AMD A10-6700 And A10-6800K Review: Richland Hits The Desktop

VLIW4... Are you kidding me??? WHen is that gonna be scrapped...

Numbering has never been for the architecture inside the chips. They have always been marketing for the current line of products. Normal people buy a laptop, they see the number, they get the performance associated with said number and they don't care about the inside of the chip. Richland is just a trinity refresh with better power management and higher clocks.

AMD, Good show! Now, release Kaveri Already! I need a new SteamRoller CPU!

They say it's VLIW4 then say it's GCN. They can't be both can they?

The 6800k is good, but I expected it to be a little more powerful.

No temps with power metrics page? 8(
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!

This is dumb. Still 6670 max card for dual graphics. Disappointing.

Anonymous said:

This is dumb. Still 6670 max card for dual graphics. Disappointing.

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.

AMD swings and misses once again.

AMD swings and misses once again.

Couple days late but thanks for the review.

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.

Quote:

The A10-6700 offers similar performance as a stock A10-5800K, but offers greater efficiency. Unfortunately, it's also multiplier-locked. I have to believe that if you're willing to spend $150 on a 65 W A10 that can't be overclocked easily, then you're probably better off with a 55 W Core i3 that's also stuck in place for $10 less.

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...

Quote:

The Intel chip's performance in single-threaded apps is exceptional. It holds its own in more parallelized workloads.

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)

Can someone review this chip with the APU turned off and CPU cranked with liquid cooling (or crazy air). That higher RAM timing has to do something positive... I hope.

so... you tested a chip that supports ddr3 2400 ram with ddr3 2133 ram... and no overclocking data? the A10-5800k already supported 2133 (maybe not officially, but it worked), the a10-6800k supports and works with ddr3 2400 ram, as other reviewers have noted elsewhere.

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.

Two things. First, I really think you should have thrown in a lower-end quad Intel CPU as well. From reading older reviews it seems that an i5-2300 is actually a second SLOWER than the A10-6800k in the TotalCode Studio test.
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.

I still feel like the A10-x800 line is designed for only adding RAM, not a GPU. If you add a GPU then performance parallels (or falls behind in games) a i3.

why you not tested with HD7750... (/ﾟДﾟ)/

So this power consumption chart. Does that include the i3 with a 6670? or is that straight cpu vs apu? The gaming power consumption chart feels a bit wrong if it is running the i3 HD in metro w/o the gpu as that is misleading. Clarification?

Why not include G2020+HD6670 benchmarks? It would be ~the same cost as 6800K and I bet that everyone would want to know which setup is better.

@ingtar33, does Richland chips officially support official DDR3-2400 RAM? If so, Toms should have tested with that RAM. However I think Richland supports 'just' 2133 MHz so that's what Toms has tested with.
@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.

Anonymous said:

Why not include G2020+HD6670 benchmarks? It would be ~the same cost as 6800K and I bet that everyone would want to know which setup is better.

Is this necessary? The gaming benchmarks already show the 6800K paired with 2133 ram to perform equal to the i3-3220 + HD 6670.

Anonymous said:

does Richland chips officially support official DDR3-2400 RAM? If so, Toms should have tested with that RAM. However I think Richland supports 'just' 2133 MHz so that's what Toms has tested with.

Richland officially only supports 2133 but 2400 seems to be compatible.