Gaming Performance

We will try to explain the vast quantity of numbers: On average, the fastest APU of the Trinity series, the A10-5800K, is about on par with the Intel Core i3-3220 of the Ivy Bridge generation. However, the results heavily depend on the benchmark: While the Core i3 especially profits from its high performance per MHz, the A10 takes advantage from its 4 integer cores. Therefore, the AMD processor performs better in well-parallelized applications and the i3 in single-threaded tasks. This gets especially obvious in the single and multi thread tests of Cinebench. Furthermore, there is another important difference: While only the more expensive Intel Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs implement the instruction set extension AES-NI which accelerates encryption, AMD does not restrict this feature to special CPU series. So, the AMD CPUs perform better in TrueCrypt and similar tasks.

While the A8-5600K is only slightly slower than the A10-5800K because of its lower clock rate, the A4-5300 and A6-5400K (not tested here) are significantly slower. Only half of the two modules or four CPU cores of the Trinity chip are active in these two models and so, the performance is cut in half. As a result, the A4-5300's performance does not even come close to the dual core Pentium G860: AMD's CMT technology, the base of the innovative module design, cannot reach the performance of "real" CPU cores.

The FX-8350, the Core i5-3470/3550, and the Core i7-3770K are at the top of the price and the performance ranking. Compared to the similarly expensive Core i5 models, the FX performs well and is even marginally better than the Intel on average. However, the AMD CPU profits from our application selection, as most of the applications are well-parallelized. The i7-3770K is still the undisputed winner. But, its unrivaled combination of performance, energy efficiency and OC potential is quite pricey.