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Review: Overclocking AMD's A8-3850 APU: a close look

by Tarinder Sandhu on 6 July 2011, 08:57

Tags: AsRock, AMD (NYSE:AMD)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qa6kr

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Memory bandwidth and light-load tests

We've got the three A8-3850 combinations highlighted in different colours. The default performance is the one shown by the dark-green line, the one representing a near-stock CPU speed and elevated bus/GPU/memory in light-green and the full-on OC in red.

Note that overclocking the master-bus speed also enables us to increase RAM frequency from 1,600MHz to 1,772MHz here. The net result is that bandwidth improves by up-to 10 per cent.

The HEXUS PiFast test is a single-threaded benchmark that loves high frequencies and clock-cycle throughput. Marginally increasing the frequency to 2,933MHz does little for additional performance, as does the bump in master-bus speed. However, ramping up to 3.6GHz knocks off around 20 per cent of the time taken for this test.

Bear in mind that a basic Intel Core i3-2100, which costs sub-Ā£100, chomps through this benchmark in 26s - and no A8-3850 chip is going to manage that.

Extra frequency clearly helps in the MP3-encoding test, and it's enough to push the overclocked A8-3850 into mid-pack respectability.