Earlier this year AMD released two Black Edition APUs with an unlocked multiplier. We now take a look at the flagship and see what it has to offer.
Product on Review: AMD A8-3870K APU
Manufacturer and Sponsor: AMD
Street Price: £95inc. VAT (GBP)
The AMD APUs so far have made a positive impression with many people, offering mainstream quad core computing with integrated discrete class GPU. By releasing a Black Edition APU with an unlocked multiplier, AMD would have made a lot of enthusiasts happy because they are no longer limited to overclocking on the baseclock, which can be a very fiddly affair. Using the multiplier to overclock users can hit higher frequencies with little effort and for the extreme overclockers will discover the limits of the APU under sub-zero cooling. For the common folk, the unlocked multiplier will not really matter so AMD have given the A8-3870K a modest 100MHz bump in frequency over the previous A8-3850 APU.
About AMD
AMD (NYSE: AMD) is a semiconductor design innovator leading the next era of vivid digital experiences with its ground-breaking AMD Fusion Accelerated Processing Units (APUs). AMD’s graphics and computing technologies power a variety of solutions including PCs, game consoles and the servers that drive the Internet and businesses.
Features & Specifications
Specifications
Model Name: A8-3870K
Radeon™ Brand: HD 6550D
CPU Clock Speed: 3.0GHz
CPU Cores on Die: 4 cores
TDP: 100W
Total L2 Cache: 4MB
Radeon™ Cores on Die: 400
GPU Clock Speed: 600 MHz
DDR3 Speed: 1866MHz
DX11 and UVD3
Instruction Set Extensions MMX(+) 3D Now!(+) SSE 1, 2, 3, 4A, x86-64, AMD-V
Transistor count 1450 Million
Die size 228mm²
Lithography 32nm
Features
– AMD Radeon™ Dual Graphics – Combines two powerful AMD Radeon™ graphics processors to dramatically boost graphics and gaming performance. Get the power of two when you add a qualifying AMD Radeon™ discrete graphics card for the most extreme visual and gaming performance.
– AMD Perfect Picture HD – Auto-boosts image quality for enhanced color, contrast and resolution. Experience images and video that you need to see to believe. AMD Perfect Picture HD automatically enhances your images to look bright, clear and vibrant.
– AMD VISION Engine – Accelerate media, productivity and Web browsing applications along with DirectX® 11 support. Enjoy faster Internet browsing on your favorite sites with sharp, crisp images. Enjoy ultra-realistic gaming and immersive visuals.
– AMD Steady Video – No more headaches from watching shaky hand-held video. AMD Steady Video stabilizes the video during playback so you can actually see the action.
– Quad-Core Processor – Easily handle productivity and entertainment all at once. More cores allow you to do more and handle complex tasks blazing fast. Enjoy quad-core performance and lightning speed even when you’re watching the latest blockbuster movies, video chatting with friends and dominating the newest game.
– AMD Turbo Core Technology – Automatically scales performance on-demand to provide extra performance when you need it most. Amazing performance when you’re pushing your system to the limits, with scaled back power consumption for everyday activities.
– AMD Cool ‘n’ Quiet™ Technology – Reduces heat and noise so you can experience amazing performance without distraction. The sound effects should be coming from the movie you’re watching, not your PC. Experience reduced heat and noise so you can enjoy the show.
– Form Factor – Efficient design that’s capable of supporting leading edge, unique desktop form factors. Get amazing HD performance in an energy-efficient, compact design.
Model Name: A8-3870K
Radeon™ Brand: HD 6550D
CPU Clock Speed: 3.0GHz
CPU Cores on Die: 4 cores
TDP: 100W
Total L2 Cache: 4MB
Radeon™ Cores on Die: 400
GPU Clock Speed: 600 MHz
DDR3 Speed: 1866MHz
DX11 and UVD3
Instruction Set Extensions MMX(+) 3D Now!(+) SSE 1, 2, 3, 4A, x86-64, AMD-V
Transistor count 1450 Million
Die size 228mm²
Lithography 32nm
Features
– AMD Radeon™ Dual Graphics – Combines two powerful AMD Radeon™ graphics processors to dramatically boost graphics and gaming performance. Get the power of two when you add a qualifying AMD Radeon™ discrete graphics card for the most extreme visual and gaming performance.
– AMD Perfect Picture HD – Auto-boosts image quality for enhanced color, contrast and resolution. Experience images and video that you need to see to believe. AMD Perfect Picture HD automatically enhances your images to look bright, clear and vibrant.
– AMD VISION Engine – Accelerate media, productivity and Web browsing applications along with DirectX® 11 support. Enjoy faster Internet browsing on your favorite sites with sharp, crisp images. Enjoy ultra-realistic gaming and immersive visuals.
