Product Listing

AMD A10-5700 Trinity Desktop APU - Going Back for Seconds

By Wong Chung Wee - 28 Nov 2012
Launch SRP: S$136

Power Consumption and Overclocking

Power Consumption

On this test, we're back to utilizing a discrete graphics card to control all possible variables. Although the A10-5700 is rated at 65W TDP, its idle power draw registered higher at 83W than that of the A10-5800K. Do note that the A10-5700 was tested on a different board from the A10-5800K due to a technical glitch. At load testing, we saw less influence of the motherboard and actually noticed slightly better power consumption figures that are better in-line with our expectations.

 

 

Overclocking

As creatures of habit, we eschew the AMD OverDrive software utility and used the UEFI BIOS utility of our MSI FM2-A85XA-G65 motherboard to overclock the A10-5700. We could only approach this exercise by tweaking the board's CPU Base Frequency from its default value of 100MHz to higher levels. This is due to locked CPU multiplier of the A10-5700 APU. We also had to turn off the AMD Turbo Core 3.0 feature of the APU (for MSI's UEFI utility, it corresponds to the AMD Turbo Core Technology setting) as well as the C6 Mode function.

We managed to obtain a stable overclocked state of the APU by keeping its CPU Ratio to 34, while pushing its Base Frequency to 112MHz. Hence, in this case, its overclocked frequency was approximately 3.8GHz. At this clock rate, that should rival the AMD A10-5800K model (without Turbo Core activated).

For Cinebench 11.5, our overclocking efforts translated to a paltry gain of about 7%. For its CPU Score of the 3DMark Vantage benchmark, the gain was less, with an approximate 2.7% improvement.  For the Far Cry 2 scores, the overclocked A10-5700 APU did surprise us with a 14% gain in average frame rates. Hence, although the APU features a locked CPU multiplier, we do see some performance gains when it is paired with a board that is able to operate stably at higher CPU base frequency settings.

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8.0
  • Performance 7.5
  • Features 8
  • Value 8.5
The Good
Ideal top-tier Trinity APU for non-overclockers
Great for HTPC and compact desktops
Multi-monitor gaming capable
Low power consumption
Affordable
The Bad
Needs new Socket FM2 motherboards
Poor compute performance in some tests
Doesn't perform better than Llano all the time
Limited overclocking capabilities
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