AMD A8-3870K Review

Performance Analysis

With so little between it and the A8-3850, the A8-3870K performed almost identically in most of our benchmarks. The variations were more obvious in the more granular tests such as WPrime, where the 100MHz higher CPU clock speed counted for small gains. Real-world there's next to no discernible difference.

Intel's Core-i3 2100 was still way ahead in all the media benchmarks, with the A8-3870K gaining single-figure increases thanks to the small CPU frequency bump. Overall, it managed a score of 1,082 - 23 points faster than the A8-3850, while the Core i3-2100 managed a much healthier 1,476.

In Left 4 Dead 2 at 1,280 x 720, the A8-3870K managed a minimum frame rate of 56fps - 2fps faster than the A8-3850, with the same increase also being seen at 1,680 x 1,050, where its minimum frame rate was 35fps. Call of Duty: Black Ops proved to be a fair bit more demanding, but the A8-3870K was still able to pull a 1fps minimum frame rate boost over the A8-3850. We'd still consider the 24fps minimum frame rate at 1,680 x 1,050 to be a little too low for comfort though.

Overclocking proved to be a doddle, with the unlocked multiplier freely accessible in the BIOS so we set about seeing how far we could push the CPU and GPU, but decided toleave the reference clock alone, seeing as how varying the results are from board to board. We eventually settled at 3.6GHz using a multiplier of 36x and a vcore of 1.475V, while also boosting the GPU frequency from 600MHz to 900MHz.


This saw significant gains across the board, with the overall score in the media benchmarks rising to 1,264 - an increase of 20 per cent. This was still slower than the 1,476 points the Core i3-2100 managed though. Games also saw some good benefits from the overclock, the most notable being Black Ops at 1,280 x 720, where the minimum frame rate increased from 31fps to 43fps. Likewise at 1,680 x 1,050, it went from a stuttery 24fps to a much smoother 29fps.

Unsurprisingly, power draw also rose with the overclock, with the load draw increasing from 158W to 229W for the system as a whole.

Conclusion
The addition of an unlocked multiplier is always a fantastic tool to have at your disposal if you're keen on this overclocking malarkey. We're still a little bitter about the fact that overclocking Intel's budget CPUs is so limited too - imagine a Pentium G850 with an unlocked multiplier? We go giddy at the thought too.

Thankfully, AMD has seen sense and created what is essentially an enthusiast-orientated CPU at the budget end of the market - something that only AMD has been willing to do for a while and the A8-3870K is one of the best examples we've seen and certainly the most rewarding.

If your motherboard proves particularly capable in tweaking the reference clock too, then you'll likely see further gains, however it's worth bearing in mind that power consumption and in turn the need for additional cooling rise steeply. This is nothing a decent modern CPU cooler can't handle, though, but it's unlikely you'll be able to keep a heavily overclocked A8-3870K cool in a mini-ITX case using a low profile CPU cooler for example. It is essentially an overclocked quad core Phenom II afterall.

We can't ignore the benefits of overclocking it, though, and costing the same as the A8-3850, the A8-3870K is both better value at stock speed, and has the awesome benefit of being a far easier chip to overclock. If you're on a tight budget and don't mine gaming at 1,680 x 1,050 and below with modest settings, the A8-3870K should be on your short list. If you're prepared to overclock it, it's an even more a great buy.