– AMD Steady Video – No more headaches from watching shaky hand-held video. AMD Steady Video stabilizes the video during playback so you can actually see the action.
– Quad-Core Processor – Easily handle productivity and entertainment all at once. More cores allow you to do more and handle complex tasks blazing fast. Enjoy quad-core performance and lightning speed even when you’re watching the latest blockbuster movies, video chatting with friends and dominating the newest game.
– AMD Turbo Core Technology – Automatically scales performance on-demand to provide extra performance when you need it most. Amazing performance when you’re pushing your system to the limits, with scaled back power consumption for everyday activities.
– AMD Cool ‘n’ Quiet™ Technology – Reduces heat and noise so you can experience amazing performance without distraction. The sound effects should be coming from the movie you’re watching, not your PC. Experience reduced heat and noise so you can enjoy the show.
– Form Factor – Efficient design that’s capable of supporting leading edge, unique desktop form factors. Get amazing HD performance in an energy-efficient, compact design.
Die shot of the Llano architecture
As with the A8-3850, the A8-3870K does not feature Turbo core, though the architecture supports the implementation of it as seen with various lower end APUs. AMD have managed to slightly improve IPC of the K12 CPU cores over the K10.5 as seen in the Phenom II CPUs even though Llano does not contain any L3 cache. The integrated memory controller can natively support DDR3 1866MHz which is intended to feed the bandwidth hungry Radeon cores in the HD 6550D iGPU.
The AMD A series family
As we can see, the A8-3870K is virtually identical to the the A8-3850 with exception of an increased frequency to 3.0GHz up from 2.9GHz within the same TDP, because of this we can assume that base performance will be similar to the A8-3850. Though the real selling point of the Black Edition is the unlocked multiplier.
Closer Look
Packaging livery sends a clear message that it contains a black edition APU
The box art is in keeping with the AMD A-Series APUs albeit replacing the white colour for Black, of course giving a clear visual representation that the contents are that of an unlocked Black Edition APU.
The common heatspreader used by AMD
The appearance is like that of any AMD desktop CPU we have seen for the past 10+ years, the only real difference would be the name etched onto the heatspreader.
FM1 pin layout
This is AMDs latest pin layout for socket FM1 which is expected to be succeeded by FM2 this year.
Test Setup
A75 Setup
Motherboard – GIGABYTE GA-A75M-UD2H
RAM – Team Xtreem PC3 12800 DDR3 1600 7-7-7-21
HDD – Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB 7200RPM SATAIII
Power Supply – Corsair CX430
Cooler – CoolerMaster Hyper 212+
Motherboard – GIGABYTE GA-A75M-UD2H
RAM – Team Xtreem PC3 12800 DDR3 1600 7-7-7-21
HDD – Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB 7200RPM SATAIII
Power Supply – Corsair CX430
Cooler – CoolerMaster Hyper 212+
APU Configurations
AMD A8-3870K @ 3.0GHz (100MHz x 29, 1333MHz 9-9-9-24) @ OC 3.68GHz (115MHz x 32, 1840MHz 8-8-8-24)
HD 6550D integrated graphics (OC @ 920MHz), AMD Radeon HD 6570 discrete graphics card
AMD A8-3850 @ 2.9GHz (100MHz x 29, 1333MHz 9-9-9-24)
HD 6550D integrated graphics, AMD Radeon HD 6570 discrete graphics card
AMD A6-3650 @ 2.6GHz (100MHz x 26, 1333MHz 9-9-9-24)
HD 6530D integrated graphics, AMD Radeon HD 6570 discrete graphics card
Overclocking
The average Llano overclock on air appears to be around 3.7GHz and appears to ring true with this sample. Booting in using a x37 multipler @ 1.5V held ok but was not 100% stable. After playing around with various base clock and multiplier settings, the CPU proved stable at 3.68GHz a good 22.5% increase.The Radeon HD 6550D is already a force to be reckoned with in the iGPU world, with 400 Radeon cores and a base clock of 600MHz, as of writing there is no better integrated solution on the market. After spending a little time looking for a max clock, I was surprised when I eventually reached a cracking 960MHz, though unstable. Hitting reverse gear a bit I found a stable max speed of 920MHz, a heftin’ 53% increase.
Trying to find the right mix of settings was a combination of fun and infuriating but I managed to get there in the end.
Using a base clock of 115MHz and a CPU multiplier of x32 and a manually set GPU speed of 815, I managed to hit the settings I was aiming for. I found that setting the voltage too high caused just as many instabilities as not using enough volts and found a happy medium at around 1.52V with a slight increase on the NB by 50mV. These are the settings used for the OC results in testing.
Power Consumption
It’s interesting to note the power consumption across all motherboards because energy results can fluctuate between manufacturers due to the features and specifications that are integrated. First of all, for the idle tests the system is cold booted into Windows and no additional applications are executed – the watts are noted on the external energy monitor we use. Then the system is loaded with LinX 0.6.4 and MSI Kombustor simultainiously – watts are again monitored throughout the period of testing and the highest and lowest rated watts are then noted down. Below are the results of this energy test.
