Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 & AMD A10 5800K Review (w/ discrete)

For this review today we are pairing up the AMD A10 5800K processor with an AMD HD7970 GHZ Edition graphics card.

Is this an ideal foundation for a kick ass gaming system? There is a theory that there is no need to spend £300+ on a processor … just for gaming.

To test this theory we compare our game results against a high end Core i7 970 system and a low end Core i3 2105 system using an identical graphics card. We will use a mixture of the latest and some older games to give a complete overview of frame rate performance.

In some of the benchmarks and tests we will compare the AMD A10 5800k against a variety of desktop and mobile processors.

Our other AMD A10 5800k review today with the ASUS F2 A85-V Pro will be focusing on the ‘on chip' graphics performance of the AMD HD7660D – if this interests you, then be sure to check it out.

AMD A10 5800K System:

Processor: AMD A10 5800K
Memory: 16GB Corsair Dominator Platinum @ 2,133mhz
Cooling: Antec H20 620
Thermal Paste: Noctua NT H1
Motherboard: Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4
Power Supply: Antec TruePower 550W
Case: Cooler Master Silencio
SSD: Kingston 90GB SSD Now & Patriot Pyro SE 240GB

Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition

Supplemental Hardware:
Optical: Asus USB 2.0 BluRay Drive
Monitors: LaCie 730 (IQ testing) and Dell U2410 x3

Comparison processors:
AMD A8 3870K
AMD A8 3850
AMD Zacate E-350
Atom D525 @ 1.8ghz
Turion X64 X2 L510 @ 1.6ghz
Core i7 3610QM
Core i7 2960XM Extreme Edition (Mobile)
Core i7 2630QM
Core i7 2640M processor
Core i7 2360QM
Core i7 2600K
Core i5 2500K
Core i5 2410M
Core i3 2105 desktop processor.

Software:
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
PCMark 7
Cinebench 11.5 64 bit
FRAPS Professional
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
ATTO Disk Benchmark
CrystalDiskMark
Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra 11
Cyberlink MediaEspresso
HQV Benchmark V2.
Alien V Predator
Left4Dead2
Resident Evil 5
F1 2012
Dirt Showdown
Total War: Shogun 2
Battlefield 3

Gaming systems for comparisons:
Intel Core i7 970 System
Processor: Core i7 970
Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition
Cooling: Coolit Vantage
Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Thermal Paste: Noctua NT H1
Memory: 6GB ADATA @ 2133mhz 9-10-9-32
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot)

Intel Core-i3 2105 System
Processor: Intel Core i3-2105 3.10 GHz
Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition
Memory: 4 GB (2x 2GB) Kingston HyperX DD3 (1333 MHz)
Power Supply: Antec TruePower 550W
Motherboard: Asus P8H67-M Pro
Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro.
Thermal Paste: Noctua NT H1
Drive: Kingston SSDNow V100 128 GB

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.

Some game descriptions are edited from Wikipedia.

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