The cheapest dual-core processor market representative - AMD A4-5300 - attracts all potential buyers, but no one is in a hurry to purchase it. Confused by the low cost - 2300 rubles for two cores really look suspicious. In this article, the reader will be able to better understand the budget processor for desktop PCs. Description, characteristics and reviews of the owners will help determine the choice for the buyer.
Budget Class Segment
Not only the price, but also the official positioning of the AMD A4-5300 processor in the world market hint to all customers that the product is not intended for demanding games. The budget-class crystal is designed for office and home use and is designed for low power consumption. Surfing the Web, working with documentation, watching movies and listening to music from the point of view of the manufacturer limit the functionality of this processor.
But only in the tests, which were conducted by many independent enthusiasts, the crystal showed the results that are inherent in entry-level gaming platforms . Naturally, such indicators attracted the attention of many buyers to the cheapest product on the market from AMD.
Evolution through the eyes of the manufacturer
In pursuit of lowering the power consumption of processors for mobile platforms, AMD technologists had to change the technical production process from 40 nm to 32. The new Trinity-labeled core was primarily to reduce the heat dissipation of laptops without sacrificing performance. However, tests showed a significant increase in power in working with resource-intensive applications.
Accordingly, the manufacturer without delay introduced a novelty in the desktop PC market, designating the AMD A4-5300 processor as the successor of the old Bulldozer technology. Undoubtedly, the latest technologies have improved the performance of the new crystal, however, as practice shows, the solution remains with the technical characteristics. And they have to get acquainted in more detail.
Weak link
Support for the FM2 socket and the presence on the chip of an integrated graphics core clearly indicate that the processor is a completely new product on the market. The manufacturer preferred to provide the world with a novelty with an unlocked multiplier, blocking the path to overclocking the core by enthusiasts. However, according to the statements of many owners of this processor, this functionality is not in demand anyway, because, having determined the product in a budget class, the manufacturer limited the performance of the chip on the hardware level.
Two physical cores operating at a frequency of 3400 MHz have a small amount of cache memory of the first level. Only 32 Kb for data and 64 Kb for general instructions are not able to show high processor performance in demanding applications and games. However, many users in their reviews claim that the current situation with the overall system capacity is easy to fix.
Mind games
Since the performance characteristics are the main criterion for the AMD A4-5300 processor , many enthusiasts have found several ways to speed up the entire system. A locked crystal multiplier prevents overclocking, but no one forbids users to increase the frequency of the data bus. Professionals recommend limiting themselves to a frequency of 122 MHz, clocking the cores to 4.2 GHz. Firstly, this limit is perfectly balanced by the criterion “performance-stability”.
An important moment in acceleration is heat dissipation - consumption does not exceed 95 watts, which allows the use of a conventional cooling system, which is supplied with the processor. The integrated graphics core can also be overclocked, but the owner should not expect something supernatural from the budget representative of the Radeon HD 7480. Even with an increase in the GPU to 1200 MHz, demanding games will not work faster.
Winged swing
Any advanced IT user will not have much difficulty, having studied the review on the AMD A4-5300 processor, assemble a gaming computer. Naturally, the low performance of the chip will be compensated by a powerful video adapter with support for CUDA technology. In addition, the collector will add ultra-fast RAM, which can partially increase the speed of the cache and provide the platform with NAND memory for system files. That's just the cost of all computer components will quickly go beyond the framework corresponding to the budget class.
Professionals in their reviews recommend that all gamers start building a productive platform with crystals that have 4 cores or more on board, and in no case try to compensate for a weak processor with expensive computer parts. In a system, all components must belong to the same class.
The right customer choice
Since the AMD A4 x2 5300 processor still lends itself to overclocking, attention should be paid to choosing a motherboard that supports a hardware increase in bus frequencies or has the ability to increase voltage for all installed components separately. Since all processors for the FM2 socket support RAM operating at a frequency of 1866 MHz, a potential buyer should certainly use this.
When it comes to the video adapter, many buyers try not to notice that the integrated integrated core has a budget representative, and they prefer more expensive devices. However, as the tests show, it will not be possible to achieve high performance from the entire system with a discrete video game adapter, since the processor power of the AMD A4-5300 is not enough to unleash the potential of the video card. In terms of price-quality ratio, the Radeon HD 7870 graphics accelerator is the most efficient.
Driver Features
Quite strange situation with the work of integrated graphics on a chip. Perhaps this is a minor flaw in the manufacturer, but out of ignorance, many users are deprived of the opportunity to fully use the AMD A4-5300 processor. The whole problem lies in the drivers and software that come with the motherboard. After installing applications from the disk in any operating system, the DirectX 11 instruction set is not fully available - the description is present, the functionality does not work.
For full interaction with games, the Windows operating system must receive an appropriate update from the official site, and for this, the "Update Center" must be enabled on the computer. You can, of course, download the package with libraries from the Internet, but there is no guarantee that it does not contain malware.
Finally
Conclusions on the A4-5300 processor from AMD are quite simple, because this is an ordinary budget representative, whose characteristics cannot be brought to the gaming class by overclocking. And compensation by other components, as practice shows, is economically disadvantageous. The blame for everything in the processor is the first-level cache memory, which discards the performance of the crystal many years ago. But this does not mean that the product should be ignored when buying. For many users for the office or home, its performance will be more than enough. After all, the processor works great with video and audio codecs, which means it supports multimedia, and there will never be problems with office applications.