AMD A8-3870k APU benchmarked, with and without 6670 dual graphics. - Page 3

and what is the competition?
single discrete graphics I think, and for gaming I think it's a better solution, a single 7750 ($110 card, and looking at the results even my old 5750 can keep up with that CF) should be better than this CF, with less driver/stuttering issues and a lot faster, and you can save a bit of money buying cheaper memory, and maybe a Athlon II X4 (with a cheap AM3+ MB which will work with Vishera CPUs on the future, FM1 is not going to support newer CPUs), not to mention options from Intel...

"APUs" make a lot more sense on mobile, but on desktop if you want more performance than what the integrated graphics can give...
Trinity IGP is faster BUT not all that much if you overclock lano IGP... the specs give you an idea, both have similarly limited memory bandwidth, llano have 20TMUs and Trinity 24, llano have 400sps VLIW5 and Trinity 384 VLIW4, the biggest difference (for performance) comes from the GPU clock, 800MHz for Trinity and 600 for llano, but llano IGP seems to overclock quite well (900+) and it's quite fast when overclocked (I've seen it scoring around 1.5k alone on 3dm11 performance mode, that's higher than Trinity)

OP should use tessellation on Heaven benchmark (and less anti aliasing) and try higher settings on the games...
but good work, there are not many results from this kind of setup (hybrid CF)...

proof of what? be more specific,
you can easily find comparison of GPUs on google and about stuttering, micro stuttering is a known problem with multi GPU (but it can happen in many situations), and with hybrid CF we are talking about 2 VGAs with significant different performance characteristics working in AFR, is even harder to get it right... and when llano was released driver support was quite bad for CF (no DX9, lot's of gamings with negative scaling), I'm sure it improved but still you can find on the reviews... with CF you are more dependent on driver updates with the right profiles...
I think CF and SLI are great for the high end stuff, when basically there is no way of going faster with a single GPU at the moment, or for the flexibility when upgrading, but for lower end solutions, when you can avoid and get the same performance with a single card...

so why a regular rig with 2 GPUs? you can get this kind of performance with a single GPU, also did you test power consumption? on the tests I saw it was nothing special for the performance,
there are inexpensive options with sata III and USB 3.0 for any platform.

about your challenge, I have not intention of competing nor building such a system right now, but I'm pretty sure it's possible to build a fast system for the money without hybrid CF, and using less or the same power, go with a 7750 as a start point, or even a 7770 (110 after rebate on newegg) saving a bit on other parts for the best gaming performance, also if you are only gaming you could go with a cheap dual core sandy bridge, and get the same performance, overclock loses a bit of relevance when for the same money and no overclock you can get better/same performance,

so, I'm not saying you build is not great for the money, it is, but I still think a single more powerful card would be better overall...

if you state the price from each part from your build it would be easier to compare with an option with a single discrete graphics card,
and as I said before, it would be more interesting to have a result on "Heaven" with more regular settings (tess ON, less AA..)
Edited by HMBR - 6/28/12 at 10:55pm

Hybrid CF = Dual Graphics, I'm just using the older term,
Intel IGPs are mostly useless for gaming, that's not what I'm discussing here, the thing is, the 6670 is just to expensive when you can buy a 7750 or 6770 for little more, and have performance at the same level as the CF with the 6550D (with fast memory) with better consistency, and any faster VGA will just make you disable the 6550D

AII X4 + HD7770 to me looks like a better package, and you can save money buying cheaper memory,

first of all, 3dmark 11 scales pretty well (better than games) with 4 cores, so physic scores for the i3 will suffer (trust me, dual core sandy bridges are better in gaming than 3dmark11), also it's highly optimized by the driver team and scales wonderfully well with CF


here an interesting test against Pentium+6770

why such a drastic difference from the results you found!?

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amd-a8-3870k_7.html#sect0


another source with much lower score (Corsairs blog, under 2k with dual graphics)
http://www.corsair.com/en/blog/amd-llano-revisited-more-performance-options-plus-special-bundle-from-tiger-direct/

and another 2.5k while overclocked
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/4177/amd_a8_3850_llano_apu_video_performance_examined/index2.html
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1320/pg9/sapphire-hd6670-low-profile-graphics-card-review-3dmark-11.html

average seems to be 2-2.5k with 2.5k being achieved with fast ram, and a ddr5 6670, if you go with slower ram, DDR3 card...


if the OP could test 3dmark11 it would help...

the results I find all around seem to be consistent, Dual Graphics (with fast ram and a good 6670 with ddr5) at best is as good as a 6770 or 7750 and a good enough CPU, but there are cases in which it is clearly slower, and with cards like the 7770 and 6850 in their current prices...

There's something called black, and you can use this for text

I ran out of black font a long while ago.