Its' equivalent to Athlon 2 quad core? Dam i didn't know that. I was hoping it would be on par with the Phenom 2.
Is the difference between the 1333 and 1600 really that big?
Considering I'm currently running an Athlon II x4 620 as my primary desktop/gaming system, I can say right off the bat/from experience with other builds that the A8 is faster; it's based off an optimized Phenom II core, and keeps up quite nicely with the Phenom II parts.
As a side note, for the most part I've not run in to too many slowdowns on the Athlon anyways. WiH more or less maxed out (admittedly the initial release) at times made it dip to 15~20 fps, but nothing unbearable
The 1333/1600 split wouldn't be a particularly big issue if it weren't for the GPU portion of the A-series using the same RAM as the CPU. It ends up bandwidth-starving the GPU with only 1333, not letting it work at its full potential.
EDIT: this all with the caveat that the Athlon II x4; while being a solid chip that does a better job than you think it'd do, and matching a Phenom II on many things; falls apart on things that need a lot of CPU Cache.
EDIT II: and the fact that I just noticed it's an A8 3800, not a 3850, which actually makes a significant difference. I that case it more or less matches my Athlon II.