Thrashing them there CPU cores
Pushing the cores shows that the four execution units of the AMD APU can outmuscle the dual-core, four-threaded setup of the Core i3-2100.
A fact reinforced by the wPrime test.
And 7-zip, too.
The two budget CPU-and-GPU chips benchmark, as expected, near the bottom of this premium processor line-up. Intel has a lead if the application is lightly threaded, while AMD moves ahead if all cores can be used.
The real question we have to answer is whether the A8's CPU performance is good enough for a budget-orientated chip. The answer is yes for the vast majority of people; it punches through spreadsheets just fine and doesn't stall when multiple applications are open. More performance would be nice, obviously, but the CPU's numbers aren't a deal-breaker.
