AMD A10-6800k & A10-6700 ‘Richland’ APU Review

For many years there has been a battle going on between AMD and Intel to get the consumer on their side and to stay with them and with the new Richland update to Trinity, I was expecting a bit more from the new chips in order to tempt some more people towards AMD. Whilst AMD claim the users should see around a 30-40% gain over the Trinity platform, the prospect in the real world as that they should see around 10% gains give or take. A lot of this is down to the memory speeds that the chips offer and in the case of the 6800k, it is highly recommended that a 1.5v 2133MHz kit is used to give optimum performance, whilst an 1866MHz kit is used with the 6700 as this lacks 2133MHz support.

Whilst there is not quite the gain in performance that I expected, the major factor that we have to take in to account with the AMD platform in general is the relative costs involved in getting a system built over Intel. With both the A10-6700 and the A10-6800k priced at around the £110-120 mark, (~€135 / ~US $180) and the boards that they run on also highly affordable, users on a budget can get the two key components they need for far less than an equivalent Intel setup and this is what matters – the performance that is on offer for the price. With the APU’s offering high performance Radeon graphics whilst Intel’s chips offers Intel’s own graphics platform, the advantage is there for AMD meaning users can quickly and cheaply get a system built that will happily play and game at 1920×1080 with good quality and frame rates without the need for a discrete GPU in the mix.

When it comes to the likes of video of photo editing work, the choice is less likely to be an AMD chip but for the most part and users that are on a tight budget, the AMD FM2 platform continues to deliver a lot for a relatively small price giving the upper hand to AMD on the entry level end of the market.

Bottom line: With 8000 series HD Radeon graphics on-board and still a remarkably low price point for upgrade with a simple BIOS update needed, AMD have got the entry level and mainstream user markets locked firmly in their grasp.