"the release of a Kaveri Refresh line of APUs is not going to set the world alight in a miasma of queues outside brick and mortar stores or bundles of pre-orders"
That is one of the weirdest sentences I have ever read in a tech article. WTF does this even *mean*???
Yeah, with the existing Kaveri, one can already overclock past the rated speed of this Godavari chip. GPU set to 950Mhz is wicked. Thats 10% over this chip, still with 512 cores.
If the Kraken and Sunspider test results are correct, they are nonsense... The extra 100 megahertz makes the 7870K 15% slower on Sunspider compared to the 7850K, while it is an equal percent FASTER on Kraken.
Either the test is broken or something very weird is going on - really, this makes no sense. Unless, of course, the variety in the tests is easily +/- 35% but in that case - why even bother running it?
There are reports that this chip throttles back to 1600 MHz quickly after being loaded, only to jump up to a turbo mode for a short time and back to throttling again. This might due to unfinished pre-release bioses, but AMD certainly changed the performance tuning. And applies a mad voltage to this chip.
From what's being said in the forums, stock voltages for these chips are ludicrously high - in the 1.4-1.5V range! - causing all kinds of throttling and other odd behavior. From what's being said there, most Kaveri chips run just fine at stock speeds at~1.2V, so this overvolting is causing some real havoc in the test results. I would love to see AT look into this, at least for a bit, as it could cause some serious differences in both speed add power usage.
The 7850K auto-throttles to 3.0GHz CPU-side whenever iGPU is pulling a lot of watts. It's a known issue that basically can't be fixed, probably because AMD is too paranoid about more ASRock A88X-ITXs blowing up under load. I wouldn't be surprised if the 7870K doesn't suffer from the same thing. The CPU speed boosts are always nonsense with Kaveri; the APU runs into its thermal envelope faster than you can say "throttling".
Maybe AMD should start setting spec for VRM design. VRM design is the one killing AM3+, since MSI clearly doesn't know how to make them properly on that platform. FM2+, being the modern platform, shouldn't even have to address these problems (AMD should have made the necessary precautions), but it must if AMD wants to make any money.
I recieved a Asus crossblade ranger fm2+ and i had to send it back because of the VRM, they burnt my finger as soon as i touched them they were that hot. Plus it kept shutting my computer down even with a desk fan it would be red hot. could be a common problem with these APU's.
I don't see how the conclusions match the test results. In many (arguably the majority) the new chip was bested by at least one other older AMD chip yet the conclusions of each segment pretty much state that the new chip is the clear winner. What?
You are correct. He says "almost all of our graphics tests saw a gain over the previous head of the Kaveri list". This is plainly not true. The test results show that Alien Isolation, Total War Attila and GRID autosport it's slower than 7850K. That's 3 out 5 games where it's slower! and it seems that most of the CPU tests it's slower than older Kavari CPUs.
"I don't see how the conclusions match the test results. In many (arguably the majority) the new chip was bested by at least one other older AMD chip yet the conclusions of each segment pretty much state that the new chip is the clear winner. What?"
Agree 100% !! All I could think of while reading the review was how bad AMD's scaling looked and how the 7870K was dominated by the 7850K. I figured I was going to get to a page somewhere in the review explaining why it trailed the outgoing chip so often and then bam, dat conclusion tho..
I'm not sure it's a good idea for anyone to buy a dual-core CPU nowadays. You're better off spending the extra $20-40 on an i3. The boost to minimum frame rates and basically everything else you do outside of gaming seems well worth it IMO. Generally speaking, that is. Without knowing everything his brother needs/wants to do, it's hard to say.
Twice the cost depends on the pricing on the given day/week. As of TODAY, Microcenter charges $50 ($70 Amazon/Newegg) for the G3258 - arguably the only Pentium worth buying. However, you'd have to buy a more expensive motherboard to get the OC option you need. They charge $100 for the i3-4370, $160 i5-4590, and $200 for the i5-4690K. So as of TODAY, it's twice the price for the CPU alone, but $50 is a small price to pay for the added power. The second you start doing anything multithreaded, the Pentium falls short. Likewise, the minimum framerates on that G3258 are up to 50% lower than an i3. A cheaper Pentium would be even worse. The only way it makes sense is if you only work/play in a single-threaded world.
You don't need an expensive mobo at all. You can easily take the G3258 to 4.2Ghz on an H81M-P33 with the stock cooler. If you even only consider buying the pentium, that means you are on a tight budget. 50$ on a tight budget can be as much as 15% of the whole budget. Of course, if you even have "just" a 600$ budget, then you can very well fit an i5 and a good GPU in there, but it seems to me that this is not the case.
If you really wanted to bring Microcenter into this they have 100 dollar FX 6300 bundles that come with a cheap board, or for 10 bucks more you can move up to a 970 chipset based board. For 120 you can get an FX 8320E with a 970 chipset based board or pay 170 to move up to a 990FX based Gigabyte board. For 110 you can get an a10 7850K with a cheap board or pay 135 to move up to an A88 based board. Basically all around the I3, intro I5, and even pentium dual core price range there are great AMD bundles that you can get from Microcenter. The only problem is they aren't everywhere so it can be difficult to get those deals. They also do have intel bundles like you said, but frankly they kind of suck in comparison.
Horrible value? Son, you might want to check your facts.
The 4M L3 i3s offer little value because one can buy an i5. It's the 3M i3s that make the G3258 look like, well, not a very appealing option.
Overclocking? Sure, it's locked, but tell me, exactly how many more frames is that 4.5GHz Pentium going to net you compared to an i3-4130? About 5 fps? I thought so. On the other hand, what is going to happen to the G3258 in the games are completely unoptimized for it? While the i3-4130 is merrily playing whatever game is at hand, the G3258 is struggling with stuttering, lag, and other issues, if it even successfully runs at all.
Son?? Who the hell are you?!? For the same price, an fx6300 STOMPS an i3 in most cases. The i3 is a bit better than the pentium of course, but the doubled price makes it a bad choice for budget builds, and if budget isn't a major concern, just 60$ more grant you an i5, wich totally CRUSHES an i3.
The 260X (and radeon GPUs in general) don't do well with dual cores, as proven by digital foundry. It looks like their DX11 drivers are having problems. You could go i5 + 260X for just a bit more than i3 + 750ti, and have way better performance.
There are no separate integer and floating point threads. AMD's 870K can run four threads, end of story. It has four 128-bit FMAC's, so I don't see your point.
Try playing crysis 3 or any game with actually suffer with a 2 core cpu (worse without ht). Crysis 3 on pentium are a nice stop motion experience, 4 secs of game then half a second of stutter.
Games like that are a lag fest on an 860k too, wich is pretty much the same as this APU's CPU. If you wanna play that kind of games, you don't even think about a 400$ budget build.
Pls check the spanish website noticias3d, 860/870K are fine for crysis 3 you wont suffer any kind of lag, just lower fps vs more expensive cpu's either AMD/Intel quadcore.
They are not at all even. In the original G3258 tests it was shown that the G3258 lost to a 760k Athlon in most gaming tests. Only exceeding it by a couple FPS in single threaded games. Its really a pretty horrible chip.
Where did you get that information? No, you don't need a quad core CPU to play FC3. I played it on an Athlon 64 x2, and it's pretty playable (with HD7850).
Honestly, with DirectX12 coming out, a dual core probably won't cut it in the future. The GTX 750 is a better investment. If asynchronous dual graphics that's vendor-neutral becomes a thing, the GPU part of the APU could work with the GTX 750 to render stuff, although if cost is a factor, a 7870K is good enough for 30fps 720 to 1080p gaming (although 720p to 900p is more reasonable imho) by itself without a dedicated GPU.
Although why would u want to go the Nvidia route if you have an APU? Why would you want to do dual vendor? The 750 isnt a good value so it only makes sense in applications that need to have a power sipping GPU.
The suggestion of getting a stand-alone budget CPU and a GPU is sound but your recommendation for GTX750 is not. That line is garbage for games for the price.
