Memory Scaling, AMD's Trinity APUs, And Game Performance

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When it comes to gaming, the integrated Radeon on AMD's Trinity architecture crushes the HD Graphics 4000 engine native to Intel's fastest Ivy Bridge CPU. But we want to make a good thing better. How much does fast memory help boost an APU's performance?

Results: Skyrim And StarCraft II

The Low quality preset in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim looks pretty basic, but you're at least able to enjoy playable performance from it. We didn't notice any distracting frame-time artifacts all the way through 1920x1080.

The Medium quality preset is smooth enough at 1280x720, particularly when we use our memory kit at DDR3-2400.

A smooth experience at 1920x1080 requires at least DDR3-1866 in StarCraft II.

We're able to play StarCraft II at the game's highest detail settings, but only at 1280x720, and only with DDR3-1866 or faster memory.

Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.