Battle At $140: Can An APU Beat An Intel CPU And Add-In Graphics?
What can you get for $140? How about AMD's top-of-the-line A8-3870K APU with four CPU cores and an integrated Radeon HD 6550D? That's also enough for a Pentium G620 and discrete Radeon HD 6670. We benchmark both to uncover the best budget-oriented option.
Benchmark Results: DiRT 3
This summary suggests that raw graphics potential is key in this game, which isn't surprising if you’ve seen any of our other articles that include DiRT 3-based benchmarks.
The Pentium G620 and Radeon HD 6670 encounter a slight dip in performance at the beginning of the run. However, that combination exceeds 60 FPS during the rest of the benchmark. Although it falls behind for most of the test, AMD's stock A8-3870 does well enough, though the overclock helps boost frame rates a bit. Just remember, though, that the Radeon HD 6670 isn't overclocked. Pushing that solution harder would likely extend the Intel platform's lead.
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tristan_b Well of course the option with a better gpu will win in gaming. A dual core sandy bridge is enough for almost any game on max these days. If you paired the apu with a 6670, I'm sure we would see different results.Reply -
dragonsqrrl tristan_bIf you paired the apu with a 6670, I'm sure we would see different results.Ya, that would also cost a lot more then $140.Reply -
jimmysmitty tristan_bWell of course the option with a better gpu will win in gaming. A dual core sandy bridge is enough for almost any game on max these days. If you paired the apu with a 6670, I'm sure we would see different results.Reply
Actually in most games it should act the same if its just the GPU as most games will be bottlenecked by the mid end GPU. If you include the hybrid CFX (If the A8 can work with the 6670) it will be a bit better in some cases.
The power draw is very interesting. The CPU load on the A8 is almost as much as a mix of CPU and GPU. It could be a sign of the 32nm still not being mature enough. But it does look better than FX by a lot in power draw.
Still interesting idea. The G620 plus the HD6670 is about $130 vs $140 which means they are about the same in price. The mobos, RAM and other stuff will be about the same. I have said it before, but it still holds true. Llano is great for the modile sector. In laptops it will be the best value for lower end laptops to provide a decent gaming setup. Not maxed but still better than what HD3K can do. But on DT, its mostly pointless as it uses a sub par CPU with a decent IGP. -
Zero_ Nice. Something I've always debated to include in my blog (my sig). The G620 + HD6670 always won out in my book. Good to see a confirmation from Toms.Reply -
ohim And yet Tom`s managed to miss out something ... the CPU + video card might be the same price as the AMD APU but the Intel motherboard is 50+$ more than the one used in the AMD system .. at least in my country.Reply -
saturnus ohimAnd yet Tom`s managed to miss out something ... the CPU + video card might be the same price as the AMD APU but the Intel motherboard is 50+$ more than the one used in the AMD system .. at least in my country.Reply
Here too. And they could have used the difference on better memory which is known to bottleneck the Llanos. That would probably have pulled the Llano ahead in all tests, not just power consumption.
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tlmck Would have been interesting to see 1866 ram used with the APU. Other sites such as Anandtech have shown it to noticeably boost performance. Conversely, there is no advantage to 1600 speed on the Intel. Stock 1333 would have worked the same.Reply