Better With Time? The A8-3870 And Pentium G630, One Year Later

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AMD's desktop APUs, which combine x86 cores and graphics resources, emerged more than a year ago. We take a Llano-based A8-3870 and compare its performance from 2011 to what you get today using new drivers, application versions, and OpenCL acceleration.

Test Setup And Benchmarks

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Test Setups And Software
Socket FM1 Platform MSI A75MA-G55, Chipset: AMD A75, BIOS: 1.6b
Socket FM1 Processor AMD A8-3870K (32 nm, Llano, B0), 4C/4T, 3.0 GHz, 4 x 1 MB L2 Cache, w/ AMD Radeon HD 6550D, 100 W TDP
LGA 1155 Platform Gigabyte H67MA-UD2H, Chipset: H67, BIOS: F2
LGA 1155 Processor Intel Pentium G630 (32 nm, Sandy Bridge, D2), 2C/2T, 2.70 GHz, 2 x 256 KB L2 Cache, w/ Intel HD Graphics, 65 W TDP
DDR3 Memory 2 x 4 GB DDR3-1600, Kingston KHX1600C9D3K2/8GX
Shared Platform Components
System Drive Samsung 470 Series SSD, 256 GB, SATA 3Gb/s
Power Supply Seasonic X-760, SS-760KM Active PFC
System Software & Drivers
Operating System Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1
Drivers and Settings
AMD Chipset Drivers AMD Catalyst 12.6 Suite for Windows 7
AMD Catalyst Drivers 2011 AMD Catalyst 11.7 Suite for Windows 7
AMD Catalyst Drivers 2012 AMD Catalyst 12.6 Suite for Windows 7
Intel INF-Update-Utility 2011 Version: 9.2.0.1030 (04/21/2011)
Intel INF-Update-Utility 2012 Version: 9.3.0.1019 (11/27/2011)
Intel HD Graphics 2011 Version: 15.22.50.64.2509 (09/03/2011)
Intel HD Graphics 2012 Version: 15.22.54.64.2622 (01/21/2012)