Going from DDR3-1600 to DDR3-2133, 3DMark shows an 11.7% performance increase in Ice Storm, 8.3% performance increase in Cloud Gate, and 10.1% performance increase in Fire Strike, none of which are small gains. Then we clocked it up to its spec of 2133MHz, roughly 33% faster. These are settings appropriate to the APU.įirst, we ran our 8GB of Dominator GT DDR3 at 1600MHz, the traditional standard for most mainstream builds. Finally, testing was done at 1366x768 using the Medium/Normal presets in each game, and again at 1600x900. We also tested in 3DMark and did a couple of rough and tumble FRAPS runs in the Battlefield 4 Beta. To get a good performance spread, we tested StarCraft II (which is predominately CPU limited), Tomb Raider (which is predominately GPU limited), and BioShock Infinite (which tends to fall in between). The Richland APUs are essentially just Trinity APUs with finer grained power optimization. Recognizing that this chip is technically last generation, it bears mentioning that the current A10-6800K is really just a very minor tweak on the 5800K, featuring an identical memory controller and identical graphics cores. We did some testing without overclocking the CPU or GPU parts of the AMD A10-5800K. If you’re willing to spend up or even just tweak your existing memory, there’s definitely room to extract a healthy performance boost. In fact, the graphics cores on these chips are more often memory bandwidth limited than anything else. Because while Intel’s IGPs (outside of Haswell’s monster Iris graphics hardware) since Sandy Bridge have been mostly in lockstep with the memory bandwidth available at the mainstream, Trinity and Richland have remarkably powerful graphics hardware built into them, and that hardware thrives on faster memory. But either overclocking the memory or even opting for higher speed memory than we’re traditionally used to can start to pay dividends, and that’s especially true when you’re talking about AMD’s Trinity and Richland APUs. When overclocking, most people typically start with the CPU, and then if they’re feeling a little more adventurous, they might work on the GPU. Yet as technology continues to advance and DDR3 continues to mature, increasing memory speed and bandwidth becomes relevant again. The baseline or sweet spot for system performance doesn’t seem to have moved much over the lifespan of DDR3 with Nehalem, diminishing returns were had after 1333MHz, while Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, and virtually AMD’s entire lineup hit their stride at 1600MHz.
For a while now, high speed memory has been a bit of a luxury.
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