We tested the A10-5800K on MSI’s FM2-A85XA-G65 motherboard. First we tried overclocking the CPU, then the graphics and we finished it all off with some memory overclocking. The graphics proved the most troublesome in terms of overclocking. We encountered a few massive freezes, forcing us to power down the test rig. CPU and memory freezes weren’t as serious and we could restart the rig.

CPU overclocking

Before we overclocked the CPU we switched off Turbo Core and AMD Cool n’ Quiet. We jacked up the voltage to 1.5V and hit 4.6GHz with relative ease. With better equipment and know-how, it should be possible to push the chip even higher, but even the 4.6GHz clock resulted in significant benchmark gains. Bear in mind that the same APU on the same MSI board managed to hit 7.3GHz with some LN2 cooling. However, the clock was attained only after two out of four CPU cores were disabled.




In any case, Cinebench shows improvements after our relatively mild overclock. The single thread results went up by 11 percent, while the multithread test shot up by 18 percent.

The CPU overclock did not have much effect in gaming, since the GPU clock was not changed. We saw practically no difference in Crysis 2 or AvP, but in Sniper Elite 2 we saw some improvement. Basically if you are trying to squeeze out more performance in games, it is crucial to overclock the memory and GPU.

Memory overclocking

Memory speed is very important for graphics performance, so we tried playing around with some Corsair DDR3 1600 modules, clocked at 1033, 1600 and 1866MHz.

Extensive bios settings allowed us to measure the effect of memory speed on overall performance, with no changes to CPU or GPU clocks. There is no official support for DDR3 2400 memory, but we gave it a try anyway. We used Corsair Vengeance CMZ8GX3M2A2400C10 memory and increased the FSB clock to push the clock beyond 2133MHz. Sadly though, we got to 2133MHz, but we could not start the system at 2400MHz.

IGP memory speed mirrors system memory speed. If you wish to increase memory bandwidth, and in turn IGP performance, we can do that by overclocking system memory. AMD advises users to use system memory running at 800MHz (DDR3 1600) or higher.

We managed to get DDR1866 speeds from Corsair Vengeance LP modules, rated at DDR3 1600. As you can see, the results of memory overclocking (DDR3 1866) are clearly visible in bandwidth numbers.




Aliens vs Predator

Overclocking the memory from 800MHz to 933MHz improved the gaming scores up to 14 percent. This number is closer to 30 percent when you compare 666MHz and 933MHz memory.

Crysis 2

Overclocking the memory from 800MHz to 933MHz improved the gaming scores by about 8 percent. This number is closer to 18 percent when you compare 666MHz and 933MHz memory.

Sniper Elite V2

Overclocking the memory from 800MHz to 933MHz improved the gaming scores up to 14 percent. This number is closer to 17 percent when you compare 666MHz and 933MHz memory.


IGP overclocking

We also tried boosting the GPU clock from 800MHz to 950MHz, but as you can see in our results, memory overclocking had a much bigger impact on performance. AMD claims the GPU can be pushed north of 1GHz, but it seems we just ran out of luck and didn’t cross the 1GHz threshold.

Combined Overclocking

With a CPU clock of 4.5GHz, memory at 1866MHz and the GPU clock at 950MHz, we managed to get some impressive results. We got playable frame rates at 1680x1050, but just barely, since we had to reduce detail levels to attain them. Of course, bear in mind that we are talking about integrated graphics, so the results are actually pretty good. Just a few years ago, you couldn’t get close to decent frame rates in last generation games on any IGP.