
As far as average frame rates go, All of the APUs are playable at 1920x1080 using Medium quality settings, maintaining at least 30 FPS. As we might have guessed, using system memory running at 2133 MT/s makes an appreciable difference, slightly outpacing the same APU complemented by a discrete Radeon HD 6670.
We knew going in that HD Graphics 2500 would have been unplayable. Intel figured the same thing out quite a while after introducing its modest Core i3-3220; the -3225 didn't become available until quite a while after. The company redeems itself, however, when we drop in the same Radeon HD 6670, though. Alleviating the A10's processor bottleneck allows AMD's add-in card to achieve much higher frame rates.

Charting frame rate over time gives us a clearer look at the peaks and valleys of each solution, though we don't derive any additional insight.

All of our tested configurations exhibit fairly low variance in the time it takes to render one frame to the next. Even when frame rates get slow, then, at least you have this consistency to look forward to.

No surprise; Intel's HD Graphics 2500 implementation isn't cut out for gaming. For that, you'd want to look to HD Graphics 4000, at least.
But even then, data from Chris Angelini's review of Core i7-4770K shows that Intel cannot keep up with AMD's APUs in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. It's not even close. HD Graphics 4600 doesn't even do the trick.
Faster memory isn't a huge deal for the AMD parts in this title, though we will note that the 2133 MT/s kit helps A10-6800K outperform Intel's Core i3 complemented by discrete graphics.

The frame rate over time chart shows how 2133 MT/s memory helps push the A10-6800K to the top during this benchmark run.

Unfortunately, playable frame rates don't guarantee smooth performance. When we look at worst-case scenarios, each one of these solutions incurs more than 10 ms of variance between frames. That's definitely a difference you're going to feel as you're playing. And indeed, our experience in Skyrim reflected relatively moderate consistency in how frames are delivered.
- Richland APUs Make Their Way To The Desktop
- AMD Dual Graphics: Not Ready For Benchmark Results
- Test Setup And Benchmarks
- Results: Synthetic Benchmarks
- Results: F1 2012 And The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- Results: Tomb Raider And Metro: Last Light
- Results: Media Encoding
- Results: Adobe CS6
- Results: Productivity
- Results: Compression
- Results: Power Consumption
- As Expected, Richland Is A Little Better; Not Massively So
I guess Richland is still very hot going by the power figures alone. Still, it's a good step up (and stop gap) for AMD.
Nice review still. Are you guys planning on a follow up for Dual Graphics? 8)
Cheers!
No, since driver 13.1 even the 5800k was able to run dual graphics with a HD 7750. I am typing on a system with that exact setup right now. I am not sure if the 6800k will allow anything above the 7750 though. When I tried a 7770 with the 5800k I wasn't given the option to enable dual graphics.
Richland does appear to be just a refinement of Trinity. This review does explain why Kaveri desktop APUs are due to release at the end of the year.
I don't see why this argument is even made since both the 6700 and 6800K have the same MSRP considering that the only real difference in power consumption observed between the two chips was in gaming...
Your final graph suggests that the overall performance of the i3 is within margin of error of the A8-6800K(for which you didn't even bother to provide overclock benchmarks)
Lastly, can you confirm the MSRP? Your values seem to differ, other sources suggest $142 instead of your stated $149 (in fact, the pricing on all of the models seems to be off)
Isn't this a tech enthusiast site? The few reviews I've seen out there claim Richland overclocks better, cooler and higher then Trinity. Furthermore, they claim the overclocked igpu performs at the level of a 6670... which is a huge jump in performance... as the 5800k, even overclocked and with fast ram, was only about 70% a HD 6670.
where is the beef? Seriously i expected more from this site.
Secondly, the comment that Kaveri will require a new socket is largely unknown at this point - all that's been revealed is that it uses an "FM2+" socket - who knows what that'll mean in terms of mobo socket compatibility.
No, since driver 13.1 even the 5800k was able to run dual graphics with a HD 7750. I am typing on a system with that exact setup right now. I am not sure if the 6800k will allow anything above the 7750 though. When I tried a 7770 with the 5800k I wasn't given the option to enable dual graphics.
Hurry call amd tech support and tell them you have managed to accomplished what there high paid engineers have been unable to do.
I have no doubt that ccc is saying dual graphics option enabled but when you run benchmarks with it enable and disabled they are the same.
@Don, I have 3 queries for you.
Does Richland crossfire with 7750 (officially or unofficially)? If it does, that is sure an interesting thing to explore.
Also Don, yes even I've seen the figure of $142 floating around in other tech sites. Why do you quote it otherwise?
Lastly, you 'could' have added the Core i3 with Radeon 6670 in the power consumption charts just to show the increased performance in games and other applications comes with the added power consumption of the 6670 if it is present.