R9 270X costs $125 USD and is 44% faster than a GTX750Ti, which means > 50% faster than GTX750. If gaming is the primary consideration on a budget, under no circumstances should a budget gamer pick a 750/750Ti over the nearly 50% faster $125 270X: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
2 haswell cores are just as fast as 2 steamroller modules (wich, i remind, aren't really 4 actual "cores") in multithreaded tasks, and the pentium is MUCH better in single threaded tasks. As for the GPU, the 750 is way better than the APU's iGPU. It's either a tie or a win for my combo in 90% of the situations.
You'll see. The issues with dual cores crop up when those two cores somehow get maxed out or one of them maxes out. 2 cores + 2 virtual cores just has better overhead when one of them gets maxed out.
An APU dooesn't have virtual cores. Maybe you are confusing their design with intel's hyperthreading. basically, an APU module is composed of 2 ALUs but only one FPU, so a dual module APU, like this one, does ok in ALU heavy workloads but just fails in FPU heavy ones. And if a workload can "max out" 2 haswell cores, it sure as hell will kill 2 steamroller modules in almost all cases. With the pentium you have equal multi thread performance and better single thread performance, as well as a better GPU.
Try crysis 3 on the pentium and the 870K, use the same dedicated gpu 750, 260, 980ti is you want. With just 2 cores youll get an stutter festival, IPC means nothing when the game actually demand core resources.
Outside of CPU results the Gaming results are all over the place. The 7700k beats out the 7870k sometimes and the APUs beat our the i5 at times. There is so much difference between games at the low end it's ridiculous.
Outside of some results I think the 7870K gpu boost is bottlenecked by DDR3 bandwith, how about testing the 7850K/7870K both with 2133 and 2400/2600 DDR3.
Great review, great coverage. I've been looking over the smorgasbord of leaks for the past few weeks wondering what is real and what is fake. Thanks for your high standards in tech reporting.
Clearly there is something wrong, since a supposedly faster chip comes in slower on many benchmarks. Sunspider being the most egregious offender. Perhaps the instructions used in the sunspider benchmark cost a lot of power, which leads to even more pronounced throttling. At any rate, why is this throttling not mentioned in the article? What about the crazy high stock voltages? Very disappointing to say the least.
Ehh, HD7770 has 25% more shaders than Kaveri, faster clock, and better bandwidth. So I would expect about 50% faster than Kaveri, and GTX750 (non-Ti) is still faster than HD7770. So 750 non-Ti is still a vast improvement over the igpu of Kaveri. If you are really budget limited and dont want a non-HT dual core, the Athlon X4 860k plus HD7770 or GTX750 will give far superior performance to an APU. Despite the repeated arguments in the gpu forums by AMD fans, you have to work really hard to construct a scenario in which an APU makes sense for gaming compared to a cheap cpu (pentuim, Athlon X4, or FX 6300) plus a hundred dollar discrete card.
Right. There are lower levels than the 750Ti. But it's always worth it and best to pay extra for 750Ti version. Because it's got a *significantly* better (non-marginal) price / performance ratio over the lower slots of GTX 750, 740, or 730. Making the 750Ti always best value choice amongst those.
AMD APU only makes sense for certain low-to-midrange mobo upgrades. E.g. just upgrading only the mobo+CPU only. And regardless of that possibility the AMD is never going to be as power performant (the TDPs). Which does still matter, the fan noise, case thermals, throttling etc.
The more other components you upgrade at same time (e.g. PSU, case, monitor etc). Then the less money is being saved with APU route = diminishing returns. And it's really not typical to 'just upgrade only the mobo+cpu' without also replacing other components too. Often monitor, storage, ram. So most times that puts all of these AMD APUs in some kind of a general 'grey area'. And that's being nice about it, ignoring both the higher TDP and also the poorer single-threaded performance.
I completely agree that APUs make little sense for gaming at their current prices. I got an R7 260x for $90 and an athlon x4 750k for $75. This comes to a total of $165 for cpu/gpu whereas the kaveri apus at were I think $120 for much worse gaming performance. I also didn't need to worry very much about the speed of my RAM. I went with a single 4 GB stick of DDR3 1600 which allows me to upgrade to 8GB later by dropping in another stick. Had I gone with an APU, I would have had to go with dual channel which would make me decide between being stuck with 4GB or spending another $40 to get 8 GB. The RAM also would have cost more to get 2133 or 2400 RAM. I also was able to get the motherboard for $25 because they were clearing out FM2 motherboards. So I was able to get a better PC for likely the same price as a kaveri APU based build, but with much better performance. For laptops however, they might make sense. Another way they might make sense now is if you don't plan on overclocking, you might spend the extra $10 to go from an Athlon x4 to an a8 7600 hoping that DirectX 12 will be able to offload some stuff to the APU's GPU and improve performance, but I don't think that it is worth it especially if you would need to buy faster RAM when you could simply jump up to the next level of GPU for guaranteed better performance.
With Intel having 83% share of the desktop, 93% in desktops, and NVidia with 76% share of the discrete GPU graphics, AMD is finding out that price/performance is not working for them. Yes, this is low cost and has good internal graphics but is it enough to even slow down the Intel/NVidia juggernauts? AMD needs to do better, but time and it's abysmal low amount of spending on R&D is not going to get it there.
FX 8320E is the best bang for the buck, especially from Microcenter. Pair it with a halfway decent cooler and you're good to go. If they're going to put in a $200+ Intel i5, why not put in a $100 FX with a discreet GPU? You could get the processor, a cooler, and a discreet GPU for the same price as that i5.
In fact, if you're doing single or low threaded gaming you can set that chip to "one core per module" in the BIOS of a motherboard like the UD3P and overclock to a much higher speed on a moderately effective cooler.
The processor selection employed for this article makes it look like you have to go with Intel for inexpensive performance in professional workloads, by noticeably excluding FX. While FX doesn't beat Intel in everything, for $100 (the cost of an 8320E at Microcenter, ignoring the additional $40 off a motherboard) it's going to kill the Intel chips here for value, as well as the APUs most likely.
It also just occurred to me that review sites like this one always overclock to extremes when they review FX. Anandtech overclocked their 8320E to 4.8 GHz at 1.55 volts. What good is that result for practical users? You need a custom water loop for ridiculous voltage like that.
Anandtech should instead overclock the chip to sane level (low voltage) that an inexpensive cooler like the EVO can handle at reasonable noise levels. You can get around 4.2 GHz with a fully loaded chip and higher with "one module per core" set. Reasonable overclocking also doesn't require tons of case cooling, exotic things like fans behind the socket, and fancy motherboards.
If Anandtech is going to present their benchmark charts with processor pricing they should at least try to make those charts informative and comprehensive enough to not give people the wrong general impression. The impression one gets from these charts in that, aside from a few gaming benchmarks, one's only solution for a general-purpose chip (capable of professional workloads as well as games) is an Intel.
1.4 is a lot more voltage than the 1.28 or so needed for around 4.2 on an 8320E. Trying to get Prime stability with an 8 core at 1.4V requires much better cooling.
Your words are sage indeed sir. Reading them in 2019 it is clear how right you are. Of course your suggested combo is better buying for gaming performance.
The best bang for the buck in AMD's portofolio is the 8300. Yes, you've read that right, 8300. Same TPD as the 8320E with some frequencies, same overclock capabilities and for 20% cheaper. It's only slightly more than an FX 6300.
What is the BIOS version being used? And what was the voltage?
According to CPU World there might be heavy throttling with a somewhat older BIOS. The newer version fixes the problems: "Update (May 31): Throttling problem was fixed by upgrading to P2.60 BIOS. Thanks to Roger Harshman for the hint! The processor is stable now, and runs CPU benchmarks and games without throttling and lockups. By the way, new BIOS sets lower core voltage, close to 1.45V."
No, it has the same number of shaders as the 7750, but lower clocks, less bandwidth, and a limited thermal envelope. I don't know why you think it should be as fast as the 7750.
Nope. GDDR5 is immensely better than any DDR3 on the planet, plus the APU has to throttle back due to the TDP constraints. NO WAY it will reach a 7750. the newer architecture isn't much faster, the main improvement are the added features.
You last tested AMD A6-A10 using both Starswarm and #dMark API Overhead test.
When you pulished those results it was determined that all AMD APU's A6-A10 outperform Inteel i3, i5 and i7 by 100% in drawcalls and frames per second.
What was the 3dMark API Overhead for A10-7870K?
How did it perform using Starswarm?
