AMD Trinity On The Desktop: A10, A8, And A6 Get Benchmarked!

Power

Power consumption is monitored throughout our testing. And because our benchmark suite is scripted, it’s easy to subject each APU to the same workload and evaluate consumption during the entire run.

Our power data is interesting, though I’d caution against taking it as gospel. The motherboard vendors we’ve talked to indicate that Turbo Core functionality isn’t working perfectly yet.

With that said, A8-3850, A10-5800K, and A8-5600K are all rated for 100 W, while the A6-5400K has a 65 W thermal design power.

We immediately see that the Llano-based A8 (the yellow line) doesn’t drop to as low of an idle power consumption number as a Trinity-based chip. Otherwise, the three 100 W APUs all appear to place relatively close to each other.

Run the averages, and you actually see the trio end up within 4 W of each other. A8-5600K averages 101 W total system power use, while the A10 lands at 105 W. The Llano-based APU is in between.

The little A6-5400K-based machine averages just 83 W of power consumption through our benchmark suite. But look at that green line. It takes so long to complete testing that power use over time ends up being worse than the quad-core chips.

Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini is an Editor Emeritus at Tom's Hardware US. He edits hardware reviews and covers high-profile CPU and GPU launches.
  • mayankleoboy1
    Nice scoop, Chris!
    Reply
  • Youngmind
    This is so exciting! AMD is probably going to dominate the lower-end and give the poor gamers like me more bang-for-buck as their IGP get better and better :)!
    Reply
  • dudewitbow
    depending on how its priced, its a really nice alternative for bare budget gaming that opens up a quad core as well
    Reply
  • I can't WAIT for this, HAIL AMD!!!!
    Reply
  • So this means that a 'Crossfired' Trinity APU would beat ANY similarly-priced Intel (CPU+discrete GPU) ???
    Well at least in gaming
    Reply
  • dudewitbow
    JiggerByteSo this means that a 'Crossfired' Trinity APU would beat ANY similarly-priced Intel (CPU+discrete GPU) ???Well at least in gaming
    really the question is what gpus are able to hybrid crossfire with it. the information was never public. not all amd gpus will hybrid crossfire with it.
    Reply
  • Well, where are the Ivy/Sandy i5's and i3's???

    Once they are pitted against each other, that will be A TRUE measure of the APU Trinity's marketability
    Reply
  • mayankleoboy1
    in the OpenCL Winzip benchmark, when openCL is enabled the workload is done only by the iGPU or the CPU as well ?

    i mean what is the processor usage during the benchmark ? are all CPU cores used? or only one?
    Reply
  • cangelini
    mayankleoboy1in the OpenCL Winzip benchmark, when openCL is enabled the workload is done only by the iGPU or the CPU as well ?i mean what is the processor usage during the benchmark ? are all CPU cores used? or only one?Good question--I'll take a look for you.
    Reply
  • monkeymonk
    This is awesome. Glad to hear pile driver is making improvements.
    Reply