AMD A10-6700 APU Richland Processor Review

Processor Testing Methodology

Richland is the next generation of APUs from AMD and follows Trinity in that role. Because of that, I have included the flagship Trinity processor in this review; the A10-5800K. Throughout the testing process, we will be able to see what kind of improvements the better yields and instructions have given the new APUs. As of this writing, the closest Intel processor to the A10-6800K and A10-6700 APUs that I have on hand, in terms of price and performance, is the Core i3-3220. I’ll be comparing the i3-3220 to the new APUs so that we can see exactly where they stand. Of course, when the lower range of Haswell CPUs are released, we will have to revisit the

comparisons.

The A10-6700, as a locked processor, was not intended to be overclocked, and I haven’t included any results from overclocking the slower of the two APUs.

The question on everyone’s mind, of course, is whether or not the new series of APUs can play games; especially the latest titles available now. Because of that, I’ll be specifically answering that question by using an array of GPU synthetic benchmarks and two of the newest games. I’ve used the HD2500 graphics on the i3-3220 for comparison, but since that’s really no competition I also included a GT 630 for low end discrete comparison. Unfortunately I didn’t have a GPU between the GT 630 and the Radeon HD 7850 on hand to test with. I added in results from the Radeon HD 7850 and the GTX 660Ti just to show was a little more juice can provide. At around $150, the Radeon HD 7850 could be a great match up for a Richland APU.

Intel Z77 Express Test Platform

• Motherboard: Biostar Hi-Fi Z7&X
• Processor: 3.3GHz Intel Core i3-3220 and 3.3GHz Intel Core i5-2500K
• System Memory: 8GB DDR3-1600 (two 4GB DIMMs) at 11-11-12-28
• Primary Drive: Seagate ST1000LM014 1TB SSHD drive
• Graphics Adapter: AMD Radeon HD7850; GT 630; GTX 660Ti; Integrated HD2500

AMD FM2 A-Series Platform

• Motherboard: ASUS F2A85-M Pro
• Processor: 3.8GHz A10-5800K; 3.9GHz A10-6700; 4.1GHz A10-6800K
• System Memory: 8GB DDR3-1600 (two 4GB DIMMs) at 11-11-12-28
• Primary Drive: Seagate ST1000LM014 1TB SSHD drive
• Graphics Adapter: AMD Radeon HD7850; GT 630; GTX 660Ti; Integrated Radeon HD Graphics

Benchmark Applications: CPU

• Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
• Finalwire AIDA64 Extreme Edition v2.99.2446 (Beta)
• Futuremark PCMark 7
• Maxon CINEBENCH R11.5 64-Bit
• SiSoft Sandra 2013.SP3a

Benchmark Applications: Integrated GPU

• ComputeMark 2.1
• 3DMark 11
• Unigine Heaven 4.0
• BioShock Infinite
• Tomb Raider

Let’s start the benchmarking with an AIDA64 run in the next section.