You have those benchmarks why didn't you present them here?
When I spend money I would like to know how the silicon will perform on using high performance software.
Ignoring the impact of DX12 is absurd,
Any new systems with AMD A10-7870K will be Windows 10 and the gaming will be either with Mantle or DX12.
Users will tolerate DX11 only until the legacy games get ported to a better API.
What games do you suggest he test with DX12? Oh wait, there arent any. The few games tested with mantle showed minimal gains with an APU in real gaming preformance, not some artificial benchmark.
Back in the day the idea of a 95 watt part didn't even make me blink twice. 'Like having a light-bulb on", I thought. Now - in the age of LED light-bulbs it makes me wince. The thought of it feels like leaving a faucet on with all the electricity running out, draining the well. LOL. Whatever the reason and how ever logical I simply wouldn't buy a 95 watt part today for general use. What is the point with so many parts pulling a fraction of that and perfectly able to handle day-to-day chores?
-You and your family will use a towel not a hair dryer -You and your family will use bycicle, public transportation or simply walk (check nederlands) -Implies no car.
My biggest energy usage is definitely climate control. I've switched to LED lightbulbs, and in my kitchen which was a flourescent grid, I'm using an LED rope light. But I have an 80,000 BTU natural gas heater, and 2000 watts worth of air conditioning. Those aren't on constantly since they use a thermostat, but the bulk of my utility bill is definitely represented there. My PVR computer is on 24 hours a day, but probably only represents a couple of dollars of energy usage.
You can use that money to get a refurb EVGA 750 Ti 2 GB from Newegg and have three dollars and 80 cents left over to get an extra 120mm fan for your EVO cooler (which you would get with either processor... no one should use a stock cooler).
Since that AMD processor and motherboard easily overclock to around 4.2 GHz on low voltage (1.27 - 1.3) with a moderate-quality cooler it would be very interesting to see the results in this article coupled with that "free" 750 Ti. Also, one can set the chip to "one core per module" in the BIOS of that motherboard in order to get much higher overclocks (higher voltage but much less heat output) for poorly-threaded applications like most games, which helps a bit to let the chip hang in there with an Intel i5, although you'll likely be GPU bound with a 750 Ti anyway.
Even if you decide to use the stock cooler for the Intel you're still saving some money with the AMD combo -- unless you are going to pair your chip with an expensive GPU.
I have an HTPC in a tiny case (mini ITX and only a couple inches tall), powered by an A8-7600. For the price, form factor, and versatility (allows midrange gaming), I feel it was a really good choice.
That said, I'm a little bit disappointed in this release, not so much because it's beaten in CPU benchmarks by a more expensive Intel that requires a larger case for a decent GPU, but because the 7870 isn't much faster than the A8-7600. It's more expensive and uses twice the power. (The A8-7600 has a 45W mode. It idles at less than 20 watts and peaks at about 60 watts for the whole system with an SSD.)
Like others have said, I would love an FM2+ Carrizo. Hopefully that would bring noticeably higher performance at the 45W level.
This isn't for me, but it seems like these APUs are growing better more quickly than any other CPU or GPU section. Power consumption is a bit high, but if you don't have a dedicated graphics card it definitely manageable.
My biggest concern is the slow ram for graphics. This is tested on 2133 ram but the target audience for this will have 1333 or 1600... I'd like to know how much performance changes then.
But it's pretty impressive for the price, and it should suit people who do web browsing, Netflix and light gaming extremely well.
I'm running 2133 on my A8-7600 HTPC. It was only about $10 extra for 4 GB. If the target audience is running 1333 or 1600, it's because they didn't know any better. IMO.
Many recent UEFI versions showing "support for Godavari/Kaveri refresh" overvolt the hell out of these chips. It's no wonder they were showing 117W draw. Some of these UEFI revisions are pushing 1.45v OR MORE!
Older Kaveri chips (KA-V1) can do 3.9 ghz with only 1.2v on average. Newer ones (GV-A1; 7870k, 7670k, OEM 8500B) should be able to do it with less. There is NO WAY anyone should be pushing this kind of voltage. Some reviews have shown throttling to 1.6 GHz from the board/cpu being overloaded by sheer heat/power draw from these insane voltages (cpu-world, which updated their results with a new UEFI revision that backed voltage off to "only" 1.45v).
There is obviously more work that needs to be done to bring voltage numbers down for stock and the various turbo states supported by this chip, as well as other Kaveri variants. In the meantime, anyone buying this chip should expect it to turn in better results than the 7850k AND do it with less voltage at the same clockspeed (or the same voltage for slightly higher clocks). Just tweak the voltages manually in the UEFI and things should work great.
AMD seems to have the stock voltages too high a lot of times. My Athlon x4 750k with default settings goes up to 1.45 V for the 4 Ghz turbo boost, but it is perfectly stable at 1.29V and possibly lower. I had to lower the voltage because the temperatures were too high under load with the stock cooler.
Something is seriously wrong with these numbers. The ordering of the AMD parts seems to be effectively random in many cases. What the hell happened?
And the conclusions drawn make no reference to the crazy numbers. I'm a big fan of anandtech's reporting, but I'm sorry to say this article is just about useless as is.
The board in question isn't the same as the one that CPU World used (ASRock FM2A88M Extreme4+). Unless AMD made a large boo-boo pre-release that would affect multiple vendors' BIOS updates, I can't see this affecting the results too much. It may be worth testing on that ASRock board to see what a patched board will do, or perhaps throwing a 7850K into the MSI board to see if the board itself is to blame. It's likely the higher Kaveri models, but the power usage looks rather off as well so it could be the board.
I'm waiting on another review which can hopefully shed some light on the performance issues we've been seeing. Perhaps it was really only AT's sample that was causing issues?
I find it interesting that even with a R9 285 or GTX 770 you are quite often GPU bound (at 1080p) rather than CPU bound. If your only concern is gaming (like mine, and likely most here) it reinforces that low(ish) end CPU + high(ish) GPU is best for price-performance. Seems odd you can have such a low performance CPU with such a high performance GPU.
Yeah this is what makes AMD chips great options for gamers right now. Very similar performance for much cheaper with a good discrete GPU, and much better performance with integrated GPU.
It's not really odd at all, it's the way it has always been for *most* contemporary games and GPUs. Some games do have some 'balance' toward CPUs as well but GPU is still the major player in game performance. Three cores (remember Athlon-II X3?) or two cores plus hyper threading, and clock around 3Ghz or faster (depending on what CPU it is) is enough CPU for most modern games. And, unless you are aiming for really high framerates in SLI/Crossfire, PCI-e 1.1 x16 is also enough for single-card gaming. These things have been proven time and time again, yet lots of people like to talk about or imagine "bottlenecks" that just don't exist.
You can have a R9 280X or GTX 770 on a Yorkfield C2Q and not really be too worse for wear in gaming other than high power consumption/heat, particularly if you're only looking for 60FPS. You'll still have 80-95% of the FPS performance of a modern i5 and the same GPU in most games and if that performance is otherwise in the 100s and you only need 60 Vsync, then the add'l CPU power is doing nothing for you.
Going from a C2D to a C2Q to an i7 all on the same GPU, I can tell you the biggest jump in performance in gaming, came from going from the C2D to the C2Q. Sure a Haswell i7 is going to give some better frame rates than a Clarkdale i3 and the same GPU, but it's not going to be any spectacular leap and if you're not trying to squeeze 130FPS from where you were getting 110FPS previously, you don't care about a faster CPU. And even then you are better off OCing your GPU first, again for most games.
All you really need for decent 60FPS gaming is a fast GPU(s) (fast enough for the res and settings you want to play at) and any ol CPU that is 3 cores/threads or more and a decent clock rate. Not really much more to it than that.
Ian is English, which means his vocabulary, even if he were only a typical Brit, is about 6 times the size of most Americans. A 'queue' is a line-up. A 'miasma' is a noxious atmosphere or influence. I often think, as a Canadian of British descent, the Americans would have been much better off in a myriad of ways if they'd simply lost the Revolutionary War. They'd likely have universal healthcare, about ~50,000 fewer gun deaths every year, and much bigger vocabularies. They'd also be able to read a grade 9 level English CPU review without having to ask 'WTF' it means.
