AMD APU general info wanted

Gotages · Jun 14, 2014

Hey everyone sorry for the goofy 'help wanted' style thread title. But basically I'm looking for some more info on this type of CPU from AMD. I pretty much only know that they are just a regular CPU with an above average integrated GPU. Somewhere I read that fast RAM greatly helps these, is this true? I have a laptop (specs will be given below) that I didn't exactly buy for PC gaming, the most I want to play is DC Universe Online and Minecraft...and I know more memory will help with Minecraft. I'm more then sure that my laptop should be able to play DC Universe Online, it's just it starts to lag in large groups of people, to me that sounds like memory should help. Any information will be greatly appreciated.

P.S. Extra memory should help with boosting processing speed right? At times when the hard drive is running a marathon, the CPU seems to run like a dog.

Laptop Specs:
HP pavilion n211dx
Windows 8.1 64-bit
AMD A8-4555M @ 1.6GHz
4GB 1600MHz DDR3L (1.35v) single stick
AMD Radeon HD 7600G

Karsten75 · Jun 14, 2014

let me see...

right, for an APU, in general faster memory does improve performance. I think I saw a benchmark on Anandtech once confirming that. The reason is that discrete GPUs generally use extremely fast DDR5 RAM. So if you can speed up the RAM for the integrated GPU... speed improves.

Now for the bad news. Typically you can't install faster RAM in a laptop.

More RAM might improve the responsiveness of a computer, but only if RAM (memory) is the bottleneck. And often times that manifests itself with a lot of disk activity as memory is being paged out to virtual memory on the swap or page file.

a caveat - if you have 32-bit Windows, then the integrated GPU is the only component that can use the memory >4GB.

Hope that helps a little.

Rakeen70210 · Jun 14, 2014

Alright so since this is a laptop your upgrade options are very limited. The a8-4555m isn't exactly bad for laptop gaming, but its not the APU thats going to keep you going for the next few years in newer games so keep that in mind. Now as far as RAM goes, you can significantly improve performance of your FPS by adding more. An integrated GPU at most will use up 2GB of your system memory. You have a total of 4GB, this means that sometimes you will only have 2GB of memory left for your system to use(and if your CPU is eating up too much RAM your GPU will not be able to utilize as much as it can). Another very important thing to have in these kinds of setups is dual-channel memory. I have no idea if your laptop uses 2 2GB sticks to make 4 or just 1 4GB stick but make sure you get a total of two sticks. So because you want two sticks you want to get 2x4GB sticks in total. This will free up a ton of memory for your CPU and GPU and because it will be in dual-channel you WILL see a vast increase(10-15 sometimes more depending on the game) in framerates. Also as the above guy mentioned, make sure you have a 64-bit of windows as 32-bit will not use more than 4GB of RAM ever.

I forgot to mention that clockspeed(frequency) of the RAM is also extremely important. Make sure both sticks have the same frequency and look for no less than 1600mhz.

Gotages · Jun 14, 2014

Karsten75 :

It does help confirm what I already knew. I forgot to mention that I am a CIT student (information that doesn't apply to this thread). Fortunately/Unfortunately my laptop only takes 1600MHz RAM which to me is rather impressive...I guess. And to fill in the blanks for the last comment you made, yes it is a 64-bit version of Windows 8.1 (I'll change that in my first post).

Gotages · Jun 14, 2014

Rakeen70210 :

Also more information I failed to input. I unfortunately have only a single stick of memory..so I was aware of the configuration prior to buying the laptop. It has an usual configuration of memory with a max of only 12GB and 2 DIMM slots. So since you can't buy 6GB sticks of memory I'm opting to going with 8GB.

Rakeen70210 · Jun 15, 2014

Gotages :

Rakeen70210 :

Also more information I failed to input. I unfortunately have only a single stick of memory..so I was aware of the configuration prior to buying the laptop. It has an usual configuration of memory with a max of only 12GB and 2 DIMM slots. So since you can't buy 6GB sticks of memory I'm opting to going with 8GB.

Yea go with another stick of 4GB of RAM thats really the best thing you can do right now. I mean, you can try to replace the HDD with a faster one(7200RPM) for example but that wont do much in terms of actual gaming performance. For laptops you usually wanna buy one that has the best specs and spend a ton of money on it(I learned this the hard way) since they just arent good enough for gaming yet.

Gotages · Jun 15, 2014

Rakeen70210 :

Gotages :

Yea go with another stick of 4GB of RAM thats really the best thing you can do right now. I mean, you can try to replace the HDD with a faster one(7200RPM) for example but that wont do much in terms of actual gaming performance. For laptops you usually wanna buy one that has the best specs and spend a ton of money on it(I learned this the hard way) since they just arent good enough for gaming yet.

Ya...I'm trying to stay away from PC gaming, especially with a laptop. I use to do a little bit not too long ago but hated sinking enough money into a single computer to buy more then a couple of consoles. It's just the two games mentioned above were the ones that kind of stuck around, luckily they don't demand too many resources. As far as the hard drive goes, I thought about it but to me the decrease in load time isn't worth the money needed for a new one (although hard drive are rather cheap now a days), not to mention needing to track down a Windows 8 disc.

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