Overclocking

Overclocking saw some gains, but most were from GPU overclocking rather than CPU overclocking. I managed to get 4.5 GHz and 1025 Mhz out of the AMD A10-5800K while the A8-5600K managed 4.6 GHz and 1000 MHz on the GPU. Adding the HD 6670 to the A10-5800K didn't seem to have any effect whatsoever on the APU's stability, which is a nice treat. 3DMark11 saw a near 700 point increase from overclocking with the A10-5800K; a number I found hilarious since the Intel 3770K only manages 770 points at stock. The extra 100 MHz did not allow the A8-5600K to surpass the A10-5800K chip, something that is probably due to its smaller number of shaders.

When it comes to memory overclocking, I didn't manage to get very much with the kits I have on hand here. I was able to get 2400 Mhz to boot with no issues even with 4x 4GB sticks installed, and I completed all the testing with 16 GB at 2133 MHz without any issues whatsoever, but 2400 Mhz simply failed to work properly even with just one stick installed. At the same time, bus clocking did not go very well either. I think the current BIOS for my F2A85X-UP4 could be faulty since I have seen others that have similar hardware do much better. Perhaps more could be gained with a bit more time spent, and I wasn't willing to give the APU more than 1.55 V, a voltage I'm sure a few might call excessive. AMD has hinted that you could not give the APU too much voltage, but, at the same time, suggested you take it one step at a time. I did so and quit at 1.55 V. More might be possible with more voltage.

What's more interesting is that the A8 chip could not compete with the A10 chip on CPU-focused tests even though they are basically the same, and the A8 chip took a 100 MHz higher OC. I'm a bit puzzled by this, and I will talk with both AMD and the board maker about it since I fully expect the A8 chip to get better scores on CPU-focused tests, but lag behind in 3D because it has less GPU shaders. Again, I'm just going to list the numbers here and let you judge for yourself, but will highlight that I'm pretty happy with what AMD has here.

OC Power Consumption

Overall, the power draw increase from overclocking was not that large, and, try as I might, I just could not get the system to draw over 200 watts. I got pretty close with the HD 6670 added in, but I never got over 200 watts. That, in and of itself, is pretty impressive.

AIDA64 OC Memory Performance

CineBench CPU and GPU Performance

HandBrake Encoding & WinRAR

SuperPi & wPrime

3DMark11 & PCMark07

F1 2010 & Shogun 2