Dual-core CPUs are dead men walking for gaming. If you've already got one, fine, you'll have to upgrade very soon. But recommending buying a dual-core chip NOW is uttery unconsionable, unless it's for your grandmother to play solitaire. The damn thing will choke just running windows and a web browser these days.
@RafaelHershel: "Less power means less heat and less noise. It also means better performance in a (very) small case. It also means a more modest PSU."
But it's a question of proportion. How much money do you think you're saving in electricity by paying a lot more for an Intel processor? Check this out:
Not to mention in buying Intel and nVidia, you're supporting two companies with proven track records of ripping off customers, but please go right ahead and blithely do it.
Why use a 4 years old linux distribution, it's even older than most of the hardware being benchmarked? And running it live it's not ideal too, but for the purpose of intra-comparison it's not that relevant, I guess.
I still don't understand why the Dual Graphics tests are not including Frame-Time Variance numbers/charts. It's one thing to have nice FPS from Dual Graphics but if the FTV is bad enough that it makes it no better than being on the solo-card (or the APU solo) then those numbers quickly become meaningless. Anandtech has commented on dual-GPU FTV stuff before, so I'm puzzled as to why it's not even mentioned as even a possible concern here with the Dual Graphics tests of the last few AMD APUs.
totally, off the track. Why is that AMD architectures are named after Indian rivers? Kaveri and Godavari are rivers in south India. I am not sure if earlier "Bima" refers to Bhima (indian again) mythological character.
Sorry but 30fps at low settings and 720p is not what I would consider gaming capable! These APU's are just a waste of money! You can buy a X4 860K CPU and a old R7 260 for about the same price and actually be able to game!
I am presently running the A 5800 k APU for a couple + years and have waited a few cycles here and will take the plunge for this new chip. I presently OC to 5600 with an H-105 pushpull at about 36 degrees under load and it will be interesting to see the difference in performance and operation. I suspect this will improve my experience until my next build I7 or Zeons with ECC.
The new APU is much stronger and faster than my A 5800 k. It is clocked at4400 which is slower however it is much faster for the normal office and light gaming. I can now do intensive rendering, watch and record HD video and surf the web at the same time. It stays under 30 degrees, doesn't slow down and hasn't crashed at all. I'm running the latest Insider 2010. It is a welcome addition and has increased my productivity by about double overall.
the APU stuff is great for laptops, gimme gimme, but i don't see a good case for AM1 or FM2+. flexible upgrade path - no / cheap ECC - no / good IPC - no / good TDP - no / many cpu cores - no / low price - no. its especially unfortunate AMD has abandoned ECC. regardless of all the groaning over IPC, the bang4buck was pretty solid on AM2>AM3+
Honestly, I wouldn't buy any video card in addition to any AMD APU. For me, gaming performance of my build is irrelevant since I don't like playing games. So if you are not going to do that (or use Adobe Photoshop for photo editing) then forget about Intel. APUs are good enough on power consumption and performance for simple home tasks. The only issue is that AMD doesn't really develop its processors. Which is a shame since they could give us impressive stuff. http://hardware.nl/amd/ad7600ybjabox.html - less than a 100, but performance wise, it will work fine.
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bji - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
"the release of a Kaveri Refresh line of APUs is not going to set the world alight in a miasma of queues outside brick and mortar stores or bundles of pre-orders"That is one of the weirdest sentences I have ever read in a tech article. WTF does this even *mean*???
Tegeril - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
~"People wont be lining up around the world to buy them when they are released"Set the world alight - suggests attracting lots of attention to something
Miasma of queues - oppressive lines
CZroe - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
"Miasma" implies formless emanations, like multiple lines snaking together to/from a dynamic mass (crowd).nikaldro - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Long story short : nobody will get their ass all excited about thisfteoath64 - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Yeah, with the existing Kaveri, one can already overclock past the rated speed of this Godavari chip. GPU set to 950Mhz is wicked. Thats 10% over this chip, still with 512 cores.ggathagan - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Well, if that remains consistent, then Godavari should be able to overclock the GPU to 1142MHz.Even more wicked...
Ken_g6 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Basically, the response to this release won't be like the response to the release of a new iPhone.merikafyeah - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Essentially, panties will remain dry.stephenbrooks - Saturday, June 6, 2015 - link
Come for the reviews, stay for the odd phrasing.jospoortvliet - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
If the Kraken and Sunspider test results are correct, they are nonsense... The extra 100 megahertz makes the 7870K 15% slower on Sunspider compared to the 7850K, while it is an equal percent FASTER on Kraken.Either the test is broken or something very weird is going on - really, this makes no sense. Unless, of course, the variety in the tests is easily +/- 35% but in that case - why even bother running it?
MrSpadge - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
There are reports that this chip throttles back to 1600 MHz quickly after being loaded, only to jump up to a turbo mode for a short time and back to throttling again. This might due to unfinished pre-release bioses, but AMD certainly changed the performance tuning. And applies a mad voltage to this chip.silverblue - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Apparently, it was an early BIOS that caused the throttling, and as such has now been fixed.Valantar - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
From what's being said in the forums, stock voltages for these chips are ludicrously high - in the 1.4-1.5V range! - causing all kinds of throttling and other odd behavior. From what's being said there, most Kaveri chips run just fine at stock speeds at~1.2V, so this overvolting is causing some real havoc in the test results. I would love to see AT look into this, at least for a bit, as it could cause some serious differences in both speed add power usage.tabascosauz - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
The 7850K auto-throttles to 3.0GHz CPU-side whenever iGPU is pulling a lot of watts. It's a known issue that basically can't be fixed, probably because AMD is too paranoid about more ASRock A88X-ITXs blowing up under load. I wouldn't be surprised if the 7870K doesn't suffer from the same thing. The CPU speed boosts are always nonsense with Kaveri; the APU runs into its thermal envelope faster than you can say "throttling".Maybe AMD should start setting spec for VRM design. VRM design is the one killing AM3+, since MSI clearly doesn't know how to make them properly on that platform. FM2+, being the modern platform, shouldn't even have to address these problems (AMD should have made the necessary precautions), but it must if AMD wants to make any money.
Hobbitter - Friday, June 5, 2015 - link
I recieved a Asus crossblade ranger fm2+ and i had to send it back because of the VRM, they burnt my finger as soon as i touched them they were that hot. Plus it kept shutting my computer down even with a desk fan it would be red hot. could be a common problem with these APU's.Gigaplex - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
I don't see how the conclusions match the test results. In many (arguably the majority) the new chip was bested by at least one other older AMD chip yet the conclusions of each segment pretty much state that the new chip is the clear winner. What?lefty2 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
You are correct. He says "almost all of our graphics tests saw a gain over the previous head of the Kaveri list".This is plainly not true. The test results show that Alien Isolation, Total War Attila and GRID autosport it's slower than 7850K. That's 3 out 5 games where it's slower! and it seems that most of the CPU tests it's slower than older Kavari CPUs.
jeffrey - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
"I don't see how the conclusions match the test results. In many (arguably the majority) the new chip was bested by at least one other older AMD chip yet the conclusions of each segment pretty much state that the new chip is the clear winner. What?"Agree 100% !! All I could think of while reading the review was how bad AMD's scaling looked and how the 7870K was dominated by the 7850K. I figured I was going to get to a page somewhere in the review explaining why it trailed the outgoing chip so often and then bam, dat conclusion tho..
FriendlyUser - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Thanks for the review guys, much appreciated as I am considering one for my brother.nikaldro - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
You're better of with a pentium + GTX750 in most casesnathanddrews - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
I'm not sure it's a good idea for anyone to buy a dual-core CPU nowadays. You're better off spending the extra $20-40 on an i3. The boost to minimum frame rates and basically everything else you do outside of gaming seems well worth it IMO. Generally speaking, that is. Without knowing everything his brother needs/wants to do, it's hard to say.nikaldro - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
20-40$An i3 costs TWICE as much as a pentium.
i3s offer horrible value, considering that i5s go for as low as 160$.
nathanddrews - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Twice the cost depends on the pricing on the given day/week. As of TODAY, Microcenter charges $50 ($70 Amazon/Newegg) for the G3258 - arguably the only Pentium worth buying. However, you'd have to buy a more expensive motherboard to get the OC option you need. They charge $100 for the i3-4370, $160 i5-4590, and $200 for the i5-4690K. So as of TODAY, it's twice the price for the CPU alone, but $50 is a small price to pay for the added power. The second you start doing anything multithreaded, the Pentium falls short. Likewise, the minimum framerates on that G3258 are up to 50% lower than an i3. A cheaper Pentium would be even worse. The only way it makes sense is if you only work/play in a single-threaded world.nikaldro - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
You don't need an expensive mobo at all.You can easily take the G3258 to 4.2Ghz on an H81M-P33 with the stock cooler.
