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A look into APU graphics performance in modern games.

S

Silverforce11

Lifer
It's something most review sites don't really touch, they test new CPUs in a small handful of games, often old titles.

A good thing that GameGPU.Ru actually cover APU tests for games alongside their dGPU tests..

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Surprisingly, APUs are "there" finally, capable of 1080p gaming in most titles at ~30 fps.
 
Silverforce11 said:
Surprisingly, APUs are "there" finally, capable of 1080p gaming in most titles at ~30 fps.
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Kaveri is what, two years old now? The lack of a proper follow up has meant "there" is still a ways off. At least "there" isn't necessarily the benchmark for an enjoyable PC gaming experience, but Kaveri simply isn't powerful enough for more recent titles. It's too bad there are not more 720p tests.
 
Blitzvogel said:
Kaveri is what, two years old now? The lack of a proper follow up has meant "there" is still a ways off. At least "there" isn't necessarily the benchmark for an enjoyable PC gaming experience, but Kaveri simply isn't powerful enough for more recent titles. It's too bad there are not more 720p tests.
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Hey, console gamers are quite happy with 30 fps.

Some games even dip below that. 😵
 
broadwell tanking even with the massive difference in cpu. wasnt broadwell with crystalwell supposed to be intel's fastest cpu ever?
 
Got to keep in mind that AMD APUs CPU cores throttle heavily whenever the graphics cores are working,that's not that visible in benchmarks since they are graphics heavy but don't tax the CPU that much,unlike actual gameplay where the CPU is being taxed a lot.

http://www.tomshardware.de/amd-a10-...enchmark-budget-pc,testberichte-242059-2.html
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Dark arisen makes this very clear,it's very unoptimized and the graphics driver needs a lot of (single core) CPU grunt.
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They all look pretty much tied at "mostly unplayable", though.

A ddr5 GT730 would handily beat them all.
 
LTC8K6 said:
They all look pretty much tied at "mostly unplayable", though.

A ddr5 GT730 would handily beat them all.
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Bingo. Arguing about which APU is best for gaming is like trying to decide which knife is better to bring to a gunfight. When the price is so close between something like a athlon x4 and a discrete card, vs an APU, you have to work *very* hard to construct a scenario where an APU makes any sense at all for a desktop gaming system.

Now they would make sense in mobile, but unfortunately, due to thermal and TDP limitations, they are even more inadequate than in a desktop.


Edit: APU fans argue that the most games are "playable". However, the point is that a so much better experience is available for a very minimal additional cost.
 
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Sort of off topic, but game.gpu obviously has a 6700k on hand because they use it in these APU tests. Dont understand why they dont use it in the tests with discrete cards. Also the results for Broadwell seem really low in some games, but that could be intel drivers.
 
I've built a few A8/10 mITX rigs for friends & family, they are capable machines that can actually do gaming quite well. Like LOL, Dota 2, CS, WoW... which we know about, but I was surprised to see it capable of 30 fps or more for some modern games as well, especially at 1080p.

That's really the only scenario where I would go with an APU rather than a dGPU.
 
frozentundra123456 said:
Bingo. Arguing about which APU is best for gaming is like trying to decide which knife is better to bring to a gunfight. When the price is so close between something like a athlon x4 and a discrete card, vs an APU, you have to work *very* hard to construct a scenario where an APU makes any sense at all for a desktop gaming system.

Now they would make sense in mobile, but unfortunately, due to thermal and TDP limitations, they are even more inadequate than in a desktop.


Edit: APU fans argue that the most games are "playable". However, the point is that a so much better experience is available for a very minimal additional cost.
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Not that hard - in the UK the A8 7600 is around £65 and for a general purpose build that is still cheaper than a Core i3 or even an Athlon II X4 with a faster card.

An X4 860K and a GT730 GDDR5 is between £100 to £110.

Silverforce11 said:
I've built a few A8/10 mITX rigs for friends & family, they are capable machines that can actually do gaming quite well. Like LOL, Dota 2, CS, WoW... which we know about, but I was surprised to see it capable of 30 fps or more for some modern games as well, especially at 1080p.

That's really the only scenario where I would go with an APU rather than a dGPU.
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The lower cost A8 chips have tended to be better value for money - the A8 3670K,A8 5600K and A8 7600 have tended to be £60 to £70.

AtenRa said:
Dont thing so

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2464083&highlight=
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That is far better than I expected.

The Bristol Ridge APUs should even be better with DDR4 and colour compression.
 
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LTC8K6 said:
I was waiting for that.

It doesn't change a thing, though.

Any decent CPU with a GDDR5 GT730 will win handily against any APU or any IGP.
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Not really as Nvidia drivers are quite multi-threaded in DX11 and are not so bottlenecked by single threaded performance. You made a statement and he showed the benchmarks from hardware he has.

