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

1. Introduction & AMD A10 5800K2. The Gigabyte F2A85X-UP43. Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 (Super High Res Gallery)4. BIOS and Overclocking5. Testing Methodology6. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra7. Synthetic: PCMark 78. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.5 64bit9. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark10. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage11. Synthetic: 3DMark 1112. Image Quality: HQV Benchmark 2.013. Synthetic: Drive Performance14. Synthetic: Memory Performance15. Real World: BluRay Performance with PowerDVD16. Real World: MKV 1080p Performance17. Real World: Flash HD Performance18. Real World: Video Encoding19. Gaming: Alien V Predator20. Gaming: Left4Dead221. Gaming: Resident Evil 522. Gaming: F1 201223. Gaming: Total War: Shogun 224. Gaming: Battlefield 3 (5760x1080)25. Technical: Power Consumption26. Closing Thoughts27. View All Pages

Regular readers of Kitguru may remember our review of the AMD E-350 in March 2011. I really enjoyed AMD's Fusion technology but it was never marketed properly and subsequently wasn't quite the success it should have been.

AMD's A8 series chips made the headlines shortly afterwards and I particularly liked the unlocked A8-3870K when I reviewed it back in February this year.

Fast forward to October…. in another review today we are featuring the latest A10 5800k with onboard graphics when paired up with the ASUS F2 A85-V Pro. This particular review you are reading now however concentrates on performance when united with an AMD discrete solution and the Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 motherboard. Is the A10 5800k suitable as the foundation for a high powered gaming system?

AMD detailed the new Trinity APU around four months ago. The A10 5800K is a 32nm CoC with four Piledriver cores and a Cayman GPU.

This is no Bulldozer style core however, the focus is on getting power consumption under control and AMD have placed focus on the VLIW4 architecture to improve graphics efficiency. AMD don't want these new chips to be excessively priced either – the AMD A10 5800K should ship in the UK at a price around £94.99 inc vat.

The differences between Trinity and Llano are also significant.

AMD have created a new architecture with a higher transistor density to improve overall performance. The onboard 32nm HD7660D graphics runs at 427mhz core and 1066mhz memory. The 512MB of GDDR3 is connected via a 128bit memory interface.

The HD7660D has 8 ROPS and 384 Unified shaders.

An AMD diagram overview of the current APU range. The A10-5800K slots in right at the top of the chart, with 4MB of cache, a base clock speed of 3.8ghz and a turbo speed up to 4.2ghz. The maximum DDR3 supported is said to be 1,866mhz but as we will find out later, with the right motherboard this is ready to be broken. The ‘K' moniker, as always, is an indication that this chip is unlocked, ideal for the overclockers out there.

The Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 motherboard ships in a white box with the name of the product on the front, along with some specifications. The A85X chipset is based on the FM2 socket and has Crossfire support, and 8x SATA 6 GB/s ports. It is worth pointing out that the Crossfire support is x16 bandwidth in single mode or x8 bandwidth if two cards are used. The A85x is designed to support 4 USB 3.0 ports and 10 USB 2.0 ports.

The bundle includes several SATA connectors, a software disc, user manual, quick start guide and I/O backplate.

This is Gigabyte's flagship FM2 motherboard. It is based around the latest Ultra durable 5 motherboard construction, which includes 2 oz copper PCB layers, humidity proof glass fabric layers, solid state capacitors, new high current ferrite core chokes and PowIRstage IE3550 driver MOFSETs. The FM2 socket is powered by an 8 phase VRM.

The board is ATX form factor, measuring 30.5cm x 24.4cm.

We love the board colour scheme, the dark greys and blacks give an ominous appearance which looks fantastic. There are several heatsinks across the PCB to help with VRM cooling.

The four memory slots support up to 64GB of DDR3 with speeds of 1066/1333/1600/1866mhz.

Gigabyte have included a handy power button on the board, as well as a CMOS_SW button. This is positioned ideally for easy access, and not underneath a discrete graphics card.

There are six SATA ports on the port, all coloured black, and all SATA 6Gbps capable. Next to the SATA ports are the dual bios chips, in case of emergency. Next to the Dual Bios chips is a diagnostic readout for troubleshooting.

The Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 has three PCI Express x16 slots. The top slot runs at x16, the middle slot x8 and the bottom slot x4. While Crossfire is supported, the top slot with downgrade to x8. There are also 3 PCI Express x1 slots and a single PCI slot.

The CPU power connector is close by the small heatsinks between the CPU socket and the I/O panel.

The back panel connectors are:

• 1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse port
• 1 x D-Sub port
• 1 x DVI-D port
• 1 x optical S/PDIF Out connector
• 1 x HDMI port
• 1 x DisplayPort
• 4 x USB 3.0/2.0 ports
• 2 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
• 1 x eSATA 6Gb/s connector
• 1 x RJ-45 port
• 6 x audio jacks (Center/Subwoofer Speaker Out/Rear Speaker Out/Side Speaker Out/Line In/Line Out/Microphone)

The Internal I/O connectors are:

• 1 x 24-pin ATX main power connector
• 1 x 8-pin ATX 12V power connector
• 7 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors
• 1 x APU fan header
• 4 x system fan headers
• 1 x front panel header
• 1 x front panel audio header
• 1 x S/PDIF Out header
• 1 x USB 3.0/2.0 header
• 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 headers
• 1 x serial port header
• 1 x Clear CMOS jumper
• 1 x Trusted Platform Module (TPM) header
• 1 x power button
• 1 x reset button
• 1 x Clear CMOS button

On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source.

We received a new bios just before testing which is a pleasant change, as we normally receive one after most of the testing is done!

The Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 presents the user with a graphical interface, which can be disabled in favour of the more advanced options. For a beginner however, the ‘3D BIOS' may be enough for modest changes. For the remainder of this page however we have it disabled.

An overview of the system, before we attempt to try any overclocking. First we want a look at the rest of the interface.

The board running the latest F3C bios. Updating the bios is straightforward and can be accessed directly in the bios, without the need for a complex procedure.

The Bios Features panel is used to disable and enable startup settings, as well as for changing the peripheral boot position.

The power management menu is self explanatory.

The ‘Save & Exit' menu allows the end user to adjust the boot priority and to save and load profile settings.

A bios overview of the A10 5800K processor. We can see the the clock speed is set to 3.8ghz, with a boost up to 4.2ghz.

Gigabyte bioses are comprehensive, but we dislike how they split various advanced sections into multiple panels. ASUS place all the overclocking options into a single main panel. Overclocking the A10 5800k on the Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 requires navigating three or four different panels. The sooner they unify all these into a single page, the better.

In this review we are using Corsair Dominator Platinum 2,666mhz, however the motherboard was only able to detect a profile of 2,133mhz as shown above. You can read the standalone review of this memory running on a Z77 motherboard, over here.

The auto voltage on this board is set to 1.475. We spoke with AMD's Sami Makinen to discuss ‘safe' voltages and he said that any higher than 1.475v was ‘risky'. In order to ensure we could complete the review today (and not kill the processor) we didn't push past his recommendations for any length of time.

We are using the entry level Antec 620 liquid cooler today, which is quiet and very capable. Temperatures were listed as 37c idle.

Pushing to 4.6ghz was easy enough so we tried 4.8ghz at 1.475 volts. Stability at 4.8ghz or 4.7ghz wasn't 100% prime stable at this speed, but we found if we increased the core voltage to 1.52 volts that it was. We didn't want to potentially damage the processor however long term under Sami's recommendation, and backed down to 4.6ghz at 1.475v. Still a decent overclock.

CPU validation is available at this speed, over here.

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.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

Overall performance is quite good, out classing the i3 2105 in the Cryptographic test. Memory bandwidth performance is weak however, only achieving 11.8 GB/s with the Corsair Dominator Platinum configured at 2,133mhz.

PCMark 7 includes 7 PC tests for Windows 7, combining more than 25 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. Specifically designed to cover the full range of PC hardware from netbooks and tablets to notebooks and desktops, PCMark 7 offers complete PC performance testing for Windows 7 for home and business use.

A good all round score, supported by the Solid State drive and powerful discrete graphics solution.

CINEBENCH R11.5 64 Bit is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.

These results are a little disappointing, The A10 5800k is outperformed by the A8 3850 and the A8 3870, although it manages to slightly outclass the i3 2105.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We use the following settings: 1920×1080 resolution. Anti Aliasing off. Anisotrophy 4, Tessellation normal. Shaders High. Stereo 3D disabled. API: Direct X 11.

