AMD A10-6700 Pro Reviews

The APU is designed to offer the competence of AMD's CPU and GPU technologies in a single, convenient package that scales across laptop and desktop devices. The mid-2013 Richland refresh can be seen as a mild upgrade over last year's Trinity, with the drop-in FM2 upgrade providing a modest performance increase that's driven primarily through higher clock speeds. AMD's well-rounded design continues to make the APU platform a safe bet for small-form-factor systems, though, with 6000-series parts showing small gains over their predecessors, pricing has become a concern. The A10-6700 does a good job of balancing performance and power efficiency, making it, in our estimation, the pick of the Richland bunch, but price-conscious builders should note that the previous-generation A10-5700 is almost as proficient yet costs roughly 20 per cent less.

Budget builders who like to experiment with overclocking or who want to build a low-cost, modest PC without a dedicated graphics card may find the A10-6800K a more appealing option (on paper, at least) than the A10-6700, thanks to its support for faster RAM and tunable clock speeds. But with its 100-watt TDP, the A10-6800K will be harder to keep cool in a cramped case than the A10-6700. So if you’re looking to build a moderately small system, the A10-6800K would be challenging to base a system around without, perhaps, a fast-spinning (read: loud) fan or two ventilating the chassis. Unless you can’t live without overclocking, want the maximum possible frame rates with integrated graphics on a $150 chip (and are willing to, conversely, pay top dollar for complementary RAM), or don’t care about heat or power issues, AMD’s A10-6700 is a better choice for builders and upgraders than the unlocked A10-6800K. It is nearly as fast on CPU tasks, is exactly as capable at gaming unless you step up to 2,133MHz RAM (which the A10-6700 doesn’t support), and has a much lower TDP, which should keep things cooler and use less power in the long run.

A great choice if you want a power-efficient high-end A-series processor and don’t want to overclock it

At those prices, AMD’s latest Richland Elite A-Series APUs are somewhat more expensive than their Trinity-based counterparts, which currently top out at about $129, but they’re priced very competitively with Intel’s offerings. The Core i3-3225, for example, is currently selling for $139; the couple of extra bucks for the A10-6800K will get you a better-performing CPU (in multi-threaded workloads, at least) with a much higher-performing GPU. However, Intel still has the edge in single-thread performance and power efficiency. These new APUs are also drop-in upgrades for existing platforms. Looking back at the numbers, we doubt anyone with a high-end Trinty-based APU will feel the need to upgrade, but if you’ve currently got a low-end socket FM2 APU and want to breathe some new life into the system, a Richland Elite A-Series APU is the easiest way to do it and it won't break the bank.

Calling Richland a stopgap between Trinity and the next-gen Kaveri would be just about right. From what we hear, Kaveri should still land sometime late this year. So, although Intel took a big step in catching up to AMD with its HD Graphics 4600 engine, the integration of GCN should help AMD widen that gap again. Steamroller-derived x86 should help as well, as should the implementation of hUMA (heterogeneous unified memory architecture). Unfortunately, Kaveri requires a new socket interface, so it won't be an upgrade path for anything with Trinity or considering Richland.

The AMD Richland APUs offer small improvements over the previous version, but continue to excel in GPU workloads and are available at a compelling price.

AMD has said from the inception that the idea behind the APU was to be "more than the sum of its parts." While that can be used as a meme for the lowering of expectations, AMD has has once again demonstrated that the "more than the sum of its parts" translates to just that. Power, versatility, and value in a single package.

As a relatively minor update to the existing range of APUs, Richland does what it needs to. It provides a small but clear performance boost across the board and, considering this, is priced appropriately, at least against Trinity parts. The lowered power consumption is also welcome, and the chips appear to have good overclocking potential too, although less exotic cooling might yield less fruitful results. While the games we test with aren't the most demanding ones, they're enough to show the clear lead that Richland's onboard GPU has over that of Ivy Bridge in the same price range. However, Intel's offering is the clear victor in CPU bound performance, so if you're opting for any half decent discrete graphics card, a budget chip like the Core i3-3220 is the superior choice. If, on the other hand, your budget won't stretch to allow this, the Richland range is well priced for what it offers, which is adequate CPU performance and graphics hardware that should be more than capable of achieving playable frame rates on modern games (with the detail settings dialed down somewhat, of course), plus there the option to get double the performance by using Crossfire with a low-end discrete AMD graphics card. If you're willing to wait, it's relatively safe to assume that the upcoming lower end Haswell parts will also offer very attractive CPU performance, and while LGA1155 parts are now slowly on the way out, the LGA1150 socket will also provide you with a solid platform for upgrades. FM2, on the other hand, is now at its performance limit with the A10-6800K, and is set to be replaced sooner rather than later by the FM2+ socket when the Kaveri APUs arrive, so regular upgraders are also better off on the Intel path for now. With its all round improvements, Richland may be able to entice existing FM2 owners, especially those who opted for A8-series Trinity APUs. AMD may still have a lot of catching up to do with its high end processors, but Richland still makes for an attractive option for a new budget build too, as it achieves the best currently available balance between CPU and GPU performance for just over £100. Given their price parity, the A10-6700 should only be considered by those for whom low power consumption is a top priority, as otherwise the A10-6800K is the superior chip.

If you are currently using a dual-core FM2 system, upgrading to the A10-6800K is certainly not a bad upgrade to prolong the lifespan for a couple of more years for 100. Or if you are looking to upgrade three or four years old PC, the FM2 platform is certainly a very good alternative to the Intel Core i3 platform. Not only that you get a much more powerful system, the IO upgrade to SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 are certainly going to make world difference. The FM2 platform is also a great choice if you are building a media PC as well, especially the 65W A10-6700. Even for a budget system, the A10-6800K is certainly more than capable of playing games and the money saved can very well be put into a better graphic cards or an SSD which in term should offer a much greater performance improvements.

I am really torn on the value of the A10-6700. I am an enthusiast. I overclock my components. I don't really ever consider power consumption in my decisions. At the same time, I know that power consumption is an ever increasingly important factor for a lot of consumers. For me, it isn't worth it. I would buy the A10-6800K ten times out of ten over the A10-6700 for the same price. But I can't speak for everyone.

Overall Richland is a pretty big deal for AMD, and a fairly major refresh of their APU line. Better performance, better thermals, and better power usage have made this a worthwhile endeavor for AMD. They keep their name current and they have a new product to stack against Intel’s Haswell at much lower price points than the competition. They are still hanging their hats on the GPU technology and their ability to run GPGPU applications at a much higher speed than what Intel can do. There are still issues with Richland though. If a high end GPU is installed then the APU is only a slightly underpowered CPU at that price point. Only when the GPU is active does it really live up to its billing. It would be great if the GPU portion could be active and working when another high end GPU is installed, but we are not at that point in processor design (or software support) to have that happen. Perhaps when Kaveri rolls around we can have that particular functionality. As it is, Richland is a great standalone APU that should provide enough features and performance to keep it competitive with whatever Intel releases at that price point.