How does the A6 work?

Alright so i'll start off by saying that I was looking around for a gaming laptop, and saw these specs on newegg:

Amd Radeon HD 6650m
AMD A-Series A6-3400M 1.4GHz
4 Gb DDR3

Nice specs for a nice price, but im questioned about the CPU. I personally found that 1.4ghz wasnt alot for a processor, especially so for gaming.

So I searched around google and if im not wrong, apparently the processor has a built in 6520g which confuses me even more.

So, reader could you tell me:
1: What exactly is the new A series processors.
2: If it does have a built in 6620g, how does it work out using it. Like will the 6620g and the 6650m both be used together to increase gaming performance or such? Im also confused about the whole dual-graphics card market
3:Finally, would the 1.4ghz processor bottlekneck the 6650m for gaming, or would it even be used as an advantage?

I don't know if these questions sound stupid but im really knew in the whole graphics card/CPU market.

ANY help is appreciated, thanks.

 

The 6620g thats built is an integrated graphics card, its much akin to the intel HD 3000 on the intel series. When youre not doing anything GPU intensive, it will switch to the 6620g and conserve battery. It wont combine to increase performance.

As for the A6, im not knowledgeable in that area to know exactly what goes on in it that differs from an intel.

Edit: did some quick googling, I think its comparable to the 2nd gen I3 processor, and if so then no the cpu wont be the bottleneck as sandy bridge is way ahead in the gaming, but this is just a comparison that we are assuming. the gpu will be the bottleneck but you can game decently with lowered settings such as shadows and ambient occlusion and maybe lowered resolution. Experiment to see what gains more fps.

enjoy =]

 

Crossfire with integrated 6520g + 6600 dedicated = yes

Overall gaming performance = pretty good

It's a 1.4ghz quad core... not as fast as an intel processor, but still pretty good for gaming. I'm sure it could handle BF3 at native resolution, maybe medium settings.

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seems like we have a disagreement about whether or not it will do crossfire. I think it will, but we'll need to find some more evidence.

 

thats odd, how do you presume it does crossfire? (not asking how I mean, why)

I thought it was for battery conservation o-o

to my understanding if it does X-fire, then the dedicated card will lower itself down to match up the integrated thus making it worse.

 

AMD A8-3850 APU Review: Llano Hits the Desktop - Page 7

 

It's called an HD 6720G2 when the two cards are running in Crossfire. This explains it a bit:

AMD Radeon HD 6720G2 - Notebookcheck.net Tech

 

It's asymmetrical Crossfire.

 

I looked at the compatibility requirements and the product page, did some more research, and that information leads me to believe that the components in that laptop can be set up for hybrid crossfire (called dual graphics).

I suspect you would still be able to turn off the dedicated GPU for battery saving if desired.

AMD crossfire does not require exact matches for graphics cards. You can match up cards with some difference in performance, and load balancing takes care of it. SLI generally requires all the GPUs to be the same. Crossfire does not. AMD's solution is much more elegant than slowing down the faster graphics card. One common tactic is to designate parts of each frame to be rendered by different GPUs. With 2 graphics cards, where one is 30% faster than the other, you could split each frame into a 4x4 grid, and assign 9 squares to one GPU, and 7 squares to the other. This is the type of tactic AMD uses to allow mix-and-match graphics with crossfire.

 

That is cool O_O did not know that lol
I wish Nvidia does this

or do they o-o

 

Thanks for all the answers, you guys are helpful. But ive read the short bit about the crossfire between the two cards and it says that sometimes the performance could actually be worst than a 6650m by itself. So I now wonder, would theyre be a way to play games with the 6650m alone, and would I be better off playing with the 6650m alone or both of the cards crossfired for recent games.

 

There is a checkbox Catalyst Control Center to enable/disable Crossfire. There's also a part of the CCC that deals with switchable graphics, which is the part of the software that determines what GPU is used with what application. Most of the time, it's pretty good about selecting the appropriate GPU. If there's an executable it doesn't recognize, you can have it prompt you to select which GPU you want. Otherwise, it typically defaults to the integrated one.

One thing to bear in mind is that if you play games or use applications that run on OpenGL (Rage, Adobe CS, etc), they will always run on the integrated GPU. There are conflicting reports about whether or not AMD can fix this with software. A couple notebook manufacturers (HP and Dell) have released a combination of software and BIOS updates to their machines to allow what's called "fixed mode" graphic switching, where the user has ultimate control over what GPU is used when. Unfortunately, this fix has only been made available on systems that have an Intel CPU and AMD GPU. The default is to use the integrated Intel GPU when running on battery and the AMD one when plugged in. I'm not sure if such BIOS trickery is possible with these AMD A-Series CPUs, however. I've sent several e-mails to Asus asking them to make a fix available, but my queries have been ignored thus far.

 

Alright, thanks.

 

Visit HERE:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/601808-k53ta-best-deal-ever-could.html

Games just fine. You can and should overclock/undervolt as everyone else has with the CPU. You can fix max CPU speed much higher than 1.4GHz and still runs cooler. Many can easily get 2.2GHz with that CPU.

Right click desktop, choose configure switchable graphics, and then choose dedicated. Turn off crossfire in the AMD control panel under gaming.

 

thanks, throughly explained.

 

Personally, I would take a similarly priced machine with a Sandy Core i5 + GT 540M, like this one.

 

If the machine you're looking at comes with 6650m (GDDR3), then absolutely the i5 + 540m is probably a better overall performer.

But if you can get one with the 6750m (GDDR5) the GPU is better, like this one: Newegg.com - Recertified: HP Pavilion dv6-6135DX Refurbished Notebook AMD A-Series A8-3500M(1.5GHz) 15.6" 6GB Memory DDR3 640GB HDD Blu-Ray Drive AMD Radeon HD 6750M

 

That's a great buy if you extend the warranty.

 

Yeah, $59 for 1 year from newegg, although I think it comes with a 90 day warranty.

 

Yes Nvidia does this also it's called hybrid SLI my Alienware m17x R1 does this 9400m+260mGTX

 

That was before Intel integrated the GPU into their chips though. No such luck with nVidia with something like that these days unfortunately.

 

Yea it never worked good in the first place lol I always thought it was just a marketing gimmick...OMG tripple SLI in a notebook I must have lol

 

Yeah, it's not all it's cracked up to be in the AMD machines either. It helps a bit in some games and you're lucky if it doesn't cause micro stuttering. BF3 is actually pretty good, adds another 3-5 fps on top of the 25-30fps I already get. Otherwise every other game I've tried has been horrific. Deus Ex was a mixed bag.

 

Hybrid Crossfire has worked well in Crysis for me. It kind of stinks that it's only able to function with DirectX 10 and up. Normally, playing Crysis with DirectX 9 would give me the best performance, but in this case DX10 with hybrid Crossfire is a noticeable step up. I notice no stuttering either. I've not really played around with the feature too much otherwise, but I don't really have any other DX10 games, at least none that I've gotten around to playing.