Overall perf0rmance seems reasonably good, scoring almost 80 frames per second. By comparison the same graphics card in our ‘reference' Core i7 970 gaming system averages around 90 frames per second. Obviously the Core i7 970 system is much more expensive, but nonetheless there is a penalty of around 10 frames per second at the same settings when running with the AMD A10 5800k.

A Core i3 2105 system with comparable hardware and the same HD7970 GHZ graphics card averages around 78 frames per second at these settings.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

The system scores 18,774 points. the A10 5800K processor holds back the overall performance somewhat, scoring 10,610 points. The HD7970 GHZ scores 25,251 points which is around 9,000 points less than in our long term Core i7 970 system (34,210 points).

The overall scores from the AMD A10 5800k system are comparable against a similarly priced system using a Core i3 2105 processor.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

A score of under 7,000 points is impressive. The same graphics card in our long term Core i7 970 system scores around 2,000 points more, totaling 8,868 points. Our Core i3 2105 system with the same HD7970 GHZ graphics card scores 6,730 points.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here

	AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition
Dial	4
Dial with static pattern	5
Gray Bars	5
Violin	5
Stadium 2:2	5
Stadium 3:2	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	5
Vertical Text Scroll	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	0
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5
Random Noise: Flower	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5
Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Luminance Frequency Bands	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5
Vanishing Text	5
Resolution Enhancement	15
Theme Park	5
Driftwood	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Skin Tones	7
Total	196

A score of 196 points is class leading right now, the ideal solution for high definition media playback on a big screen.

A very important aspect of overall system performance is down to drive performance. We use two of our favourite benchmark programs today. CrystalDiskMark and ATTO Disk Benchmark.

Performance from the system is very good, averaging around 430-450 MB/s from the Pyro SE 240GB drive when the compressible data setting is enabled. Not the best result we have seen with this drive, but still impressive.

Excellent results with the ATTO Disk Benchmark, averaging up to 550 MB/s read and 505 MB/s write.

MaxxMem2 PreView is a useful, free program to rate memory performance. It can be downloaded over here.

Using the same memory (at 10-10-10 timings) in two similarly priced systems shows that the AMD A10 5800K system seems to be bandwidth limited, similar (disappointing) results to those we recorded in the Sandra memory test earlier in the review.

Cyberlink PowerDVD 11 is one of the finest solutions for the BluRay experience on Windows and we found this software to work perfectly with this chipset. We tested with the new extended Bluray Disc of Lord Of The Rings.

No real problem for the system, leaving plenty of CPU cycles for other duties.

The Matroska Media container is a very popular, open standard Multimedia container which is usually found as .MKV files. It is a very popular format in enthusiast circles and can be played directly in Windows Media Player with suitable codecs installed. We use the Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP).

We ripped our BluRay disc of Sniper Reloaded to 1080P MKV and use Windows Media Player to playback the file.

The system averaged around 30 percent CPU time which is quite a good result. MKV contained files can be very demanding of the partnering hardware.

Many people using this system will be enjoying Flash related content so we feel it is important to test with some of the more demanding material available freely online. Full hardware acceleration is enabled.

No concerns playing back 1080p HD content, averaging 16 percent CPU time.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favourite movies, songs and photos not just on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

New and Improved Features

• Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.
• Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.
• Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.
• Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.
• Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.
• Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.

For our testing today we are converting a 3.3GB 720p MKV file (2h:12mins) to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power.

We are using the newest version which has been optimised for AMD's A85X platform. Hardware acceleration is enabled.

A final time of 16 minutes and 52 seconds is respectable, thanks to the GPU hardware acceleration supporting the main processor. The AMD A10 5800K is around a minute faster than the Core i3 2105.

Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the cards we used a 1080p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on. We use this with most of our graphics card testing so cards are comparable throughout reviews.

An impressive showing from the AMD A10 5800K system, averaging 104 frames per second at these settings, only a couple of frames behind the Intel Core i7 system. The Intel Core i3 2105 system is a further 2 frames per second slower.

This particular engine is specifically dependent on the graphics card.

