AMD A8 7650K APU Review – The Little APU That Could!

DEDICATED GRAPHICS TESTS

At this point in our testing, we’ll be adding Crysis 3, Tomb Raider, Call Of Duty:AW, The Witcher 3 and revisiting GTA V.

We choose to add a AMD R9 290 for our tests, to have a overkill scenario we wouldn’t recommend putting a 290, or say a GTX 970 in any of these systems since the CPUs will be limiting the GPU in some games, we wanted to test how limited these CPUs would be. In the case of the i5 or APU, we would recommend something along the lines of a R9 285, or GTX 960 which would make a lot of sense.

CRYSIS 3

Crytek’s final installment in the Crysis trilogy is easily their most graphically ambitious release, and even though it is now a few years old, it still represents the bleeding-edge in graphical fidelity.

We test on “High” with FXAA at 1080p

As we see here, our average FPS numbers show a landslide in the favor of the i5 4430, an almost 70% difference over the A8. Not much of a difference is made between overclocked and stock on our APU, and yet again we see the Pentium G3258, even though its clock speed is much higher, fail to keep up in the minimum 1% and .01% the experience leaves much to be desired on it. The i5 certainly provides the best experience here, although at almost half the price our A8 does represent a solid value!

TOMB RAIDER (2013)

The most recent iteration of Crystal Dynamic’s long-running series, Tomb Raider represents one of the best-looking titles on PC to date. Its varied landscapes and beautiful organic environments create a quite graphically demanding title.

We ran this game on “Ultimate” with TressFX and FXAA at 1080p. MSAA and is disabled.

We see very similar results from all sides, the only thing worth noting is yet again the Pentium gets a much lower 0.01% variance at 41FPS compared to the others at mid to low 50s. These little bits of stutter will be something you’ll notice as time goes on.

CALL OF DUTY ADVANCED WARFARE 

The latest version of the long-running Call of Duity franchise, and the first to be developed by Sledehammer Games, Advanced Warfare brings a fresh spin on an old formula, some very nice visuals along with it.

We test with all settings maxed out, Caching, Shader Preloading, and Super Sampling disabled, and at 1080p.

As we take a look at Call of Duty we see the overclocked Pentium takes a strong lead in average FPS, and looks pretty good showing us clockspeed is king seeing as how dismal the i5 does in minimum frame rates. Overall our A8 7650K looks best when we take minimums into consideration never dropping below the 30s.

GRAND THEFT AUTO V

One of the most highly-anticipated releases for PC, GTA V is the latest installment of Rockstar’s long-running genre-defining open-world shooter, and it is their most graphically demanding title yet! With a massive city that’s brought to life with immense detail.

We test on “Very High” with all “Advanced Graphics” and MSAA options turned off with FXAA enabled, and at 1080p.

We see the i5 provides the best experience overall, but our A8 7650K provides a very playable experience at over $80 less. Our overclock helps get closer to our goal of 30FPS, and our stock A8 gets a “Cinematic console like” 24FPS in its lowest 1%. We see our Pentium G3258 can not handle this game at all, unfortunately all those who purchased one last summer should consider upgrading to an unlocked i5 or i7 soon with DX 12 around the corner.

THE WITCHER 3

We see in the Witcher we get a pretty unplayable experience all around. There is not too much to really mention here, aside from the rather poor performance at stock on the APU.