for my girlfriend to do some lightweight gaming, and decided to give the Trinity APU a try as I've heard good things about it both over the net and from colleagues (I am a lowly employee at Intel in fact).

So here's my build:

OCZ StealthXtreme 600w PSU
Asus F2A55-M Motherboard
AMD APU A8-5600k
Kingston HyperX Blu Red 4GB DDR3 @1600Mhz
and a SanDisk Ultra Plus 128GB SSD

While the APU runs pretty well on games such as Heroes of Newerth and Ragnarok Online 2 (which is PhysX enabled even!), when we installed Starcraft II + HotS, it performed very very VERY poorly. No matter how we lowered its settings, it cannot get above 20 frames-ish, even at minimum everything + 1280 x 720 resolution. Even the HD4000 should perform at least twice better than this...

According to the following sources, the APU should deliver at least twice of what I'm getting, if not significantly more. (I tried it @ 3.6, 3.8, and 4.3, didn't make a difference)

Here's one running at 1920 x 1080 at 60 FPS on low:

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/A8-5600K-vs-Pentium-G2120-CPU-Review/1656/11

another running 1680 x 1050 medium at 75.5 FPS

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6332/amd-trinity-a10-5800k-a8-5600k-review-part-1/5

I've updated my drivers, mobo BIOS, temps are fine, CPU clocks seems normal. So I guess the sum of my questions would be... What the heck?

PS** I'm also thinking about crossfiring a HD 6570 just for fun, can anyone share their real-world results with me, just to see if it's worth the extra 70 bucks or so. Will it boost my settings from Medium to High? to Ultra? or just a few more frames on the same settings?
 
Solution


Actually, it does support dual-channel memory. Adding a 2nd stick and overclocking the ram would be a good choice.

kei0520

Honorable
Apr 8, 2012
17
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10,510
My problem is not so much with the A8-5600k's rated performance. I'm trying to find out why my particular set up is giving me hindered GPU performance. My 3Dmark Vantage CPU results seems to be fine, but the GPU performance averages to be half of what most people with similar, if not identical setups are getting...
 

slomo4sho

Distinguished


I am going to assume that you have a single stick of ram and are crippling your GPU performance due to the limited memory bandwidth.
 

kei0520

Honorable
Apr 8, 2012
17
0
10,510


Thanks for the reply, you are indeed correct, I only have 1 stick of 4GB running in there. Would throwing a second stick in there actually help? (My motherboard doesn't seem to support dual-channel)
 

slomo4sho

Distinguished


Actually, it does support dual-channel memory. Adding a 2nd stick and overclocking the ram would be a good choice.
 
Solution

kei0520

Honorable
Apr 8, 2012
17
0
10,510


I threw in a second stick and it solved everything. Many thanks for your time, much appreciated!