A look into APU graphics performance in modern games.

[USER8000]

Can't hit 60fps even at 720p low... ouch.

Not bad for a £65 CPU. Pretty much playable.

Millions of people are playing games on consoles which don't hit 60FPS consistently.

Maybe if you want to try more demanding games - look at Planetside2 which won't hit constant 60FPS even with a Core i7 and a £200 card.

I like how people just raise the bar more and more.

Here is the game being run on an A10 7850K at 1080P on low settings:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM6_iPiepqw

Between 50FPS to 65FPS.

Another one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxcLJqRdQr0

Seems pretty smooth to me and the last one is using only 1866MHZ DDR3 in the system too.

The A8 7600 and A8 7650K should not be far off it.

As a big Diablo 3 player myself and with many friends who play WoW,the Blizzard games are made to be scaleable to lower end hardware too.

snip

Loads of people on YouTube running games fine on these £65 to £75 chips. The illogical hatred of them is getting a bit funny - or is because the Intel IGPs can't beat them,unless you spend over £200??

For low cost chips,I am surprised they can even run many of these games.

This was never the case 5 or 6 years ago. There are enough cheapish OEM desktops using these APUs.

But OFC hardware enthusiasts need to raise the cost of PC gaming so more people end up buying a console instead.

 

[frozentundra123456]

And I still cant understand why people excuse the mediocre bandwidth limited performance of APUs (either AMD or intel) when for such a small additional cost one can get 50 to 100% improved performance.

Apu fans keep arguing "but they can play the games". Well some games at some settings anyway. Point is, a much better solution is available for so little additional cost, at least in a desktop.

 

[William Gaatjes]

And I still cant understand why people excuse the mediocre bandwidth limited performance of APUs (either AMD or intel) when for such a small additional cost one can get 50 to 100% improved performance.

Apu fans keep arguing "but they can play the games". Well some games at some settings anyway. Point is, a much better solution is available for so little additional cost, at least in a desktop.

It is teething problems. If amd would have waited until the memory technology would catch up, we would have never seen apu's. AMD is doing a good job with current memory technology. Using smart techniques to counter act the limited bandwitdh problem, it will unleash great performance increases with hbm2 in the near future to solve the bandwidth issues of apu's. It is going to be a very interesting future.
I am impressed what apu's can do (Even while it is shown there are some design errors present).

 

[frozentundra123456]

Llano came out almost five years ago. I would hardly call that "teething problems."

In any case, it doesnt really matter why, APU performance "is what it is", regardless of the reason (excuse). Now HBM apus do have a lot of potential. But currently, we have no idea what they may bring to the table. They will also be competing with much more powerful and efficient new dgpus, so the bar will be raised considerably.

Edit: the real failure of APUs is that the HBM software ecosystem never really took off. The cpu/gpu integration is really the only big advantage of an APU, and there simply were not sufficient applications that used it to make APUs a compelling purchase.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Llano came out almost five years ago. I would hardly call that "teething problems."

In any case, it doesnt really matter why, APU performance "is what it is", regardless of the reason (excuse). Now HBM apus do have a lot of potential. But currently, we have no idea what they may bring to the table. They will also be competing with much more powerful and efficient new dgpus, so the bar will be raised considerably.

Edit: the real failure of APUs is that the HBM software ecosystem never really took off. The cpu/gpu integration is really the only big advantage of an APU, and there simply were not sufficient applications that used it to make APUs a compelling purchase.

Well, i see it like this. If everything is integrated in a single chip or connected on a interposer, latency in all parts should be lower then with a discrete card and gpu and memory. That would also increase the performance of the total system.
The only advantage discrete cards will have in the future is the higher power envelope. Separate cpu and gpu on separate coolling solutions, it is easier to remove the amounts of heat. But even that can be solved in the future with nanotubes and diamant surfaces to more efficiently remove the heat from chips towards a coolling solution. At least, that is what i read once about how efficient carbon in the right structure can be for removing heat. I think IBM did the research for that once.

 

[USER8000]

And I still cant understand why people excuse the mediocre bandwidth limited performance of APUs (either AMD or intel) when for such a small additional cost one can get 50 to 100% improved performance.

Apu fans keep arguing "but they can play the games". Well some games at some settings anyway. Point is, a much better solution is available for so little additional cost, at least in a desktop.

I also don't understand people like you have some illogical hatred of cheap chips like this,trying to personally attack people by calling them "APU fans".
Unlike you I am a gamer and not an elitist - I actually bother looking at what people have run on these chips,both on PCs I know people have,and on YouTube.

Yet,I like how I can predict your spooked response,when everytime it has been shown that an APU can run a reasonable number of games fine. You need to rush in since you are very scared and need to BURN IT WITH FIRE.

