AMD A8-3870K Black Edition & Hybrid Crossfire Review

Introduction

Things have been tough on AMD in the CPU side of the business lately. Whilst the Radeon arm has been pumping out some extraordinarily high performing graphics cards, the CPUs have been lackluster. Indeed the much-anticipated Bulldozer processors were nothing short of disappointing. In almost ever sector of the market from the very high-end down to the budget sector, Intel have been dominating the performance aspect.

Today we're taking a look at the A8-3870K from AMD, a CPU that is definitely aimed squarely at the budget audience, and comes with a built in HD6650D iGPU to make low-stress gaming on a CPU a possible reality.

So with a price of a mere £100, an unlocked multiplier, and a relatively good integrated graphics option, does the value portion of the AMD product range provide something good, or is it more of the same?

Technical Specifications

Based around the 32nm process on the FM1 socket, the 3870K is a 3GHz Quad Core CPU, supporting 1866MHz DDR3 and with a low (for AMD) TDP of 100W. This latest range has a wealth of models available, but thanks to the aggressive pricing we're looking at the highest end model.