Review: AMD A10-6800K (32nm Richland)

Conclusion

AMD's Richland APUs have now been transitioned to both laptop and desktop computers, replacing last year's Trinity models. Sporting the same architecture and form factor - Richland is a drop-in upgrade for FM2 desktop boards - the new APUs provide a very mild boost in performance over their predecessors.

While AMD has largely stood still in the move from one APU generation to another, Intel has improved on-chip graphics performance for its latest Haswell processors that were released at the start of the month. But AMD understands that its APUs' competition isn't against the dearer fourth-gen parts that start at £150, but, rather, against the £100 chips from Intel.

The A10-6800K's marginal gains over the previous-generation A10-5800K are somewhat disappointing when viewed in isolation but still enable it to generally match a price-equivalent Core i3-3225 in CPU-intensive tasks yet run rings around it when using the onboard graphics for gaming. Nothing much has changed in that regard.

AMD's well-balanced architecture would ordinarily make it a solid fit for a small-form-factor system, though, as before, we do have minor reservations of the 100W TDP the 6800K ships with, which may preclude the use of tiny coolers in space-constrained chassis. What AMD really needs is a chip that's practically as fast as the A10-6800K yet suckles on far less power. That APU just so happens to be the A10-6700 and we'll be taking a closer look at it in forthcoming editorial.

Bottom line: AMD's minor under-the-hood improvements enables the A10-6800K to supercede the A10-5800K in both CPU and GPU performance, and it can therefore be recommended as a solid, competent all-round chip that's suitable for a wide range of budget systems.

The Good

The Bad

Minor improvements over Trinity
Weak single-threaded performance

HEXUS Awards

AMD A10-6800K

HEXUS Where2Buy

The AMD A10-6800K APU is available to purchase from Scan Computers*

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