
WinZip used to be decidedly single-threaded. Slowly, Corel has done a better job of optimizing the compression utility’s engine, and it’s now able to utilize multiple cores to some degree. Nevertheless, Intel’s chips take the win ahead of AMD’s Trinity-based APUs. This is probably because even the "optimized" WinZip 16.5 still doesn't take full advantage of multi-core chips, as I showed in our Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition review.

That’s not the whole story, though. AMD and Corel worked together to enable OpenCL support in WinZip 16.5, which you can enable on platforms with AMD’s graphics hardware installed (even though Nvidia and Intel support OpenCL on their respective products).
So, we have benchmark results under the same workload with OpenCL turned on. It’s clear that any disadvantage AMD might have suffered in the previous chart is more than made up for with OpenCL enabled.
Of course, if the Photoshop CS6 benchmark is any indication, Intel’s Core i3s will quickly regain ground as soon as Corel exposes support for competing platforms, which it plans to do.

WinRAR is unable to tax AMD’s hardware fully, resulting in a win for Intel. The difference isn’t particularly bothersome. Though, given the amount of power AMD’s chips consume while active, the conversion to efficiency makes this outcome more severe.

We use 7-Zip on our own workstations, not only because it’s freely available, but also because the utility effectively utilizes our hardware. A fairly even finish shows that AMD’s additional processing resources and notably higher clock rates more than make up for a loss in instruction throughput per clock cycle, if just barely.
- Trinity: Great Gamer, But What About Power?
- A10-5800K: The Undervolt And Overclock
- Test Setup And Software
- Benchmark Results: 3DMark 11
- Benchmark Results: Adobe CS6
- Benchmark Results: Content Creation
- Benchmark Results: Productivity
- Benchmark Results: Compression Utilities
- Benchmark Results: Media Encoding
- Power Consumption
- Efficiency
- The Pursuit Of Balance Warms Our Hearts
At this price point, i would choose AMD Trinity.
Happy to set a couple of systems up and let you know what I find.
At this price point, i would choose AMD Trinity.
Happy to set a couple of systems up and let you know what I find.
So, it's probable that we're seeing a difference in configuration. It looks like Anand is using the Gigabyte A85X board and perhaps an older driver version. I'm on the MSI board and Cat 12.8, with a different Intel setup as well. On the Windows desktop, after 10 minutes on each config, I get 59 W for Intel and 67 W for AMD at idle.
Hopefully this articale can start to filter around particularly for the budget users which A-series is premised to target.
overclock the locked Intel chips? how do you suppose they do that? they weren't testing against Intel K series unlocked chips.
I can't be the only one who was waiting for the money shot of what is the difference in performance when you clock up from 800Mhz to >1000Mhz.
SUCH AN OVERSIGHT. UNFORGIVABLE!
1. overclocked/undervolted benchmarks for the i3 parts
2. dedicated gpu game benchmarks at 1440, 1680, 1920 for the A10 and the A8
3. More OpenCl benchmarks with and without dedicated GPUs for the i3 parts as well as the A10 parts
p.s. I realised I was getting thumbed up and down for this. do these seem like too many requests? nobody has covered trinity like toms and that too with superb writing quality. is it wrong for me to get greedy to read more of their stuff? :-) i'm addicted to this stuff is all. now if you'd excuse me, I have an F5 button to press.