The A8-3870K falls in line with previous results though the overclocked setting does draw fair bit more power than using the APU with a discrete card/Dual Graphics mode but doesn’t seem to be anything too worrying.
Synthetic Benchmarks: AIDA64
Memory Tests
Memory bandwidth benchmarks (Memory Read, Memory Write, Memory Copy) measure the maximum achiveable memory data transfer bandwidth. The code behind these benchmark methods are written in Assembly and they are extremely optimized for every popular AMD and Intel processor core variants by utilizing the appropriate x86, MMX, 3DNow!, SSE, SSE2 or SSE4.1 instruction set extension.
The Memory Latency benchmark measures the typical delay when the CPU reads data from system memory. Memory latency time means the penalty measured from the issuing of the read command until the data arrives to the integer registers of the CPU.
The Memory Latency benchmark measures the typical delay when the CPU reads data from system memory. Memory latency time means the penalty measured from the issuing of the read command until the data arrives to the integer registers of the CPU.
CPU Queen Benchmark
This simple integer benchmark focuses on the branch prediction capabilities and the misprediction penalties of the CPU. It finds the solutions for the classic “Queens problem” on a 10 by 10 sized chessboard. At the same clock speed theoretically the processor with the shorter pipeline and smaller misprediction penalties will attain higher benchmark scores. For example — with HyperThreading disabled — the Intel Northwood core processors get higher scores than the Intel Prescott core based ones due to the 20-step vs 31-step long pipeline. CPU Queen test uses integer MMX, SSE2 and SSSE3 optimizations.
CPU Photoworxx Benchmark
This benchmark stresses the integer arithmetic and multiplication execution units of the CPU and also the memory subsystem. Due to the fact that this test performs high memory read/write traffic, it cannot effectively scale in situations where more than 2 processing threads used. For example, on a 8-way Pentium III Xeon system the 8 processing threads will be “fighting” over the memory, creating a serious bottleneck that would lead to as low scores as a 2-way or 4-way similar processor based system could achieve. CPU PhotoWorxx test uses only the basic x86 instructions, and it is HyperThreading, multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core (CMP) aware.
FPU Mandel Benchmark
This benchmark measures the double precision (also known as 64-bit) floating-point performance through the computation of several frames of the popular “Mandelbrot” fractal. The code behind this benchmark method is written in Assembly, and it is extremely optimized for every popular AMD, Intel and VIA processor core variants by utilizing the appropriate x87, SSE2, AVX or FMA4 instruction set extension. FPU Mandel test is HyperThreading, multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core (CMP) aware.
Synthetic Benchmarks: x264 HD
Simply put, this test measures how fast your machine can encode a short, DVD quality MPEG-2 video clip into a high-quality x264 video clip. What’s x264, you ask? It’s more or less the next-generation Xvid/DivX codec. I think it’s ideal for a benchmark because the application (x264.exe) reports fairly accurate compression results (in frames per second) for each pass of the video encoding process, and it uses multi-core processors very efficiently.
Synthetic Benchmarks: Cinebench 11.5
CPU RenderingCINEBENCH can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. This test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects which in turn contain more than 300,000 polygons in total, and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights, shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. The result is displayed in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor.
Open GL Graphics Rendering
This procedure uses a complex 3D scene depicting a car chase (by renderbaron) which measures the performance of your graphics card in OpenGL mode. The performance depends on various factors, such as the GPU processor on your hardware, but also on the drivers used. The graphics card has to display a huge amount of geometry (nearly 1 million polygons) and textures, as well as a variety of effects, such as environments, bump maps, transparency, lighting and more to evaluate the performance across different disciplines and give a good average overview of the capabilities of your graphics hardware.
Synthetic Benchmarks: SiSoftware SANDRA 2012
SANDRA isn’t always a benchmark that is included in hardware reviews but I believe it shouldn’t be ignored. SANDRA provides a vigorous package that tests your system in a rather large array of benchmarks. There are many aspects of benchmark that can be executed. We will be considering – CPU, memory and GPGPU tests.
Synthetic Benchmarks: SiSoftware SANDRA 2012 cont…
It is interesting to note how well the overclocked HD 6550D performs in the GPGPU processing test, besting the HD 6570 by 20%, yet the GPGPU bandwidth result suggests that the HD 6550D is starved of memory bandwidth which may be inhibiting the overall performance of the iGPU.
Synthetic Benchmarks: 3DMark Vantage & 3DMark 11
3DMark Vantage
3DMark Vantage is the industry standard performance benchmark for DirectX 10 gaming PCs. It includes two graphics tests, two CPU tests and six feature tests. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark Vantage is the best way to consistently and reliably test DirectX 10 under game-like loads.
