The goal for this project is to upgrade my Asus K55N laptop for gaming. The K55N is based on the AMD APU system which uses a combined CPU and graphics card. These systems can be found for $200 to $300 used on ebay.
The system will be benchmarked using
The graphics card in the APU does not have dedicated RAM, it shares system memory. So it is important to use the fastest system ram you can support. I added a Crucial Ballistix Sport SODIMM 8GB Kit which I estimate will be about 20% faster. This ram is spec at 800mhz 9-9-9-24, but my system decided to run it at 809mhz 9-9-10-24.
I replaced the A8-4500M with an A10-4600M. This A10 is 400mhz faster and has 128 more shader cores than the A8. I tried to use an A10-5750M, this APU is pin compatible with the socket but the display does not work.
There is a great guide to this procedure on Inside my laptop. It will take about an hour.
Base | Memory | APU | Memory and APU | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Valley | 482 | 540 | 577 | 633 |
FF11 | 4662 | 5165 | 5725 | 5502 |
FF14 | 2588 | 2913 | 2729 | 3138 |