As we have seen from the benchmarks, the newer A8-3870K APU from AMD seems to have about the same behavior when running memory at different speeds, like the previously tested A6-3650. The IGP performance increases quite lot when we compare the performance at 1600MHz or 1866MHz to the one we have obtained at 1333MHz. When we ran the tests at 1866MHz, the ECS board also overclocks the system bus at about 117MHz, so the resulting CPU clock is 3510MHz as opposed to 3GHz stock.

At about 1.496V for the CPU (1.49V set inside the UEFI interface), we were able to overclock the APU at a stable frequency of 3742MHz. We were able to overclock the IGP even further, to 720MHz, with the options offered inside the BIOS interface, this without increasing the NB voltage; the system memory was running at 1760MHz, a lower frequency that we had in the third run, with the memory at 1866MHz.

What is interesting to see is that even if we had higher CPU and IGP clocks in the 4th run, we weren’t able to get higher scores in the 3D applications compared to the 3rd run, when the memory was running at a higher frequency; however, in the productivity benchmarks like PCMark or in the SuperPi, Wprime runs, the score was noticeably higher.

The AMD Black Edition A8-3870K APU can be found in online stores for about 110 Euros, a decent price considering what is offered and the possibilities of overclocking. When buying such an APU, make sure you will also get a motherboard that supports modifying the frequencies, otherwise you won’t be able to enjoy the “K” unlocked features this product comes with.

AMD A8-3870K Black Edition APU Recommended For:

I would like to thank again to AMD for making this review possible!