3DMark 11
Designed to measure your PC’s gaming performance 3DMark 11 makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to consistently and reliably test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.
Synthetic Benchmarks: PCMark 7 & UNIGINE Heaven 2.5
UNIGINE Heaven 2.5
Unigine’s benchmark is to showcase the benefits of DX 11 and the use of tessellation as opposed to normal rendering techniques. The demo has impressive visuals that give an insight into what we can expect from gaming in the future.
PCMark 7
PCMark 7 is a tool provided by FutureMark that tests the PCs ability in general office and everyday use. It produces a number that reflects the all-round performance of the PC and is useful to compare between differing setups. For more information, visit the FutureMark website.
Game Benchmarks: AVP, Deus Ex:HR, Shogun 2
Alien Vs. Predator
Spawned from the popular Alien and Predator franchises, Rebellion have collaborated to bring the legendary war to us through the medium of a first-person shooter. The game forces you to hunt, prey and most importantly survive in the swamp colony of Freya’s prospect as a Predator, Alien or Marine. The stunning visuals add to the sense of dread and terror that we have become so accustomed to seeing with the series.
The stand-alone Alien VS Predator benchmark tool was used for testing here. All the settings were set to very high and Tessellation was applied. The average FPS was recorded at the end.
The stand-alone Alien VS Predator benchmark tool was used for testing here. All the settings were set to very high and Tessellation was applied. The average FPS was recorded at the end.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
You play Adam Jensen, an ex-SWAT specialist who’s been handpicked to oversee the defensive needs of one of America’s most experimental biotechnology firms. Your job is to safeguard company secrets, but when a black ops team breaks in and kills the very scientists you were hired to protect, everything you thought you knew about your job changes.
Shogun 2
In the darkest age of Japan, endless war leaves a country divided. It is the middle of the 16th Century in Feudal Japan. The country, once ruled by a unified government, is now split into many warring clans. Ten legendary warlords strive for supremacy as conspiracies and conflicts wither the empire. Only one will rise above all to win the heart of a nation as the new shogun…The others will die by his sword.
Conclusion
As expected, the AMD A8-3870K performed a touch above the A8-3850 while trading blows in more GPU limited applications. Base performance arguably sits at the top of AMD’s ‘mainstream’ performance bar. As many may be waiting to see what Llano’s successor ‘Trinity’ will bring to the table, there is still a lot of life in using an APU such as this in a system and the magic really kicks in with the overclocking. I can’t help but question, ‘How much more performance can be squeezed out of the HD 6550D when paired with some high performance memory?
In the graph above we see 12-16% performance increase merely by shifting memory speeds from 1333MHz-1866MHz. While the iGPU may be nearing it’s max performance @ 1866, with a huge 53% overclock, it is likely going to require 2133-2600MHz memory to fully realise the potential of the HD 6550D (little reminder that this APU currently holds world record memory speed). While the increased CPU performance may contribute to the extra performance, that is minimised in our tests by running the games at 1920×1080 resolution to create a more GPU limited environment. Regardless, for a chip that can currently be found from as little as £85 and potentially matches the performance of a £50 discrete graphics card, it is nothing short of impressive and would serve well in budget gaming systems or lan rigs.
At time of writing, you could get a complete A8-3870K setup including 2x4GB 1866MHz memory for just under £330inc VAT without OS, that is fantastic value. Even though the CPU performance may not be on par with Intel’s latest offering, with a decent bump to 3.6GHz, it is likely going to perform competitively with price comparable CPUs from the blue team while giving you far better graphics performance for your money. While the integrated graphics level may not yet be able to give you max eye candy at playable frame rates, back those settings down a little and even at 1920×1080 resolution this APU will hold its ground when given an overclock. The biggest downfall is however, tied to its own success. That is, the APUs offer excellent value stand alone but the second you spend £100+ on a graphics upgrade, you lose out on the iGPU performance and may end up with an inferior system than if you originally went with a CPU+GPU combo from the competition.
Modern computing demands are ever pushing a graphics rich, entertainment driven experience. Some performance numbers when concerning the ‘mainstream’ are, realistically, irrelevent. The APU delivers on all fronts and sets the standard for allround mainstream performance, for that amongst many other reasons, the A8-3870K has been awarded the coveted Gold Award and our Amazing Value award.
Pros.
+ Unlocked multipler
+ Discrete class integrated graphics
+ Overclocking potential on CPU + GPU
+ Affordable
Cons.
– Limited upgrade options
+ Unlocked multipler
+ Discrete class integrated graphics
+ Overclocking potential on CPU + GPU
+ Affordable
Cons.
– Limited upgrade options
Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net. Thanks to AMD for providing today’s review sample.