Like the original, Left 4 Dead 2 is set during the aftermath of an apocalyptic pandemic, and focuses on four survivors fighting against hordes of the infected, who develop severe psychosis and exhibit zombie-like tendencies. The survivors must fight their way through levels, interspersed with safe houses that act as checkpoints, with the goal of reaching a rescue vehicle at the campaign's finale. The gameplay is procedurally altered by an artificial intelligence engine dubbed the “Director” that monitors the players' performance and adjusts the scenario to provide a dynamic challenge. Several new features have been introduced: new types of infected, melee weapons, and a story-arc that connects the game's five campaigns together.

No problems maintaining smooth frames in this older SOURCE powered game – still a popular engine for many gamers today. The AMD A10 5800K system doesn't suffer too badly when compared against the Intel i7 970 system, and outperforms the Core i3 2105 platform by a noticeable margin.

Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa.

Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best selling Resident Evil game ever made.

These are interesting results, as this particular game also focuses on the processor, as well as the graphics card. We can see that the Core i7 970 system pulls out way in front, allowing the HD7970 GHZ Edition to fully utilise all the bandwidth. The Core i3 2105 and AMD A10 5800K systems on the other hand are limited by comparison. Still, its perfectly playable with 60 fps+ at all times.

F1 2012 is a video game developed by Codemasters. It is based on the 2012 Formula One season, and is the sequel to F1 2010 and F1 2011. It is the fourth Formula One game developed by the Codemasters studios after the company renewed its licence to develop the official games of the series.

The game features all twelve teams and twenty-four drivers competing in the 2012 season, as well as the twenty circuits — including the brand new Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas — included in the championship.

This game runs smooth on all of the systems, although the Core i7 970 system is way out in front. Still, good results for the AMD A10 5800K, outperforming the Core i3 2105 system.

Shogun 2 is set in 16th-century feudal Japan, in the aftermath of the Ōnin War. The country is fractured into rival clans led by local warlords, each fighting for control. The player takes on the role of one of these warlords, with the goal of dominating other factions and claiming his rule over Japan. The standard edition of the game will feature a total of eight factions (plus a ninth faction for the tutorial), each with a unique starting position and different political and military strengths.

At 1080p when GPU bound, all systems deliver great frame rates, with the AMD A10 5800K system only 7 fps behind the Core i7 970 system.

At 720p however (when the processor plays a more important role), we can see the Core i7 970 system pulls way out in front, averaging 175 frames per second, compared to 104 fps from the A10 5800k. The Core i3 2105 system takes up last place with 99 frames per second.

According to EA, Battlefield 3 garnered 3 million pre-orders by the day of its release. It is unknown at present whether these figures are worldwide or just for the US. The pre-order total makes it “the biggest first-person shooter launch in EA history”, according to the publisher. The engine is beautiful on the PC and very demanding of the partnering hardware.

We configured the game to run on three 24 inch monitors at 5760×1080. Settings are detailed in the screenshot above.

The game is predominately GPU bound at this ultra high resolution, although the processor still plays an important role. The AMD A10 5800k scores well, averaging 64 frames per second, which is around 12 fps behind the Intel Core i7 970 system. The Intel Core i3 2105 system takes up last place, around 3 frames per second behind the A10 5800k.

To measure power consumption we take a reading from the socket with a calibrated power meter. The power readings are taken when loaded in Cinebench R11.5 64 bit, with the graphics card inactive. All peripherals, including the monitor, do not factor into this reading.

When loaded with Cinebench R11.5 64 bit – the system only takes 133 watts at the socket, which is very good.

Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4

The Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 is the companies flagship motherboard and it has has proven a worthy pairing for AMD's A10 5800k processor. The colour scheme is very dramatic, simple dark greys and blacks give the board an ominous appearance. This is a much nicer design than the ASUS F2A85-V Pro which incorporates a mixture of light and dark blue slot colours.

On a technical level the F2A85X-UP4 is without reproach, delivering perfect stability throughout the last week of intensive stress testing. We love the new A85X chipset, comprising an array of USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps ports. There are no concerns now with checking if the SATA ports can deliver maximum performance with your new Solid State Drive – just simply plug and play.

Gigabyte supplied us an updated bios just before we started the review, which was good timing and a refreshing change. We had no problems overclocking the A10 5800k processor, achieving 4.6ghz with minimal effort. Higher speeds are possible, but the core voltage settings needed to be pushed past 1.5V, which is not recommended by AMD for long term stability.

