AMD A10-6800K review

The AMD-6800K is one of the first processor in AMD’s 2013 APU range to be released. Nicknamed Richland, the new APUs improve upon the outgoing Trinity processors, although not in a radical fashion. The new processors still use Socket FM2, for instance, and are compatible with existing motherboards and the A55, a75 and A85X chipsets. This means you can buy and install an A10-6800K today.

One difference is that the A10-6800K has a built-in Radeon HD 8670D graphics processor rather than the AMD A10-5800K’s Radeon HD 7660D graphics processor, but the difference in performance isn’t phenomenal. The A10-5800K delivered an average frame rate of 45.5fps in Dirt Showdown at a resolution of 1,280×720 with 4x anti-aliasing and graphics quality set to High, while the A10-6800K delivered an average frame rate of 48.9fps under the same conditions. Raising the clock speed of our memory to 1866MHz increased the A10-6800K’s performance a little further, with our system delivering 50.3fps under the same test conditions. Although not a huge increase on the graphics performance of the A10-5800K, we’re not too concerned, as the high-end A-series chips have always delivered fantastic graphics performance. Indeed the top-of-the-range Intel Core i7-4770K only scored 32.4fps in the same task.

The A10-6800K is the successor to the A10-5800K, and it has the same TDP of 100W, same amount of level 2 cache memory and is a 32nm process. However, the A10-6800K runs at a higher clock speed of 4.1GHz and has a higher boost speed of 4.4GHz. It performed better than the A10-5800K in our benchmark tests, scoring a very impressive 83 in the image editing segment, 69 in video editing, 68 in the multitasking segment and 71 overall. This compares well with the A10-5800K, which scored 67 in the image-editing segment, 61 in video, 66 in the multitasking segment and 65 overall.

We can see that the biggest increases were seen in the image- and video-editing segments, with the A10-6800K having nearly the same multitasking score. Overall, the A10-6800K is around 9.2 per cent faster than the A10-5800K in our benchmark tests. This is a healthy and welcome increase, but it isn’t astounding considering the rise in clock speed and the fifteen per cent rise in price.

When overclocked to 4.4GHz, the A10-6800K scored 88 in image-editing, 72 in video editing and 71 in the multitasking segment, giving it a score of 74 overall. That’s a performance increase of 15 per cent over the A10-5800K at default clock settings and an increase of around four per cent over the A10-6800K at its default clock settings.

Its closest rival processor is the Intel Core i3-3220, as we’ve still to see 4th-generation Haswell Core i3 processors. The Core i3-3220 is cheaper, but it’s also a dual-core CPU that can’t be overclocked. The A10-6800K consistently beat the Core i3-3220 in all segments of our benchmark suite, with the Core i3-3220 scoring 60 overall. It also trounced the Core i3-3220 in our Dirt Showdown laptop test, scoring a very smooth 48.9fps. The Core i3-3220 failed the same test. The Core i3-3220 is a good processor if you need a low TDP Intel-based system, but we think the A10-6800K is a better general-purpose processor, especially if you tend to play more games or watch videos.

Combined with a good SSD, the AMD A10-6800K is ideal for a budget PC build. It provides excellent on-chip graphics processing, good performance and decent overclocking potential at a great price. It doesn’t provide a massive increase in performance over the A10-5800K, but it’s enough for the A10-6800K to earn a Best Buy award.