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have i wasted my money? amd a6 graphics

ezroller

ezroller

ezroller

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Joined
1 Nov 2012
Posts
17
hi all, basically i bought a pc with an AMD a6 vision processor, im not sure how powerful the graphics are as its an internal GPU. I bought a 1gb dedicated graphics card as i was under the impression that APUs used RAM and CPU speed in order to work and that by putting a new GPU in it would speed to whole lot up.

ive noticed a small improvment, and yes it seems a bit quicker and less taxing on the processor but if someone could fill me in as to whether it would have helped that would be great as there seems to be a lot of conflicting opinions online.

AMD a6 vision 4c processor
8gb Ram
1gb Asus Geforce gt620
 
That GT620 wouldn't really help your system at all.

The APU's performance depends on RAM speed, and the CPU can offload some things to the GPU.

But I'm not sure what you expected the GT620 to do. I mean, I could be wrong, but I can't imagine why it would become a faster system because of it.
 
Llano is known for having a decent IGP. The Llano A8 IGP can even compete against the GT440/GT630 which has 96 shaders ,so I expect the A6 IGP to competitive with a GT620/GT520 which has 48 shaders.

I have an A6-3670K and I did a small review of it:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=22602051&postcount=2

TBH,you should have kept using the IGP and got a small SSD.
 
Last edited:
stuie said:
TBH you should really have got an amd card to take advantage of that system
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Makes no difference whether it's an AMD or nVidia card, the reason it's not made a big difference is that the GT620 is a fairly slow budget card. For a big improvement OP needs to be budgeting at least £150 IMO. GTX660 or a 2gb 7850/7870 would be my choice.
 
Muel said:
Makes no difference whether it's an AMD or nVidia card, the reason it's not made a big difference is that the GT620 is a fairly slow budget card. For a big improvement OP needs to be budgeting at least £150 IMO. GTX660 or a 2gb 7850/7870 would be my choice.
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If it had been an AMD card it might have been able to run in X-Fire with the iGPU, which I think is what the OP was aiming for when he said he was under the impression an extra GFX card could help, but messed up the execution.
 
seems like i wasted my money then! was only 40 quid but i could have doubled my ram for that, i thought id take the pressure off the CPU first, then buy ram but it seems there was no need at all,

i did use the over clocking program to boost it a little, and also the built in amd cpu clock adjuster so perhaps thats why it seems faster. at least attempting basic overclocking has bought me here, i can learn properly now as custom pc's have always interested me but ive never got my hands dirty as i could never afford it before!!

2 more noob questions then....

is it worth taking this card out at all? i chose it because it was an ASUS nvidia, and my pc is an ASUS as well. note that i wont be able to return it for a refund.

secondly, what would you guys to get a bit more out of my pc? it runs the steam games fine, but i want to start getting a bit more involved in this fast computer business!

many thanks for your replies, should learn a lot from this site
 
I would return the 620 as it is pants

get an el-cheapo amd card (idk which models are compatible) and run it in hybrid crossfire with the igpu.

Also, iirc faster ram speeds benefit the apus a lot.
 
ezroller said:
seems like i wasted my money then! was only 40 quid but i could have doubled my ram for that, i thought id take the pressure off the CPU first, then buy ram but it seems there was no need at all,
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Best to do a little research first, its only a matter of minutes to google performance number for your A6 APU and other competing cards, then you can compare them and see if its worth it. :)
 
thanks for the quick replies, well.. a friend has offered to but the gt620 for 50 quid, (his offer btw!) so im going to upgrade the ram later,

so it is possible to run the IGPU and a compatible card in conjunction? as i guess this would be cheaper than buying a better graphics card, i wouldnt want to waste the IGPU now that ive found out it doesnt slow the CPU down much

if someone could give me any pointers to either any info on compatible cards that would run in conjunction, and on how to run them like that it would be mch appreciated, im still quite new too this, although learning already!

Ive told myself im not going to make a silly purchase like that again
 
Scoob145 said:
I believe the amd 6670 cards are comparable . I know they are for trinity processors . Below is a link to comparable amd cards

http://www.amd.com/us/products/technologies/dual-graphics/pages/dual-graphics.aspx#3

Just click desktop tab and it will list them
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thankyou very much, sorry i missed your post as i wrote mine over the course of a late lunch break!!

so paring my a6 with an AMD Radeon HD 6570 would allow me to harness more power than either the GPU or IGPU by iteself??
 
ezroller said:
thankyou very much, sorry i missed your post as i wrote mine over the course of a late lunch break!!

so paring my a6 with an AMD Radeon HD 6570 would allow me to harness more power than either the GPU or IGPU by iteself??
Click to expand...

Correct, ideally though for your chip you would want a HD 6670
 
ezroller said:
thanks for the quick replies, well.. a friend has offered to but the gt620 for 50 quid, (his offer btw!) so im going to upgrade the ram later,

so it is possible to run the IGPU and a compatible card in conjunction? as i guess this would be cheaper than buying a better graphics card, i wouldnt want to waste the IGPU now that ive found out it doesnt slow the CPU down much

if someone could give me any pointers to either any info on compatible cards that would run in conjunction, and on how to run them like that it would be mch appreciated, im still quite new too this, although learning already!

Ive told myself im not going to make a silly purchase like that again
Click to expand...

But surely a "friend" would be honest with another "friend" and not rip him off for more than he bought it? :)
 
in most cases yes! but he smokes all my weed so i dont mind,

well thanks for the info and opinions, anymore are welcome and im sure ill be asking a few more questions further down the line,

seems like a great forum so i should be staying for a while
 
I recommend maybe overclocking the CPU side of the APU as well, I have an A8 laptop with discrete graphics in "dual graphics mode" (it's what they call hybrid crossfire with their APUs) and found the CPU was holding the GPU grunt back by quite a bit.

Also, what's your RAM speed?
 
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