Plus,you also seem to want to speak for the whole of the world. To even get an X4 860 and a similar performing card,you are looking at £100 to £110. Even with a modern Celeron it is pretty much not much cheaper.

A Core i3 is £100 alone.

So that is a £60 to £65 chip. So £30 to £35 extra for no real improvement,which is the cost of an SSD in a lower end build. Not similar.

If you think that is not a reasonable sum of money - they give me £30 to £35 if it is such pocket change.

But OFC people like you,who are scared to admit the APUs are not too bad(plus faster than the equivalent Intel IGPs as we must remember PC MASTER RACE ELITIST E-PEEN),push the bar higher and higher. It is such a weird and illogical fear.

This is the sad thing - plenty of lower budget gamers,or people simply having a low cost prebuilt PC with something like an A8 7600,will be pushed off PC gaming and onto console gaming.

Why??

Because the elitists think nothing than a £100 card and a £150 CPU at a minimum will run any game,even when people show the games run reasonably fine on cheaper and slower hardware.

I don't know what has happened to the modern enthusiast.

More worried about posing than actually opening their mind and looking.

Even one of the mods here stated that too.

 

[sweetusernames]

APUs, and integration in general IS the future. It has been for a very long time. It's already used in consoles and mobile devices. The power cost savings of integrated graphics makes them extremely viable for both. We're already getting somewhere with eDRAM and eSRAM, and then there's HBM, which is obviously an exciting possibility.

Current AMD APUs being relatively expensive isn't because integrated graphics isn't viable, that's for sure. Hell they can sell the PS4 APUs to Sony for like $100. Either they aren't expecting many people to buy Desktop APUs so they need to price high to offset R&D costs, or they're using different silicon for their desktop APUs from the PS4 APUs, I don't really know anything so I can't really comment on that.

 

[William Gaatjes]

APUs, and integration in general IS the future. It has been for a very long time. It's already used in consoles and mobile devices. The power cost savings of integrated graphics makes them extremely viable for both. We're already getting somewhere with eDRAM and eSRAM, and then there's HBM, which is obviously an exciting possibility.

Current AMD APUs being relatively expensive isn't because integrated graphics isn't viable, that's for sure. Hell they can sell the PS4 APUs to Sony for like $100. Either they aren't expecting many people to buy Desktop APUs so they need to price high to offset R&D costs, or they're using different silicon for their desktop APUs from the PS4 APUs, I don't really know anything so I can't really comment on that.

With Sony and Microsoft buying dedicated apu's, AMD is guaranteed that they will sell millions of units by contract. That is good for book keeping and gives a comfortable feeling of a guaranteed income. When you have a guaranteed income, you can start to plan for a future. That is why these big contracts for millions of units are lucrative. On the other side of the coin, it is scale of business (I think it is called) Because AMD can sell so many at once, they can lower the price for their customers and still make a decent profit.

 

[USER8000]

Don't worry if AMD launches a dual core Zen APU with HT,with similar performance to a Broadwell chip,and HBM which pushes it closer to HD7770 GDDR5 level performance EVEN for £50 ,I expect the same lot here will say its "not good enough","not good enough" since you can get a Core i5 for £150 and a GTX1050 for £100 which will obliterate it. That is not a lot more,right?

Plus it cannot run games at 4K at Ultra settings,so it is an INSTA-FAIL.

I can now understand why the UK and US got into so much debt.

Lets,borrow another $100 billion more?? That is only a few percent extra debt,right??



Some of the posters have made the command decision that IGPs cannot run any game,so any bit of information to show they are OK for ANY game is ignored and they will make sure they swamp any thread on it with their illogical hatred of these low cost chips.

So instead of a low cost £300 desktop that can run even games like Overwatch fine at lower settings,the same people will buy a console for £250 instead. Plus that low cost desktop can always be upgraded with a dGPU if more demanding games need to be run.

Oh! Noes! But dat BOTTLENECKING!!

So going by the experts on here,Intel and AMD should just not bother selling sub £100 CPUs,graphics cards and should ditch all IGP improvements.

If you CBA to be PC MASTER RACE in terms of money spent,buy a console,peasant!!

 

[William Gaatjes]

Don't worry if AMD launches a dual core Zen APU with HT,with similar performance to a Broadwell chip,and HBM which pushes it closer to HD7770 GDDR5 level performance EVEN for £50 ,I expect the same lot here will say its "not good enough","not good enough" since you can get a Core i5 for £150 and a GTX1050 for £100 which will obliterate it. That is not a lot more,right?

Plus it cannot run games at 4K at Ultra settings,so it is an INSTA-FAIL.

I can now understand why the UK and US got into so much debt.

Lets,borrow another $100 billion more?? That is only a few percent extra debt,right??



