A10-6800k Crossfire Rig?

[M4GHOST45]

First let me give my rig's specs, for review and go from there.
ASUS A88x-Pro mobo
AMD A10-6800k APU OC'd to 4.5ghz Water cooled
2-Sapphire R9-270 Crossfired stock speeds
16gb of Adata 1600mhz RAM
250gb Samsung EVO SSD

I seem to be experiencing some throttling when running benchmarks, although I never see any temps rise above 60C; CPU usually hovers around 50C and the GPU's around 55-60C. When gaming, I get great framerates, usually above 50-60fps during most games. The lowest being ARMA3, where I only get about 30-40 depending on server load.

I know the APU isn't the best thing out there for the type of setup I have, but its performance is as good as an Athlon X4 760k and nearly as good an X4 860k. I don't really want to change the mobo to an AM3 socket because that would most likely mean upgrading the PSU to handle the xtra current draw from the AM3 processors.

Any suggestions? Comments? Have I reached the pinnacle of what I can expect out of this rig, or am I doing something wrong?

 

[clutchc]

If you want to change cards, the A10-6800K can probably keep up with a R9-280 if you OC the APU a bit. That would probably give you smoother gaming at 1080p than dual 270s.

 

[M4GHOST45]

If you want to change cards, the A10-6800K can probably keep up with a R9-280 if you OC the APU a bit. That would probably give you smoother gaming at 1080p than dual 270s.

I wouldn't have thought that a single R9-280 could out perform two R9-270s, especially considering the Sapphire cards are OC'ed out of the box at specs close to an R9-270x.

Plus my APU is over clocked already at 4.5ghz(stock was 4.1). I have got it to clock stable at 4.83ghz, but I don't see any real performance gains either in gaming or benchmarking.

I guess my biggest concern is whether the APU is throttling and bottlenecking the cards, and if so, then how can I tell?

 

[LucoTF]

I think you're probably experiencing some motherboard throttling while running benchmarks. Are you saying it doesn't happen during gaming?

 

[Rafael Luik]

I guess my biggest concern is whether the APU is throttling and bottlenecking the cards, and if so, then how can I tell?

Easy, you see whether the usage of its cores are hitting ~99% (e.g. via Windows task manager), if all cores are jumping to 99% usage there's a CPU bottleneck. If not all cores are being utilized then it's the program's fault for not utilizing all the power of you processor.
To check whether the bottleneck is on the GPU you can check in the Catalyst Control Center's AMD Overdrive section for example, if they display as ~99% there's a GPU bottleneck.

If none of the two are hitting their max capacity again the software may be the limiting factor, or something else.

With a program like MSI Afterburner you can see both at the same time, temps, etc.

 

[clutchc]

If you want to change cards, the A10-6800K can probably keep up with a R9-280 if you OC the APU a bit. That would probably give you smoother gaming at 1080p than dual 270s.

I wouldn't have thought that a single R9-280 could out perform two R9-270s, especially considering the Sapphire cards are OC'ed out of the box at specs close to an R9-270x.

I didn't say it would out perform the dual cards. I said the gaming experience would be smoother. Dual AMD cards still have some micro-stutter issues that CrossFire Frame Pacing hasn't totally eliminated in all games. And it is more pronounced in mid range cards than in high end cards.

But to answer your other question, I feel the A10-6800K is capable of keeping up with dual 270X's in most games w/o much if any bottle neck.