If you even only consider buying the pentium, that means you are on a tight budget. 50$ on a tight budget can be as much as 15% of the whole budget.
Of course, if you even have "just" a 600$ budget, then you can very well fit an i5 and a good GPU in there, but it seems to me that this is not the case.
artk2219 - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
If you really wanted to bring Microcenter into this they have 100 dollar FX 6300 bundles that come with a cheap board, or for 10 bucks more you can move up to a 970 chipset based board. For 120 you can get an FX 8320E with a 970 chipset based board or pay 170 to move up to a 990FX based Gigabyte board. For 110 you can get an a10 7850K with a cheap board or pay 135 to move up to an A88 based board. Basically all around the I3, intro I5, and even pentium dual core price range there are great AMD bundles that you can get from Microcenter. The only problem is they aren't everywhere so it can be difficult to get those deals. They also do have intel bundles like you said, but frankly they kind of suck in comparison.http://www.microcenter.com/site/products/amd_bundl...
http://www.microcenter.com/site/brands/intel-proce...
tabascosauz - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Horrible value? Son, you might want to check your facts.The 4M L3 i3s offer little value because one can buy an i5. It's the 3M i3s that make the G3258 look like, well, not a very appealing option.
Overclocking? Sure, it's locked, but tell me, exactly how many more frames is that 4.5GHz Pentium going to net you compared to an i3-4130? About 5 fps? I thought so. On the other hand, what is going to happen to the G3258 in the games are completely unoptimized for it? While the i3-4130 is merrily playing whatever game is at hand, the G3258 is struggling with stuttering, lag, and other issues, if it even successfully runs at all.
nikaldro - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Son?? Who the hell are you?!?For the same price, an fx6300 STOMPS an i3 in most cases.
The i3 is a bit better than the pentium of course, but the doubled price makes it a bad choice for budget builds, and if budget isn't a major concern, just 60$ more grant you an i5, wich totally CRUSHES an i3.
Lolimaster - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
The cheapo gaming way with a dedicated gpu is the Athlon 870K (quad core).AS118 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
I've got to agree with that. The 860K's not bad either.Lolimaster - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Steamroller offers better performance than piledriver on modern games. It also destroys piledriver in emulation (dolphin for example).nikaldro - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Both the 860k and the 870k are steamroller CPUs.They're pretty much the same.
Cryio - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Yep.Either 750 Ti and a 860K OR
260X and an i3.
Same performance, same cost.
nikaldro - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
The 260X (and radeon GPUs in general) don't do well with dual cores, as proven by digital foundry. It looks like their DX11 drivers are having problems.You could go i5 + 260X for just a bit more than i3 + 750ti, and have way better performance.
msroadkill612 - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
Would such cpu only processors be any faster than the equivalent APU?ie. - are there any performance or other downsides to having the integrated gpu?
as in, if you had an apu anyway, are there advantages for a dgpu rig to swap processors?
rtho782 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
But this is a dual core. A dual core with CMT, which even AMD admits has failed and is dumping for Zen.It can only run two floating point threads.
MrMilli - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
There are no separate integer and floating point threads. AMD's 870K can run four threads, end of story. It has four 128-bit FMAC's, so I don't see your point.nikaldro - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
The point is, the 860k has 4 ALUs but only 2 FPUs.Jimster480 - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
It has 4 128-bit FMAC's (FPU's) which can combine to make 2 256b FPU's.It can process 4 normal floating point threads or 2 AVX threads.
Lolimaster - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Try playing crysis 3 or any game with actually suffer with a 2 core cpu (worse without ht). Crysis 3 on pentium are a nice stop motion experience, 4 secs of game then half a second of stutter.nikaldro - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Games like that are a lag fest on an 860k too, wich is pretty much the same as this APU's CPU.If you wanna play that kind of games, you don't even think about a 400$ budget build.
Lolimaster - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Pls check the spanish website noticias3d, 860/870K are fine for crysis 3 you wont suffer any kind of lag, just lower fps vs more expensive cpu's either AMD/Intel quadcore.nikaldro - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Lower FPS = lag. It may be a bit better in this single case, but they're generally about even.Jimster480 - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
They are not at all even. In the original G3258 tests it was shown that the G3258 lost to a 760k Athlon in most gaming tests. Only exceeding it by a couple FPS in single threaded games. Its really a pretty horrible chip.nikaldro - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
The results i saw were quite the opposite.Jimster480 - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
The 860k doesn't lag in Cyrsis 3. They have 4 threads and all modern instruction sets. The G3258 does not.nikaldro - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
4 threads with low IPC, and it costs more.Margalus - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
or far cry 3, which won't even start without a quad core. It is mandatory to have a quad core if you want to play that one.geekman1024 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Where did you get that information? No, you don't need a quad core CPU to play FC3. I played it on an Athlon 64 x2, and it's pretty playable (with HD7850).Neither did the recommended PC spec demanding a quad core CPU.
http://far-cry.ubi.com/fc-portal/en-gb/community/d...
Cryio - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
He obviously wanted to type FC4. That one only accepts quads.AS118 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Honestly, with DirectX12 coming out, a dual core probably won't cut it in the future. The GTX 750 is a better investment. If asynchronous dual graphics that's vendor-neutral becomes a thing, the GPU part of the APU could work with the GTX 750 to render stuff, although if cost is a factor, a 7870K is good enough for 30fps 720 to 1080p gaming (although 720p to 900p is more reasonable imho) by itself without a dedicated GPU.Jimster480 - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Although why would u want to go the Nvidia route if you have an APU? Why would you want to do dual vendor? The 750 isnt a good value so it only makes sense in applications that need to have a power sipping GPU.RussianSensation - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
The suggestion of getting a stand-alone budget CPU and a GPU is sound but your recommendation for GTX750 is not. That line is garbage for games for the price.R9 270X costs $125 USD and is 44% faster than a GTX750Ti, which means > 50% faster than GTX750. If gaming is the primary consideration on a budget, under no circumstances should a budget gamer pick a 750/750Ti over the nearly 50% faster $125 270X:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Benchmarks:
http://www.computerbase.de/2015-05/grafikkarten-17...
nikaldro - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
I know that, but apparently the 260 and 270 line simply don't work well with intel dual cores, as digital foundry found out.meacupla - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
After playing around with a Pentium G3258, I can clearly say that you're better off with 4 cores, even if 2 of them are virtual.There are now plenty of programs and games that will use up more than 1 thread.
nikaldro - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
2 haswell cores are just as fast as 2 steamroller modules (wich, i remind, aren't really 4 actual "cores") in multithreaded tasks, and the pentium is MUCH better in single threaded tasks.As for the GPU, the 750 is way better than the APU's iGPU.
It's either a tie or a win for my combo in 90% of the situations.
meacupla - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
You'll see. The issues with dual cores crop up when those two cores somehow get maxed out or one of them maxes out. 2 cores + 2 virtual cores just has better overhead when one of them gets maxed out.nikaldro - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
An APU dooesn't have virtual cores. Maybe you are confusing their design with intel's hyperthreading.basically, an APU module is composed of 2 ALUs but only one FPU, so a dual module APU, like this one, does ok in ALU heavy workloads but just fails in FPU heavy ones.
And if a workload can "max out" 2 haswell cores, it sure as hell will kill 2 steamroller modules in almost all cases.
With the pentium you have equal multi thread performance and better single thread performance, as well as a better GPU.