But you are starting to move the goalposts now. That poster showed the games being run on the APU and the GT730 GDDR5 trades blows with the IGP.

If he started benching with a Core i3 6100 that means the price is now £140 to £150 instead of £100 to £110 for that APU.

It also shows your lack of understanding of the low end graphics card market. Most of the AMD and Nvidia cards are rebrands so are actually not that great - the GT730 is Kepler based and only has 384 shaders. There might be some situations it can reasonably faster but it is not a slam dunk since the microarchitecture is getting on now.

You realistically need to start spending £60+ to get uniformly better performance overall since that is where you tend to get cards with far more shaders and larger memory buses which will destroy any IGP.
 
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Who would pick an X4 860K for gaming, though?

If you are really on a budget, you pick the APU, which is a good compromise.

If you are going with a CPU and GPU, you wouldn't pick an X4-860K as the CPU if you do any research.

Well, I certainly wouldn't. 🙂

You can get an FX-6300 for just a little more money, for example. Or you can go with an i3-6100 for a little more than that, and have an 1151 system that will last you a long time.

There are way better CPU choices than the X4-860K despite it's price, imo.
 
LTC8K6 said:
Any decent CPU with a GDDR5 GT730 will win handily against any APU or any IGP.
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You will always be GPU limited with the GT730 so even having a 5GHz Skylake will not give you anything more than what you get with the Athlon 860K.
 
AtenRa said:
You will always be GPU limited with the GT730 so even having a 5GHz Skylake will not give you anything more than what you get with the Athlon 860K.
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My point is, that if you are really on a tight budget, you'd go with the AMD APU, throttling and all, and if you have decided to go with a more expensive CPU/GPU setup, you'd pick a decent combo.

People on a really tight budget aren't going to go with a CPU and GPU these days.

Even if you stuck with an 860K as the CPU, you can get an R7-250X or 360 in the $80 range. I think that puts you at about $150 for the pair?
A 7870K is what, $130? It's in the ball park of just $20-30 more for the far faster CPU/GPU combo.

But I'd still go with a better CPU if I were building a system and not on an APU sized budget. 🙂

www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150717

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202196
 
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Silverforce11 said:
Surprisingly, APUs are "there" finally, capable of 1080p gaming in most titles at ~30 fps.
Click to expand...

More proof that for the enthusiast/high-end gamers, it would have been better to have an i7 6700K 6-8 core and no IGP. Good to see GameGPU test APUs at real world 1080p resolution, not the useless CPU limited 1280x800 or 1024x768 benchmarks that show Intel's GPUs in good light but in the real world, Intel's graphics still falls apart even against way ancient 7870K tech/architecture/node.

Hopefully Zen + 14nm Polaris APU comes to fruition to shake up the APU market segments in 2017-2018.
 
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You can't beat the value of a A8-7600 or A8-7670K (on sale). I've built a couple dozen of these types of HTPC's over the years and many people use them for 720/900P gaming just fine. I've only had one person ask me recently for something faster after a year and a half of gaming on it which kinda surprised me to be honest. I told him to hold off until Polaris and then add in a card. Most people who game on them understand they have to turn down the details to get playable framerates. You just have lower your expectations a little which is easy when you save a good chunk of cash. Versatility is nice.
 
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RussianSensation said:
More proof that for the enthusiast/high-end gamers, it would have been better to have an i7 6700K 6-8 core and no IGP. Good to see GameGPU test APUs at real world 1080p resolution, not the useless CPU limited 1280x800 or 1024x768 benchmarks that show Intel's GPUs in good light but in the real world, Intel's graphics still falls apart even against way ancient 7870K tech/architecture/node.

Hopefully Zen + 14nm Polaris APU comes to fruition to shake up the APU market segments in 2017-2018.
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I agree. High-end cpu's paired with a low-end igpu is worthless if you ask me. I hope AMD knocks one out of the park with Zen plus Polaris igpu. It would be nice to see them get some profit and strengthen their market position. There are many low-budget gamers that could use an integrated solution that gets them GOOD gaming performance.
 
Madpacket said:
You can't beat the value of a A8-7600 or A8-7670K (on sale). I've built a couple dozen of these types of HTPC's over the years and many people use them for 720/900P gaming just fine. I've only had one person ask me recently for something faster after a year and a half of gaming on it which kinda surprised me to be honest. I told him to hold off until Polaris and then add in a card. Most people who game on them understand they have to turn down the details to get playable framerates. You just have lower your expectations a little which is easy when you save a good chunk of cash. Versatility is nice.
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especially for mobas and facebook/flash games.
 
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