AMD A8-3850 Fusion GPU Performance Analysis

[aBigRat]

sorry for my typo..
yeah FM1 is better. but still, what else do you want from budget system? 2 USB 3.0 and 2 Sata 3.0 is enough for me..



how many times do i have to tell about it :shadedshu

Actually, A75 chipset is for H67, not H61.
The upcoming A55 chipset with the price of $50~60 will do the job.
And the price of 2100 is 120, not 110.

 

[Jonap_1st]

Actually, A75 chipset is for H67, not H61.
The upcoming A55 chipset with the price of $50~60 will do the job.
And the price of 2100 is 120, not 110.

what makes it different when it comes graphic performances?
comparing xxx socket to xxx socket is confusing enough for some people since the main point to show who's the fastest is only for cpu and gpu. motherboard only work for providing support for the both..

A55 is cheap, but you have to sacrifice usb 3.0 and sata 3. sure if you compare that feature to the latest H61 who already support that 2 things. well.. the answer is clear.

for 2100 price, that's my mistake..

 

[bostonbuddy]

Looked into one of these for a htpc,
the egg has no fm1 m-itx mobos.
This better change soon, would only use one of these in a low power m-itx app

 

[Strider]

Cant wait to get my hands on these to give them a try for myself. Would make for an inexpensive "general" build for average everyday computing and gaming.

The only thing I don't like about this specific review is they consider no Cuda or PhysX support a negative. Really?

Cuda is not a "support", it's a brand name. Nvidia calls its processing cores and GPU computing Cuda, AMD calls them Stream Processors and Direct Compute. One is not better than the other, they can both do the exact same things, this is all about the software and driver support. Not the technology itself. Cuda simply gets more attention and overly hyped. Not that its a bad thing by any means, just hate it when it's represented as a negative if something does not have it. It's far from necessary in any respect.

The other point is PhysX. Of course there is no PhysX support on an AMD chipset, it's an Nvidia proprietary engine. PhysX is not the only physics engine on the planet, hardly any mainstream games use it anymore, most use their own engine or a Havoc based one. The PhysX engine can run on any GPU, the ONLY reason it will not run on an AMD/ATI GPU is purely political. Nvidia will not allow it unless they are paid for it. Hence why most game developers do not use PhysX. AMD was beating Nvidia in video card sales the last time I looked, developers are not in a hurry to alienate a vast portion of their customer base. heh

Beyond that, great review. Like I said, I want to get my hands on one of these setups and mess around with it myself. lol

 

[aBigRat]

Cant wait to get my hands on these to give them a try for myself. Would make for an inexpensive "general" build for average everyday computing and gaming.

The only thing I don't like about this specific review is they consider no Cuda or PhysX support a negative. Really?

Cuda is not a "support", it's a brand name. Nvidia calls its processing cores and GPU computing Cuda, AMD calls them Stream Processors and Direct Compute. One is not better than the other, they can both do the exact same things, this is all about the software and driver support. Not the technology itself. Cuda simply gets more attention and overly hyped. Not that its a bad thing by any means, just hate it when it's represented as a negative if something does not have it. It's far from necessary in any respect.

The other point is PhysX. Of course there is no PhysX support on an AMD chipset, it's an Nvidia proprietary engine. PhysX is not the only physics engine on the planet, hardly any mainstream games use it anymore, most use their own engine or a Havoc based one. The PhysX engine can run on any GPU, the ONLY reason it will not run on an AMD/ATI GPU is purely political. Nvidia will not allow it unless they are paid for it. Hence why most game developers do not use PhysX. AMD was beating Nvidia in video card sales the last time I looked, developers are not in a hurry to alienate a vast portion of their customer base. heh

Beyond that, great review. Like I said, I want to get my hands on one of these setups and mess around with it myself. lol

Yes, you got thing right about Nvidia CUDA support. AMD still have FireStream to compete. So why doesn't GPU-Z have AMD FireStream support checkpoint in it?
And about PhysX, I only see as an unlock key for some extra details in some games, no more. Strong GPU like GTX580 or HD 6970 is strong enough to handle these details. The thing is if your GPU is not a Nvidia GPU, the games with PhysX will pass these details to CPU forcefully.
With some games you clearly need two strong Nvidia Cards to have PhysX enabled because those cannot be played on just one card. The FPS will be heavily dropped down to nearly un-playable with very high settings for the GPU has to handle the PhysX details as well. That proves that a GPU with PhysX is just a mere GPU like another non-physX GPUs no more. And AMD wants it to be available on its GPUs? pays for the license just like SLI and no GPU modification is needed to be made.

 

[Strider]

I highly doubt AMD will pay for PhysX. Like I said, it's hardly used anywhere anymore and is not the only physics engine out there. Like I said, it's a great engine, but it's not what Nvidia wants the consumer to believe it is.

Any 4800 series, 5800 series, or 6900 series GPU from AMD/ATI can handle the same exact level of physics the PhysX engine can produce as their Nvidia counterpart cards can. It's all marketing, pure and simple. Any non-Nvidia GPU is detected, PhysX is either disabled or offloaded to the CPU. The PhysX engine has one serious limitation, it was not coded to run on the CPU, it never was. Ageia coded it to run on a separate PPU "Physics Processing Unit". These were basically just a separate GPU. When Nvidia purchased the PhysX engine from Ageia, they simply incorporated it to run on the standard GPU.

You used to be able to run modified drivers to "trick" the engine into running on an ATI GPU, something you can not do anymore. So some people who wanted PhysX ran hybrid setups. ATI primary GPU and a separate Nvidia GPU for PhysX alone. Then Nvidia blocked that as well. However, due to negative customer response, they later removed that block.

So all in all, you can see why I am not a PhysX fan, or Nvidia fan for that matter. I know everyone has their preference for their own reasons, and there are a lot of hardcore fans on both sides of the fence. However it's clear that AMD is doing something right and Nvidia is not.
They used to all but dominate the gaming world, not anymore, they are loosing more and more sales to AMD.

=/