Lolimaster - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Try crysis 3 on the pentium and the 870K, use the same dedicated gpu 750, 260, 980ti is you want. With just 2 cores youll get an stutter festival, IPC means nothing when the game actually demand core resources.nikaldro - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
IPC IS core resources.If core count was all that mattered, we'd use ARM octacores.
silverblue - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
...or AMD FX 8xxx CPUs. Sadly, reality is a mixture of IPC and core count.nikaldro - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
"IT'S CORE COUNT I TELL YOU!!! NOW GO AND BUY THAT XEON E7! GREAT VALUE!!!!"Crunchy005 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Outside of CPU results the Gaming results are all over the place. The 7700k beats out the 7870k sometimes and the APUs beat our the i5 at times. There is so much difference between games at the low end it's ridiculous.Lolimaster - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Outside of some results I think the 7870K gpu boost is bottlenecked by DDR3 bandwith, how about testing the 7850K/7870K both with 2133 and 2400/2600 DDR3.Pissedoffyouth - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Sorry to be a pain, but I think you meant GDDR5 rather than GDDR3 on the first page.LarsBars - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Great review, great coverage. I've been looking over the smorgasbord of leaks for the past few weeks wondering what is real and what is fake. Thanks for your high standards in tech reporting.Shadowmaster625 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Clearly there is something wrong, since a supposedly faster chip comes in slower on many benchmarks. Sunspider being the most egregious offender. Perhaps the instructions used in the sunspider benchmark cost a lot of power, which leads to even more pronounced throttling. At any rate, why is this throttling not mentioned in the article? What about the crazy high stock voltages? Very disappointing to say the least.dreamcat4 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Regardless of the CPU it's the GTX 750ti you want and not the plain GTX 750.Also - there's no big issue to buy the Pentium if the CPU is socketed LGA1150. Then you can always upgrade it later on to something better / faster.
nikaldro - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Pentium + 750ti would cost quite a bit more than the APU, even considering a cheap H81 mobofrozentundra123456 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Ehh, HD7770 has 25% more shaders than Kaveri, faster clock, and better bandwidth. So I would expect about 50% faster than Kaveri, and GTX750 (non-Ti) is still faster than HD7770. So 750 non-Ti is still a vast improvement over the igpu of Kaveri. If you are really budget limited and dont want a non-HT dual core, the Athlon X4 860k plus HD7770 or GTX750 will give far superior performance to an APU. Despite the repeated arguments in the gpu forums by AMD fans, you have to work really hard to construct a scenario in which an APU makes sense for gaming compared to a cheap cpu (pentuim, Athlon X4, or FX 6300) plus a hundred dollar discrete card.dreamcat4 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Right. There are lower levels than the 750Ti. But it's always worth it and best to pay extra for 750Ti version. Because it's got a *significantly* better (non-marginal) price / performance ratio over the lower slots of GTX 750, 740, or 730. Making the 750Ti always best value choice amongst those.AMD APU only makes sense for certain low-to-midrange mobo upgrades. E.g. just upgrading only the mobo+CPU only. And regardless of that possibility the AMD is never going to be as power performant (the TDPs). Which does still matter, the fan noise, case thermals, throttling etc.
The more other components you upgrade at same time (e.g. PSU, case, monitor etc). Then the less money is being saved with APU route = diminishing returns. And it's really not typical to 'just upgrade only the mobo+cpu' without also replacing other components too. Often monitor, storage, ram. So most times that puts all of these AMD APUs in some kind of a general 'grey area'. And that's being nice about it, ignoring both the higher TDP and also the poorer single-threaded performance.
Travis26 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
I completely agree that APUs make little sense for gaming at their current prices. I got an R7 260x for $90 and an athlon x4 750k for $75. This comes to a total of $165 for cpu/gpu whereas the kaveri apus at were I think $120 for much worse gaming performance. I also didn't need to worry very much about the speed of my RAM. I went with a single 4 GB stick of DDR3 1600 which allows me to upgrade to 8GB later by dropping in another stick. Had I gone with an APU, I would have had to go with dual channel which would make me decide between being stuck with 4GB or spending another $40 to get 8 GB. The RAM also would have cost more to get 2133 or 2400 RAM. I also was able to get the motherboard for $25 because they were clearing out FM2 motherboards. So I was able to get a better PC for likely the same price as a kaveri APU based build, but with much better performance. For laptops however, they might make sense. Another way they might make sense now is if you don't plan on overclocking, you might spend the extra $10 to go from an Athlon x4 to an a8 7600 hoping that DirectX 12 will be able to offload some stuff to the APU's GPU and improve performance, but I don't think that it is worth it especially if you would need to buy faster RAM when you could simply jump up to the next level of GPU for guaranteed better performance.neo_1221 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
The A10-7850K by any other name...johnpombrio - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
With Intel having 83% share of the desktop, 93% in desktops, and NVidia with 76% share of the discrete GPU graphics, AMD is finding out that price/performance is not working for them. Yes, this is low cost and has good internal graphics but is it enough to even slow down the Intel/NVidia juggernauts? AMD needs to do better, but time and it's abysmal low amount of spending on R&D is not going to get it there.Lolimaster - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
They could actually release Carrizo to improve IGP performance. Just ditch cpu turbo and allow resource for the gpu.ex:
A10 8850K 3.8Ghz no turbo 900Mhz 768SP gpu.
fw1374 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
I wish you throw some FX series CPU (like FX 6300) into these benchmarks.Oxford Guy - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
FX 8320E is the best bang for the buck, especially from Microcenter. Pair it with a halfway decent cooler and you're good to go. If they're going to put in a $200+ Intel i5, why not put in a $100 FX with a discreet GPU? You could get the processor, a cooler, and a discreet GPU for the same price as that i5.In fact, if you're doing single or low threaded gaming you can set that chip to "one core per module" in the BIOS of a motherboard like the UD3P and overclock to a much higher speed on a moderately effective cooler.
Oxford Guy - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
The processor selection employed for this article makes it look like you have to go with Intel for inexpensive performance in professional workloads, by noticeably excluding FX. While FX doesn't beat Intel in everything, for $100 (the cost of an 8320E at Microcenter, ignoring the additional $40 off a motherboard) it's going to kill the Intel chips here for value, as well as the APUs most likely.Oxford Guy - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
It also just occurred to me that review sites like this one always overclock to extremes when they review FX. Anandtech overclocked their 8320E to 4.8 GHz at 1.55 volts. What good is that result for practical users? You need a custom water loop for ridiculous voltage like that.Anandtech should instead overclock the chip to sane level (low voltage) that an inexpensive cooler like the EVO can handle at reasonable noise levels. You can get around 4.2 GHz with a fully loaded chip and higher with "one module per core" set. Reasonable overclocking also doesn't require tons of case cooling, exotic things like fans behind the socket, and fancy motherboards.
If Anandtech is going to present their benchmark charts with processor pricing they should at least try to make those charts informative and comprehensive enough to not give people the wrong general impression. The impression one gets from these charts in that, aside from a few gaming benchmarks, one's only solution for a general-purpose chip (capable of professional workloads as well as games) is an Intel.
Cryio - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
I can up to a 4.5 GHz on my FX 6300 at 1.392/1.404 V. I doubt it would be much different on an FX 83x0 for 4.5 GHz.Oxford Guy - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
1.4 is a lot more voltage than the 1.28 or so needed for around 4.2 on an 8320E. Trying to get Prime stability with an 8 core at 1.4V requires much better cooling.msroadkill612 - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
Your words are sage indeed sir. Reading them in 2019 it is clear how right you are. Of course your suggested combo is better buying for gaming performance.Cryio - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
8320E? That's almost as expensive as the 8350.The best bang for the buck in AMD's portofolio is the 8300. Yes, you've read that right, 8300. Same TPD as the 8320E with some frequencies, same overclock capabilities and for 20% cheaper. It's only slightly more than an FX 6300.
Oxford Guy - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
The 8320E is $100 from Microcenter.Cryio - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Then awesome. But generally, the 8300 is the cheapest you can buy.Dresdenboy - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
What is the BIOS version being used? And what was the voltage?According to CPU World there might be heavy throttling with a somewhat older BIOS. The newer version fixes the problems:
"Update (May 31): Throttling problem was fixed by upgrading to P2.60 BIOS. Thanks to Roger Harshman for the hint! The processor is stable now, and runs CPU benchmarks and games without throttling and lockups. By the way, new BIOS sets lower core voltage, close to 1.45V."