The A85X chipset can support up to 64GB of memory, and we used the latest Corsair Dominator Platinum 2,666mhz sticks for our testing today. The Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 wouldn't detect the native XMP profile, offering a 2,133mhz compromise instead. While the Asus F2A85-V Pro did highlight 2,400mhz settings, these were not stable, so we wonder have Gigabyte preempted possible problems with 2,400mhz and 2,666mhz settings and just omitted them entirely.

Regardless, both Asus and Gigabyte boards delivered similar results when we tested memory bandwidth.

The Gigabyte Bios is not quite as intuitive as the ASUS motherboard. Gigabyte use a system of multiple menu panels with settings for processor and memory voltages, as well as other timing panels. I find myself spending a lot of time navigating in and out of panels when I use Gigabyte boards, and I really do wish they would centralise all of these settings within a single, scrollable panel. In a similar fashion to ASUS.

As we go to press, we have a confirmed pricing of around £100 inc vat for the Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4. Even though this is their flagship motherboard, I don't expect many people in this target audience to spend more on the motherboard than the processor. The companies need to drop their board prices a little to attract a wider audience.

You can buy direct from ARIA for £101.94 inc vat.

Pros:

• Very stable.
• excellent connectivity.
• overclocking headroom available.
• strong power delivery.
• Attractive appearance.

Cons:

• Expensive compared to the A10 5800K.
• Memory speeds over 2,133mhz not working.

Kitguru says: An excellent motherboard from Gigabyte that offers a very strong challenge against the Asus F2A85-V Pro.

AMD A10 5800K

This is our second review featuring the latest AMD A10 5800k processor today. Initially I was slightly disappointed with the new chip as results with Cinebench, Sandra and SuperPi hinted at some bandwidth restrictions.

In our other review we compared the A10 5800k against the Intel 3770k with onboard HD4000 graphics. We have never seen current titles such as F1 2012 or Dirt Showdown playable from an integrated chip solution. If you had told me a few weeks ago that 2x anti aliasing was also possible at 1920×1080, I would have raised a eyebrow in disbelief.

When we compare again the 3770k with Intel HD4000 graphics, the differences are literally night and day. Not only does the A10 5800k deliver smooth, playable frame rates with F1 2012 and Dirt Showdown, but the image quality is significantly better.

As the foundation for a high definition media center we have no hesitation recommending the AMD A10 5800k, the image quality produced from the new processor is almost at the same level as a stand alone discrete solution, often costing 3 or 4 times as much money.

In this review we focused on pairing the AMD A10 5800k with a high end AMD HD7970 GHZ Edition. We compared the system against an Intel Core i3 and Core i7 system using the same graphics card. The Core i3 system was relegated to last position and as we would expect the Core i7 system took the top spot.

While this isn't a surprise and you may question the reasons for testing such an expensive configuration, our answer is simple. Many gamers claim that you don't need a very expensive processor if all you do is play games.

If you have skipped the review just to read the conclusion then I urge you to refer back to the Total War: Shogun 2 test page.

When CPU limiting isn't such an issue at 720p, we can see the Core i7 970 processor is capable of delivering 175 frames per second, compared to only 104 frames per second from the A10 5800K system. The interesting point arises when we increase the image quality settings and resolution to 1080p. The same AMD 5800K system produces 76 frames per second, against the Intel i7 970 system which now manages 83 frames per second. This system wide 71 differential in frame rate drops to 7 when moving from 720p to 1080p.

There was a time when buying a 1080p (1920×1080) monitor was expensive. Today you can pick up a good quality 1080p 24 inch panel for only £113.99 inc vat. Why would a gamer be concerned now with 720p results?

We feel there is some merit when a purist gamer says that saving money on a processor is better invested into a higher specified graphics card.

You can buy direct from ARIA for £93.54 inc vat.

Pros:

• Only £95 inc vat.
• Outclasses the Core i3 2105 in all areas.
• fantastic integrated graphics performance.
• headroom for overclocking.
• image quality is approaching discrete solutions.

Cons:

• For processor intensive tasks such as 3D rendering and video editing, it can struggle.
• A85X motherboards are expensive.

Kitguru says: The A10 5800K is a fantastic budget gaming processor and it might be all that some people will ever need.

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