AMD A10 and A8 Trinity APU: Virgo Desktop Experience

Name: AMD A10-5800 APU
Brand: AMD

by Marco Chiappetta — Thursday, September 27, 2012, 12:01 AM EDT

Futuremark 3DMark Vantage

Synthetic DirectX Gaming

3DMark Vantage

Futuremark's synthetic 3D gaming benchmark, 3DMark Vantage, is specifically bound to Windows Vista or newer based systems because it uses some advanced visual technologies that are only available with DirectX 10, which isn't available on previous versions of Windows. 3DMark Vantage isn't simply a port of 3DMark06 to DirectX 10 though. With this version of the benchmark, Futuremark has incorporated two new graphics tests, two new CPU tests, and several new feature tests. We tested the graphics capabilities of the APUs featured here with 3DMark Vantage's Extreme preset option, which uses a resolution of 1920x1200 with 4x anti-aliasing and 16x anisotropic filtering.

For the sake of reference, we have also included 3DMark scores from a couple of entry-level discrete graphics cards, to give you all an idea as to how AMD's latest APUs (and Intel's integrated graphics solutions) fare in this benchmark.

As you can see, according to 3DMark Vantage, the AMD A10-5800K and A8-5600K offer the best overall performance, clearly dominating anything Intel has to offer. If we tunnel deeper into the results, you'll see why...

The Radeon HD 7660D and HD 7560D graphics cores built into the new AMD A10-5800K and A8-5600K APUs offer significantly higher frame rates than Intel's offerings in both GPU tests, almost doubling the performance of Intel's HD 4000 series graphics engine, which is the Intel's fastest to date.

Tags: AMD, graphics, processor, A-8, Fusion, APU, A10, Trinity, FM2, VIrgo

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com