Cryio - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
The only thing that saddens me is that on average, the iGPU in the 7870K is still just 3 fps faster on average than a 240 DDR3.On paper, the iGPU should be as fast as a 7750 GDDR5 ! Not to mention the iGPU is based on GCN 1.1.
But for whatever reason, it's still 50% slower than it should be.
frozentundra123456 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
No, it has the same number of shaders as the 7750, but lower clocks, less bandwidth, and a limited thermal envelope. I don't know why you think it should be as fast as the 7750.Cryio - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Same number of shaders (both have 512), indeed lower clocks but newer architecture which should compensate for deficiencies.Plus 2400 DDR3 dual channel should allow it all the bandwidth in the world.
nikaldro - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Nope. GDDR5 is immensely better than any DDR3 on the planet, plus the APU has to throttle back due to the TDP constraints. NO WAY it will reach a 7750. the newer architecture isn't much faster, the main improvement are the added features.fallaha56 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
where is a DX12 preview? this is what is really needed to see which chip is the one to get...akamateau - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
@Ian CutressYou last tested AMD A6-A10 using both Starswarm and #dMark API Overhead test.
When you pulished those results it was determined that all AMD APU's A6-A10 outperform Inteel i3, i5 and i7 by 100% in drawcalls and frames per second.
What was the 3dMark API Overhead for A10-7870K?
How did it perform using Starswarm?
You have those benchmarks why didn't you present them here?
When I spend money I would like to know how the silicon will perform on using high performance software.
Ignoring the impact of DX12 is absurd,
Any new systems with AMD A10-7870K will be Windows 10 and the gaming will be either with Mantle or DX12.
Users will tolerate DX11 only until the legacy games get ported to a better API.
frozentundra123456 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
What games do you suggest he test with DX12? Oh wait, there arent any. The few games tested with mantle showed minimal gains with an APU in real gaming preformance, not some artificial benchmark.ToTTenTranz - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
DX12 performance may be predicted by testing a Mantle title.0VERL0RD - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IpATnpx45BILolimaster - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
I hope they can actually bring Carrizo to the FM2+ platform.Cryio - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Not happening.savagemike - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Back in the day the idea of a 95 watt part didn't even make me blink twice. 'Like having a light-bulb on", I thought. Now - in the age of LED light-bulbs it makes me wince. The thought of it feels like leaving a faucet on with all the electricity running out, draining the well.LOL. Whatever the reason and how ever logical I simply wouldn't buy a 95 watt part today for general use. What is the point with so many parts pulling a fraction of that and perfectly able to handle day-to-day chores?
Lolimaster - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
If you really care about energy:-You and your family will use a towel not a hair dryer
-You and your family will use bycicle, public transportation or simply walk (check nederlands)
-Implies no car.
Gigaplex - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Do you have a point? I don't own a hair dryer and I use public transport. It's not exactly hard or uncommon.Lolimaster - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
TDP does not mean power consumption, and the actual measures are with the cpu @full load both gpu/cpu. You don't run a cpu/apu full load 24/7.You can disable turbo and reduce power consumption (turbo ups the voltage by a fair margin).
Electric kitchen, air conditioner, those things monthly multiply any cpu "tdp" consumption in the range of 100's.
nikaldro - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
It's funny how most people don't know that they have 2000W washing machines, yet they whine about stuff like this.Oxford Guy - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Don't forget the vacuum cleaner amp wars.RafaelHerschel - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
I don't have a washing machine in my livingroom or office and I don't use my washing machine as often as my PC's.Less power means less heat and less noise. It also means better performance in a (very) small case. It also means a more modest PSU.
A fast i3 coupled with a GTX 960 in a Mini ITX case makes for small, potentially quiet system.
Oxford Guy - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
CPUs and GPUs should have three ratings:1) Standby
2) Average (when in use) (with an industry-wide set of benchmarks)
3) Maximum (also industry-wide benchmarks)
barleyguy - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
My biggest energy usage is definitely climate control. I've switched to LED lightbulbs, and in my kitchen which was a flourescent grid, I'm using an LED rope light. But I have an 80,000 BTU natural gas heater, and 2000 watts worth of air conditioning. Those aren't on constantly since they use a thermostat, but the bulk of my utility bill is definitely represented there. My PVR computer is on 24 hours a day, but probably only represents a couple of dollars of energy usage.Oxford Guy - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
AMD FX 8320E, Gigabyte UD3P motherboard with 8 phase power and VRM sinks = 161.98 tax incl.Intel i5 4690, MSI Z97 PC Mate (cheap 3 phase + doubler) = $280.78 tax incl.
difference = $118.8
You can use that money to get a refurb EVGA 750 Ti 2 GB from Newegg and have three dollars and 80 cents left over to get an extra 120mm fan for your EVO cooler (which you would get with either processor... no one should use a stock cooler).
Since that AMD processor and motherboard easily overclock to around 4.2 GHz on low voltage (1.27 - 1.3) with a moderate-quality cooler it would be very interesting to see the results in this article coupled with that "free" 750 Ti. Also, one can set the chip to "one core per module" in the BIOS of that motherboard in order to get much higher overclocks (higher voltage but much less heat output) for poorly-threaded applications like most games, which helps a bit to let the chip hang in there with an Intel i5, although you'll likely be GPU bound with a 750 Ti anyway.
Even if you decide to use the stock cooler for the Intel you're still saving some money with the AMD combo -- unless you are going to pair your chip with an expensive GPU.
jann5s - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
am i the only one amazed by how Otten the 7870 is beat by the 7850???jann5s - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Often*Gigaplex - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
No, you're not the only one. And that's not the only AMD chip it loses to.Cryio - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Yep. The results are way off. Both in CPU and GPU.barleyguy - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
I have an HTPC in a tiny case (mini ITX and only a couple inches tall), powered by an A8-7600. For the price, form factor, and versatility (allows midrange gaming), I feel it was a really good choice.That said, I'm a little bit disappointed in this release, not so much because it's beaten in CPU benchmarks by a more expensive Intel that requires a larger case for a decent GPU, but because the 7870 isn't much faster than the A8-7600. It's more expensive and uses twice the power. (The A8-7600 has a 45W mode. It idles at less than 20 watts and peaks at about 60 watts for the whole system with an SSD.)
Like others have said, I would love an FM2+ Carrizo. Hopefully that would bring noticeably higher performance at the 45W level.
TallestJon96 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
This isn't for me, but it seems like these APUs are growing better more quickly than any other CPU or GPU section. Power consumption is a bit high, but if you don't have a dedicated graphics card it definitely manageable.My biggest concern is the slow ram for graphics. This is tested on 2133 ram but the target audience for this will have 1333 or 1600... I'd like to know how much performance changes then.
But it's pretty impressive for the price, and it should suit people who do web browsing, Netflix and light gaming extremely well.
barleyguy - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
I'm running 2133 on my A8-7600 HTPC. It was only about $10 extra for 4 GB. If the target audience is running 1333 or 1600, it's because they didn't know any better. IMO.nikaldro - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
If that 2133Mhz RAM has horrible timings, you didn't solve much...barleyguy - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
It's CAS latency 9, 9-10-9-27, Corsair XMS. Nothing wrong with it.Lolimaster - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Probably the best all around memory timming for an APU unless you find a really cheap 2600 cl11.movax2 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
I made a few calculations in Excel.Let's see.
CPU's performance (Windows only: Office-Web + Pro) on average7870K is 0.11% faster than 7850K! Yes, less than 1%.
GPU performance: +1.2%
One word:
disappointment.
Cryio - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
How did you make the calculations? Do you have on hand a 7870K and a 7850K? Not to mention 8 GBs of DDR3 2400 ram in dual channel?DrMrLordX - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Many recent UEFI versions showing "support for Godavari/Kaveri refresh" overvolt the hell out of these chips. It's no wonder they were showing 117W draw. Some of these UEFI revisions are pushing 1.45v OR MORE!Older Kaveri chips (KA-V1) can do 3.9 ghz with only 1.2v on average. Newer ones (GV-A1; 7870k, 7670k, OEM 8500B) should be able to do it with less. There is NO WAY anyone should be pushing this kind of voltage. Some reviews have shown throttling to 1.6 GHz from the board/cpu being overloaded by sheer heat/power draw from these insane voltages (cpu-world, which updated their results with a new UEFI revision that backed voltage off to "only" 1.45v).
