AMD A10-6800K (Richland) Review

AMD’s desktop APUs has been a budget DIYers dream solution since it has always delivered very good multimedia performance without having to invest in additional parts like a discrete GPU. Also, being an AMD component, the pricing has been very competitive when compared to the competition. This June, AMD launched their 2013 Elite A-Series APUs as a follow up to last year’s Trinity APUs. The new chips are more of a refresh to Trinity rather than a brand new architecture and now feature bumped up clock speeds, faster memory bandwidth and an upgraded GPU. Today we’ll be taking a closer look at their flagship A10-6800K APU which will eventually replace their, quite popular, A10-5800K Trinity APU.

Features
Before we delve into the nitty-gritty of what makes up the A10, here’s a quick look at the new line-up of APUs ranging from the A10 to the cheapest A6.

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The new batch of Elite Series APUs

The APU consists of two or four ‘Piledriver’ CPU cores built on the 32nm fabrication process. The new APUs use the same FM2 socket so any A55, A75 or A85X motherboards are compatible with it. The new APUs have varied TDPs as well ranging from 65W to 100W. The A10-6500K that we’ll be reviewing today runs at a stock speed of 4.1GHz with the ability to Turbo up to 4.4GHz. The APU has 2MB of L2 cache per dual-core module giving you a grand total of 4MB. The 6800K is the only APU currently in the family to natively support DDR3 2133MHz, which is quite impressive.

Offers a good blend of CPU and GPU performance

The Richland APUs feature a new Radeon HD 8000 graphics chip. These use the older VLIW 4 architecture first seen on AMD’s HD 6900 series desktop GPUs. The onboard graphics is pretty similar to the one on the 5800K APU and we have a total of 384 shaders, DX11 support and a slightly higher clock speed of 844MHz. The GPU and APU clock speeds can all be controlled via AMD’s Overdrive utility.

Setting it up
For setting up the A10-6800K, we turned to an MSI FM2-A85XA-G65. Based on the FM2 socket, this full-ATX motherboard supports memory up to 2133MHz (and beyond with OC), has a digital PWM and Military Class III components for good stability and supports CrossFire, AMD Dual Graphics and many more. Most importantly, the board worked very well out-of-the-box with the A10-6800K.

The MSI FM2-A85XA-G65 used for the test

Performance
The A10-6800K’s closest competitor in terms of price would be the Core i3-3240 or a Core i5-3330. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get those samples in so we’ll just have to make do with the higher-end Intel chips for now. While it’s not fair to directly compare them, we have an idea as to how much of a difference there is really.

As expected, the A10 finds it quite difficult to keep up with the likes of Intel latest Haswell or even Sandy Bridge for that matter. However, it’s not too far behind the 2600K when you look at the overall performance. The A10 may not have the computational prowess but when it comes to games, it still holds the lead. We have to say that Intel’s new HD 4600 graphics aboard Haswell is closing the gap so AMD might not have this lead for too long.

Still strong when it comes to gaming

Other than Resident Evil 5, the HD 4600 puts on a very good show giving us very playable framerates all around. The A10-6800K still manages to inch ahead thanks to a higher clock speed and better architecture.

Verdict and Price in India
The new Elite A-Series A10-6800K is priced a little higher than its predecessor at Rs 10,000. The A10 is targeted at someone who’s looking for a one-stop-solution for a CPU and GPU and would not want to invest more in a discrete card. Yes, you can get a more powerful Intel CPU at this price but you’ll have to spend at least Rs 3,000 more on a graphics card if you plan on even casual gaming. In this respect, the A10-6800K will be a slightly cheaper solution. If you already have a A10-5800K then upgrading to this won’t yield any noticeable performance increase.  If it’s raw performance you crave then Intel’s Core i5-4430 (Haswell) is not out of reach and you also get a pretty decent onboard GPU for gaming.