Curiously, I've been testing games for some time on an HP laptop with an A10-7300 APU (https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Bulldozer/AMD- … 20A10-7300.html), 16gb RAM and a 240gb SSD. And Windows 7 64.
And I was thinking of starting a thread in this regard and since it has already been raised I am not going to make a new one but rather contribute to this one for education.
The GPU built into this APU is this https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon- … -graphics.c2630. It is at the level of a GT 220. The results have surprised me because it has turned out to be very compatible, I have not found graphic errors in any of the games I tried, and quite powerful considering its 19W TDP.
After my tests so far, I would say that you can run all games up to 2005 with high details and at the native resolution of this laptop (1600x900), after that you need to reduce the resolution if you want high details and keep 30FPS.
Games I've been testing...
Games that run smoothly at native 1600x900 resolution and high details, except for antialiasing, which I don't like.
-Sacred original version on DVD.
-Sacred Gold version GOG.
-Divine divinity version GOG.
-Titan Quest original DVD version updated to v1.3.
-Neverwinter Nights Diamond version GOG.
-Half life 2 original version DVD.
-Fable the lost chapters original CD version.
-Shadow of memories original version CD.
-Sudeki version GOG.
-Enclave GOG version
-Planescape storm version GOG.
-Septera core version GOG.
-Legrand legacy version GOG (this case is surprising because on the GOG page it says to require a GT 650, but in the end it has the pre-rendered backgrounds and only the characters are in 3D).
-Maelstrom 2007 Codemasters. (Strategy games aren't my favorite, so I only tried the first mission and maybe with more units as it usually happens with strategy games, it won't be playable at this resolution anymore).
-Final Fantasy VIII remastered Steam version. (I am not going to try more Steam games because the client is disgusting and consumes a lot of resources considering that it is only for playing).
Games that work without problems, but you have to reduce the resolution (I like to go down to 1024x768 which seems to me a good resolution for the time of these games) to keep the 30FPS with high details, this is not a problem because the scaling of the GPU maintaining the aspect ratio is very good and good image quality is maintained with side bands. In the case of a normal 15-inch laptop (mine is 17) that have a typical resolution of 1366x768, the results should be better.
-Prey 2006 original version DVD.
-Oblivion original DVD version.
In some games I made little progress, and surely they would need more tests, but in most I spent hours.
I'm going to keep trying more games, but the problem is that a 240gb SSD fills up easily.
If I don't forget, which happens to me easily, I'll be adding other games that I try.
This is my opinion regarding these processors.
If someone who thinks about buying one of these laptops with AMD APUs before the Zen architecture, don't get too excited because what makes them interesting in my opinion is only the power consumption/graphic performance ratio.
For the laptop that I use, I only paid €30 (although I later expanded it, of course), because this computer is almost useful for many current things, YouTube for example is already slow until the moment you see a video that the GPU starts working. And the Turbo core feature is working, and the laptop reaches 68c max, so it's no an overheating isue or something like that.
The IPC of these APUs was lousy compared to the Intel processors of the same time, being at the level of Celeron or I3 processors according to the benchmarks of the time, but the GPU on the Intel processors of the time was bad, and it was very poorly compatible. If you add a dedicated GPU to an Intel processor from that era, the results should be better, but the power consumption of Intel processors was much higher (Intel liked to hide the real max power draw of its processors, at least back then) and if you add the consumption of the dedicated GPU, the performance/consumption for games is much worse in the case of Intel.
So, nobody got excited and go pay €200 for an A10-5750m with 8gb ram and an SSD...
As a note, I have a special appreciation for AMD because of the long history of AMD computers that I have had, but there are truths that cannot be hidden.