Compucon Thunderbird, a desktop computer model based on AMD processor, will evolve to A85X in November 2012.  This article explains what A85X is about, what the performance we can expect from it, how it compares with its preceding version and contemporary competitions, and why we should choose this model in lieu of others.

A85X is the name of the chipset announced by AMD to support the fastest APU (accelerated processing unit) A10-5700 and A10-5800K.  Compucon Thunderbird will go with A10-5800K and so we will explain about A10 first.

A10 is the 2nd generation APU.  It has 4 CPU cores and 380 streaming cores.  The counts are not impressive at all as the 1st generation A8-3850 APU contains 4 CPU cores and 400 streaming cores.  On this occasion, AMD improves on frequency and algorithm.  A8-3850 has a base frequency of 2.9GHz whereas A10-5800K has 3.8GHz base and 4.2GHz turbo among other improvements.  Various online test reports have said the new APU is faster than the previous APU by about 20% in practically all respects.

How does the new APU compare to Intel 2nd (Sandy Bridge) and 3rd generation (Ivy Bridge) Core processors?  We have reduced various online test report findings or comments to focus on direct comparison with Core i3-3220 which is a 3rd generation Core processor from Intel released quite recently.  We have also reduced various online test report results to 3 charts as shown here. 

 (Hover mouse over to enlarge)

The first 2 charts were reproduced from www.techspot.com and they show the time taken to finish an Excel spreadsheet computation task and a Photoshop processing task respectively- the shorter the better.  A10 is 5% slower than i3 and 30% faster than A8 on Excel tests, but it is 16% faster than i3 and 39% faster than A8 on Photoshop tests.  The 3rd chart was reproduced from www.anandtech.com.  It shows the test results of running a Microsoft sample application on DirectX 11.  A10 is double the performance of i3 and 3 times the performance of A8.  In a nutshell, A10 is average in computational performance (Core i3 class) but excels in graphics performance (better than Core i3, i5 and i7 classes).  When stock is available, we expect Thunderbird A85X system price to be similar to Diamond Plus with Core i3-3220. 

How does this new APU compare with non-APU CPU from AMD?  We ask this question because Thunderbird uses 6-core FX6100 CPU in the interval of transitioning from A8 to A10 (July to October 2012).  We could not do any benchmark testing ourselves and have not found any online.  Therefore we can only express the sentiment that whilst A10 may not be as good in computational performance as FX6100 when all cores are used, A10 will excel in 2 other aspects- graphics and other features.

A10 provides 3 graphics display ports: VGA, DVI and HDMI, and an Eyefinity technology which allows Windows 8 display to span across 3 monitors without using a discrete graphics card. 

Other features include 8 SATA600 ports (1 of which is external), 2 USB3 ports, and a PCIe slot for a discrete graphics card for Dual Graphics as provided for by A85X chipset.  This new model also provides 4 DIMM slot whereas the transitional model provides 2 DIMM slots only.   The positioning of this new model is now clear.  Please raise any question you may have to the Compucon team and we will respond ASAP. 

Contact Us to Enquire about this System