There is obviously more work that needs to be done to bring voltage numbers down for stock and the various turbo states supported by this chip, as well as other Kaveri variants. In the meantime, anyone buying this chip should expect it to turn in better results than the 7850k AND do it with less voltage at the same clockspeed (or the same voltage for slightly higher clocks). Just tweak the voltages manually in the UEFI and things should work great.
Lolimaster - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Exactly, the extra voltage allowed by AMD goes mainly to the gpu part, 20% clocks.Travis26 - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
AMD seems to have the stock voltages too high a lot of times. My Athlon x4 750k with default settings goes up to 1.45 V for the 4 Ghz turbo boost, but it is perfectly stable at 1.29V and possibly lower. I had to lower the voltage because the temperatures were too high under load with the stock cooler.hallstein - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Something is seriously wrong with these numbers. The ordering of the AMD parts seems to be effectively random in many cases. What the hell happened?And the conclusions drawn make no reference to the crazy numbers. I'm a big fan of anandtech's reporting, but I'm sorry to say this article is just about useless as is.
number99 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
I agree. Part of the problem may be the need for a new bios for the new cpu (it seems to be throttling), but a lot of the benches don't make sense.silverblue - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
The board in question isn't the same as the one that CPU World used (ASRock FM2A88M Extreme4+). Unless AMD made a large boo-boo pre-release that would affect multiple vendors' BIOS updates, I can't see this affecting the results too much. It may be worth testing on that ASRock board to see what a patched board will do, or perhaps throwing a 7850K into the MSI board to see if the board itself is to blame. It's likely the higher Kaveri models, but the power usage looks rather off as well so it could be the board.I'm waiting on another review which can hopefully shed some light on the performance issues we've been seeing. Perhaps it was really only AT's sample that was causing issues?
Vesperan - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
I find it interesting that even with a R9 285 or GTX 770 you are quite often GPU bound (at 1080p) rather than CPU bound. If your only concern is gaming (like mine, and likely most here) it reinforces that low(ish) end CPU + high(ish) GPU is best for price-performance. Seems odd you can have such a low performance CPU with such a high performance GPU.mikato - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Yeah this is what makes AMD chips great options for gamers right now. Very similar performance for much cheaper with a good discrete GPU, and much better performance with integrated GPU.ES_Revenge - Saturday, June 6, 2015 - link
It's not really odd at all, it's the way it has always been for *most* contemporary games and GPUs. Some games do have some 'balance' toward CPUs as well but GPU is still the major player in game performance. Three cores (remember Athlon-II X3?) or two cores plus hyper threading, and clock around 3Ghz or faster (depending on what CPU it is) is enough CPU for most modern games. And, unless you are aiming for really high framerates in SLI/Crossfire, PCI-e 1.1 x16 is also enough for single-card gaming. These things have been proven time and time again, yet lots of people like to talk about or imagine "bottlenecks" that just don't exist.You can have a R9 280X or GTX 770 on a Yorkfield C2Q and not really be too worse for wear in gaming other than high power consumption/heat, particularly if you're only looking for 60FPS. You'll still have 80-95% of the FPS performance of a modern i5 and the same GPU in most games and if that performance is otherwise in the 100s and you only need 60 Vsync, then the add'l CPU power is doing nothing for you.
Going from a C2D to a C2Q to an i7 all on the same GPU, I can tell you the biggest jump in performance in gaming, came from going from the C2D to the C2Q. Sure a Haswell i7 is going to give some better frame rates than a Clarkdale i3 and the same GPU, but it's not going to be any spectacular leap and if you're not trying to squeeze 130FPS from where you were getting 110FPS previously, you don't care about a faster CPU. And even then you are better off OCing your GPU first, again for most games.
All you really need for decent 60FPS gaming is a fast GPU(s) (fast enough for the res and settings you want to play at) and any ol CPU that is 3 cores/threads or more and a decent clock rate. Not really much more to it than that.
nofumble62 - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Does it support 4K monitor? If yes, what is the frame rate?anubis44 - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Ian is English, which means his vocabulary, even if he were only a typical Brit, is about 6 times the size of most Americans. A 'queue' is a line-up. A 'miasma' is a noxious atmosphere or influence. I often think, as a Canadian of British descent, the Americans would have been much better off in a myriad of ways if they'd simply lost the Revolutionary War. They'd likely have universal healthcare, about ~50,000 fewer gun deaths every year, and much bigger vocabularies. They'd also be able to read a grade 9 level English CPU review without having to ask 'WTF' it means.silverblue - Monday, June 8, 2015 - link
Oh, the Americans use the word 'queue', albeit spelt as 'cue', and it's seldom used.anubis44 - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Dual-core CPUs are dead men walking for gaming. If you've already got one, fine, you'll have to upgrade very soon. But recommending buying a dual-core chip NOW is uttery unconsionable, unless it's for your grandmother to play solitaire. The damn thing will choke just running windows and a web browser these days.anubis44 - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
@RafaelHershel: "Less power means less heat and less noise. It also means better performance in a (very) small case. It also means a more modest PSU."But it's a question of proportion. How much money do you think you're saving in electricity by paying a lot more for an Intel processor? Check this out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBeeGHozSY0
Not to mention in buying Intel and nVidia, you're supporting two companies with proven track records of ripping off customers, but please go right ahead and blithely do it.
jonez - Friday, June 5, 2015 - link
Why use a 4 years old linux distribution, it's even older than most of the hardware being benchmarked?And running it live it's not ideal too, but for the purpose of intra-comparison it's not that relevant, I guess.
ES_Revenge - Saturday, June 6, 2015 - link
I still don't understand why the Dual Graphics tests are not including Frame-Time Variance numbers/charts. It's one thing to have nice FPS from Dual Graphics but if the FTV is bad enough that it makes it no better than being on the solo-card (or the APU solo) then those numbers quickly become meaningless. Anandtech has commented on dual-GPU FTV stuff before, so I'm puzzled as to why it's not even mentioned as even a possible concern here with the Dual Graphics tests of the last few AMD APUs.ssv - Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - link
totally, off the track. Why is that AMD architectures are named after Indian rivers? Kaveri and Godavari are rivers in south India. I am not sure if earlier "Bima" refers to Bhima (indian again) mythological character.P39Airacobra - Sunday, June 21, 2015 - link
Sorry but 30fps at low settings and 720p is not what I would consider gaming capable! These APU's are just a waste of money! You can buy a X4 860K CPU and a old R7 260 for about the same price and actually be able to game![email protected] - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
I am presently running the A 5800 k APU for a couple + years and have waited a few cycles here and will take the plunge for this new chip. I presently OC to 5600 with an H-105 pushpull at about 36 degrees under load and it will be interesting to see the difference in performance and operation. I suspect this will improve my experience until my next build I7 or Zeons with ECC.[email protected] - Sunday, August 23, 2015 - link
The new APU is much stronger and faster than my A 5800 k. It is clocked at4400 which is slower however it is much faster for the normal office and light gaming. I can now do intensive rendering, watch and record HD video and surf the web at the same time. It stays under 30 degrees, doesn't slow down and hasn't crashed at all. I'm running the latest Insider 2010. It is a welcome addition and has increased my productivity by about double overall.gearhead99 - Monday, September 28, 2015 - link
the APU stuff is great for laptops, gimme gimme, but i don't see a good case for AM1 or FM2+. flexible upgrade path - no / cheap ECC - no / good IPC - no / good TDP - no / many cpu cores - no / low price - no. its especially unfortunate AMD has abandoned ECC. regardless of all the groaning over IPC, the bang4buck was pretty solid on AM2>AM3+SviatA - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
Honestly, I wouldn't buy any video card in addition to any AMD APU. For me, gaming performance of my build is irrelevant since I don't like playing games. So if you are not going to do that (or use Adobe Photoshop for photo editing) then forget about Intel. APUs are good enough on power consumption and performance for simple home tasks.The only issue is that AMD doesn't really develop its processors. Which is a shame since they could give us impressive stuff. http://hardware.nl/amd/ad7600ybjabox.html - less than a 100, but performance wise, it will work fine.