AMD A8-3850 Llano APU Review

Testing:

The integrated GPU for the A8-3850 is the Radeon HD 6550D. The APU can be overclocked not only for the CPU side but for the integrated graphics as well, for a performance boost. To see if this was indeed true, I ran through a couple of games that can be played on the HD 6550D integrated graphics in low resolutions.The graphics clock was moved from the stock of 600MHz to the maximum stable I could reach of 1000MHz and each game was retested to verify that the increase in performance was relevant.

Testing Setup: AMD Socket FM1

• Processor: AMD A8-2850 APU
• Cooling: Noctua NH-U12P SE
• Motherboard: Gigabyte A775M-UD2H Socket FM1
• Memory: Mushkin 996805 Redline PC312800 6-8-6-24 1600MHz 4GB
• Video Card: Integrated Radeon HD 6550D
• Power Supply: Mushkin 1000W Joule Modular power supply
• Hard Drive: 1 x Seagate 1TB SATA
• Optical Drive: Lite-On Blu-Ray
• Case: Cooler Master HAF 932
• OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-b

AvP Settings:

• 0xAA
• 0xAF
• SSAO = Off
• Texture Quality = Low
• Hardware Tesselation = Off
• Advanced Shadow Sampling = Off

Batman Arkham Asylum Settings:

• 0xAA in CP
• 0xAF in CP
• Global settings = Low
• Ambient Occlusion = Off

While playing each of these games, the eye candy was turned down but the games were playable up to 1680 x 1050 with no issues or noticable performance lag.