AMD A10 and A8 Trinity APU: Virgo Desktop Experience
Our Summary and Conclusion
Performance Summary: We can’t talk about the entire performance profile of AMD’s newest Trinity-based APUs and the Virgo platform just yet, but today’s look at graphics and gaming performance and power does shed some light on the situation. As many of you probably expected, the Radeon HD 7660D and Radeon HD 7560D graphics cores incorporated into the A10-5800K and A8-5600K are clearly more powerful than the HD 2500 and HD 4000 offered in Intel’s current Ivy Bridge-based processors. That situation is likely to change when Haswell arrives sometime next year, but for not AMD’s lead in on-processor graphics performance has been extended with desktop Trinity and the Virgo platform as a whole. Not only is graphics performance better with AMD’s latest APUs, but they now support Eyefinity as well, for more flexible multi-monitor configurations.
Power efficiency has also been improved on these Trinity-based desktop APUs, but Intel’s architectural and manufacturing advantages give them a huge edge in power. Idle power consumption was similar across all of the platform, but under load the A10-5800K and A8-5600K used much more power than Intel’s competing offerings.
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The AMD A10-5800K and A8-5600K Trinity APUs
There’s still a lot more to talk about with regard to AMD’s A10-5800K and A8-5600K and the Virgo platform, but we’ll have to end things here for now. In the not too distant future we’ll be able to give you the whole picture and talk about CPU performance, overclocking, pricing and availability, but looking back at our comparisons you can probably figure out where AMD plans to position the A10-5800K and A8-5600K. The most relevant comparisons are against the Core i3-3220, at least according to current market conditions.
As it stands now, Trinity for desktops and the Virgo platform are step forward for AMD on the mainstream desktop front. These new APUs offer improved graphics performance and power efficiency versus previous-gen offerings, additional features, and an updated platform that should have a much longer life-span than Llano’s. For more details and the rest of the scoop, be sure to check back here soon. It won’t be more than a few days—we promise.
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