Help me benchmark my oddball LOLgaming rig

[cebalrai]

Specs:

A6-3500M APU
Dual Graphics: HD 6530D with HD 6450 (HD 6550D2)
4 GB DDR3-1333 RAM that's stable around 1700 mhz and probably beyond
AsRock A75M-ITX motherboard
250W Rosewill power supply
A Rosewill ITX case with no fans other than in the power supply


So I've got Dual Graphics up and running and it shows as the HD 6550D2 on the AMD system monitor. The 6530 does most of the work and the 6450 appears to chip in now and again but never reaches more than 12% utilization.

I'd like to benchmark this system to compare the APU performance to the Dual Graphics performance. What's the best way to do this? I tried Unigene Heaven and FurMark but for some reason the HD 6450 sat around at 0% utilization. They just show that I have two GPUs installed and then only bench the APU.

Any advice? Thanks.

 

[cebalrai]

Okay, so update.

I ran 3D Mark Vantage and compared APU-only with APU+6450 sidekick.

3D Marks APU: P3081
3D Marks Dual: P3653

A 19% gain. Surprising

Graphics APU: 2660
Graphics Dual: 3199

A 20% gain.


Does this sound about right? Am I doing this right? Are these gains surprising to anyone else?

Also this is on a 1080p plasma TV if that matters. Does resolution matter?

 

[T_Yamamoto]

Sounds about right

 

[KingFatty]

I tried this with 5XXX series cards using Hybrid crossfire (HD5450 + integrated HD4290).

Similar to your results with Unigine Heaven, I also could never get an improvement under Unigine Heaven whether hybrid crossfire was enabled or disabled. But I never tested 3D Mark Vantage. Did you change any setup etc. to get the results for 3D Mark Vantage?

Are your results consistent with mine - that Unigine Heaven just won't work with the dual GPU (hybrid crossfire) setup to show any difference? In other words, you got results when you tried different software, without changing any driver settings etc.? Are you even using Hybrid crossfire, or regular old crossfire (I'm not sure how the AMD drivers treat your APU compared to how they treat my integrated motherboard graphics, but if they treat your APU as a hybrid crossfire, please elaborate.

 

[Insomniator]

What a peculiar rig

 

[cebalrai]

I tried this with 5XXX series cards using Hybrid crossfire (HD5450 + integrated HD4290).

Similar to your results with Unigine Heaven, I also could never get an improvement under Unigine Heaven whether hybrid crossfire was enabled or disabled. But I never tested 3D Mark Vantage. Did you change any setup etc. to get the results for 3D Mark Vantage?

Are your results consistent with mine - that Unigine Heaven just won't work with the dual GPU (hybrid crossfire) setup to show any difference? In other words, you got results when you tried different software, without changing any driver settings etc.?

No I didn't change anything in the Vantage setup. I just hit start. I'm going to retry Heavan and post back here.

Are you even using Hybrid crossfire, or regular old crossfire (I'm not sure how the AMD drivers treat your APU compared to how they treat my integrated motherboard graphics, but if they treat your APU as a hybrid crossfire, please elaborate.

I'm using AMD Dual Graphics, which is a different thing than Hybrid Crossfire. Dual Graphics uses the APU and a discreet card while Hybrid uses the onboard chip and a discreet card. From everything I've read Dual Graphics works much better. The irritating thing though is that it doesn't work with DirectX 9 games

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Does resolution matter?

Yes, but not in a fixed benchmark like vantage!

I hope that helps.

 

[cebalrai]

Update on Unigene Heaven. 1080p, no AA

Just the APU:
- FPS: 10.3
- Score: 260
- Min fps: 6.7
- Max fps: 18.3


Dual Graphics:
- FPS: 15.5
- Score: 390
- Min: 9.7
- Max: 31.9


A 66% improvement in FPS... Holy smokes. Not bad for a $14.99 open-box special on Newegg (the 6450 I mean).

 

[toyota]

Update on Unigene Heaven. 1080p, no AA

Just the APU:
- FPS: 10.3
- Score: 260
- Min fps: 6.7
- Max fps: 18.3


Dual Graphics:
- FPS: 15.5
- Score: 390
- Min: 9.7
- Max: 31.9


A 66% improvement in FPS... Holy smokes. Not bad for a $14.99 open-box special on Newegg (the 6450 I mean).

no thats exactly a 50% improvement in FPS and score. and 50% more in this case really doesn't help much

 

[cebalrai]

no thats exactly a 50% improvement in FPS and score. and 50% more in this case really doesn't help much

Okay math fail. But 50% is decent. I know, it's + 50% of not much but I cant complain.

 

[cebalrai]

Okay math fail. But 50% is decent. I know, it's + 50% of not much but I cant complain.

Update: I overclocked the APU from 443 Mhz to 800 mhz (the highest my mobo will go). The difference in heat is only about 5 degrees... And this is in an ITX case with almost no open space, no case fans, and the APU cooler almost entirely blocked by the power supply.

I'm getting about a 17% gain in Unigene and Vantage scores.

So... Why does AMD clock these things so low?