AMD A10-5700 Gaming Question

[tailes151]

Quick question for those more in the know than I am on AMD CPU's. An old neighbor of mine recently purchased an R9 380 for his computer and called asking for some help.

He's running a pre-built Acer from a few years ago with some Frankenstein parts in it. The processor is an A10-5700, that I know nothing about. He has 14gb of mismatched DDR3 RAM. The power supply is not stock, it is (I believe) a Corsair 750 watt.

He pretty much only plays online games. Specifically, Mech Warrior Online. After installing the new card he's running around 40 FPS on high graphics settings.

My guess is that this is a CPU bottleneck issue, but I know absolutely nothing on AMD processors and can't find any good benchmarks that address gaming performance for this chip.

Would I be right in my assumption, and if so, what would a good replacement CPU be that fits his FM2/FM2+ motherboard? Looking for something cheaper, as he doesn't have much money after the video card unfortunately.

Upgrading sockets isn't an ideal option, as he just purchased this motherboard so that he could use the video card. (something to do with needing UEFI vs Bios)

Thanks!

 

[SPBHM]

I would assume the motherboard is locked for OC and only supports FM2 CPUs, also the 5700 is a 65W CPU, so the motherboard might not support the fastest FM2 CPUs (like the 100W A10-6800K, which also might require a bios update)

in any case, 5700 is 3.4GHz, best FM2 CPU is 4.1GHz(6800K), core count, IPC and so on is all the same... so I don't see to many options apart from a new motherboard + CPU.

if it supports Fm2+ an 860K would make some sense, but I still think it's a limited upgrade,

 

[coercitiv]

Upgrading sockets isn't an ideal option, as he just purchased this motherboard so that he could use the video card. (something to do with needing UEFI vs Bios)

You have two options:

1. If the new motherboard supports 95W TDP CPUs (post mb model in thread if u can), your friend can buy a really cheap Athlon X4 860K: it's a similar CPU to the one your friend already has (same number of cores) but with slightly improved IPC and a higher TDP that allows it to sustain turbo speeds easier. The A10 5700, although has a similar 4Ghz turbo, may not be able to sustain it while all cores are loaded. At best you'll see a 10-20% framerate improvement in some games, while others will show little to no gain.
2. Identify which settings in MWO are more taxing on the CPU and lower those, anything that lets the CPU breathe a bit might have surprising effect on framerates.

If I were you I would set up a monitoring tool to watch CPU/GPU load and frequency clocks , then do a session of MWO and observe gathered data:

• if CPU is at 100% load and moreover is working at significantly lower speed than 4GHz for most of the session, then the small upgrade to 860K will have the desired effect.
• if CPU is not pegged and/or can sustain 4Ghz while gaming then changing to the new 860K will have little to no effect

 

[tailes151]

Thanks for the help, guys.

I believe the motherboard he bought is the Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-D3H. Looks like this might work with the X4 6800k based on this link?

 

[AtenRa]

Did you completely uninstall the APU drivers before you installed the dGPU driver ??

 

[tailes151]

Did you completely uninstall the APU drivers before you installed the dGPU driver ??

I wasn't with him when the video card was installed, so I'll have to check on this. I believe he said he used a driver cleaning tool.

Are you thinking there is a conflict wherein the game is trying to run using the integrated graphics instead of the dedicated card? I wouldn't think this is the case, as he has seen performance improvement over the previously installed HD5870.

 

[AtenRa]

I wasn't with him when the video card was installed, so I'll have to check on this. I believe he said he used a driver cleaning tool.

Are you thinking there is a conflict wherein the game is trying to run using the integrated graphics instead of the dedicated card? I wouldn't think this is the case, as he has seen performance improvement over the previously installed HD5870.

Well i have seen strange behaviors from a dGPU when i forgot to uninstall the iGPU driver so i had to ask.

It may be the CPU though but do ask him if he used a driver cleaner.