APU and Dual Channel RAM, Benchmarks inside

dscudella

Honorable
Sep 10, 2012
892
0
11,060
I recently purchased a Toshiba L855D-S5114 laptop from Best Buy for $379.99 (new not refurb). The first thing I noticed was the RAM. The laptop came with a single module of Kingston 4gb 1600 11-11-12-28. I was very unimpressed with it and as I started reading and researching I found that APU's greatly benefit from Dual Channel RAM with fast timings and speed (more so than other CPU's). So I found a kit of Corsair Vengeance and ran a couple benchmarks before and after upgrading.

Toshiba L855D-S5114
AMD A8-4500M
AMD 7640G
640gb 5400RPM HDD
15.6" 1366x768 LED

Original RAM:
Kingston 4gb 1600 11-11-12-28

Upgraded RAM:
Corsair Vengeance 2x4gb 1600 9-9-9-24

The first image you see here is the very confused Windows Experience Index Win 8. As you can see my RAM went from 5.9 to 7.3 but yet my Graphics score went from 4.7 to 4.5.

WEIComplete_zpseebfa4c9.png


The next image is a performance run of 3DMark 11 at 720p. You can easily see the increase of 277 points for a 26.4% increase.

3DMarkComplete_zps281ace14.png


The final benchmark was a run through of PCMark7. An increase of 140 points or 6.5%

PCMarkComplete_zpse7ed52a3.png



I just thought this would be fun or could be used as a reference. All in all the laptop was $380 and the RAM was $50, $430 total for an A8-4500M, 7640G & 2x4gb 1600 RAM.
 

bak0n

Distinguished
Dec 4, 2009
792
0
19,010
Ignore windows score. It's pointless outside of being a general guildline.

Ex: Overclocking from 2.7 to 3.5ghz does not increase the CPU score one notch. Changing the Ram from 1600 to 1866 does even though the timings are raised to reach 1866.