Some of the posters have made the command decision that IGPs cannot run any game,so any bit of information to show they are OK for ANY game is ignored and they will make sure they swamp any thread on it with their illogical hatred of these low cost chips.

So instead of a low cost £300 desktop that can run even games like Overwatch fine at lower settings,the same people will buy a console for £250 instead. Plus that low cost desktop can always be upgraded with a dGPU if more demanding games need to be run.

And the advantage AMD has, is that when both apu and discrete card are gcn, they are used both. Maybe one can even choose in the future to do the compute stuff for physics on the apu and let the more powerful dgpu do the gfx stuff.

 

[USER8000]

And the advantage AMD has, is that when both apu and discrete card are gcn, they are used both. Maybe one can even choose in the future to do the compute stuff for physics on the apu and let the more powerful dgpu do the gfx stuff.

Yeah,but it is frankly getting silly when the A8 7600 is only £61 delivered in the UK:

http://www.cclonline.com/product/15...AMD-A8-7600-Socket-FM2-APU-Processor/CPU0287/

That is close to the performance of a £50 dGPU there. Yet,even games like Overwatch can be run reasonably well too.

That really shows how low the entry level price of PC gaming has got.

I am really shocked how much things have progressed.

If Bristol Ridge and Kaby Lake IGPs show a decent improvement,you can pretty much ignore having to need a dGPU for a lot of games.

Plus,if you want to play a more demanding game you can always get a faster card.

I really don't understand the mentality of some.

Having more people using PCs is a good thing instead of pushing more casual gamers to consoles.

 

[s44]

Not bad for a £65 CPU. Pretty much playable.

Millions of people are playing games on consoles which don't hit 60FPS consistently.

Overwatch is locked at 60 on both consoles. It's not a RPG, either, but a competitive shooter. So not being able to hit 60fps even at turned-down settings on PC (no aim assist) is going to degrade your gameplay as well as your visuals.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Don't worry if AMD launches a dual core Zen APU with HT,with similar performance to a Broadwell chip,and HBM which pushes it closer to HD7770 GDDR5 level performance EVEN for £50 ,I expect the same lot here will say its "not good enough","not good enough" since you can get a Core i5 for £150 and a GTX1050 for £100 which will obliterate it. That is not a lot more,right?

Plus it cannot run games at 4K at Ultra settings,so it is an INSTA-FAIL.

I can now understand why the UK and US got into so much debt.

Lets,borrow another $100 billion more?? That is only a few percent extra debt,right??



Some of the posters have made the command decision that IGPs cannot run any game,so any bit of information to show they are OK for ANY game is ignored and they will make sure they swamp any thread on it with their illogical hatred of these low cost chips.

So instead of a low cost £300 desktop that can run even games like Overwatch fine at lower settings,the same people will buy a console for £250 instead. Plus that low cost desktop can always be upgraded with a dGPU if more demanding games need to be run.

Oh! Noes! But dat BOTTLENECKING!!

So going by the experts on here,Intel and AMD should just not bother selling sub £100 CPUs,graphics cards and should ditch all IGP improvements.

If you CBA to be PC MASTER RACE in terms of money spent,buy a console,peasant!!

Yea, I am an elitist member of the pc master race because I want something more competent than half the speed of an already outdated HD7770.

 

[maddie]

Yea, I am an elitist member of the pc master race because I want something more competent than half the speed of an already outdated HD7770.

Don't you realize this is not for you.

Its for the millions of poorer people that will always outnumber you. To them, this is something good. Having fun playing games. Get a grip.

 

[frozentundra123456]

.You get a grip, if there are all these millions of people who can afford a "gaming" pc but cant afford another 50 or a hundred dollars for a much more capable system, why is AMD's market share at historical lows?

 

[mohit9206]

APU's are no longer relevent for mainstream gaming.They haven't been relevent since PS4 and Xbox One came out.Try playing AC Syndicate,COD black ops 3,Witcher 3 or any of the recent AAA titles.Its unplayable even on 720p low settings.
I tried playing AC Syndicate on an overclocked GT730 at 720p low settings and 15fps is all i could manage.
The only way APU's could be considered for budget gaming again is if Zen APU atleast the top model has graphics performance equivalent to 750Ti.
Zen better triple up the igp performance from Kaveri to have any impact on the APU market.

 

[William Gaatjes]

APU's are no longer relevent for mainstream gaming.They haven't been relevent since PS4 and Xbox One came out.Try playing AC Syndicate,COD black ops 3,Witcher 3 or any of the recent AAA titles.Its unplayable even on 720p low settings.
I tried playing AC Syndicate on an overclocked GT730 at 720p low settings and 15fps is all i could manage.
The only way APU's could be considered for budget gaming again is if Zen APU atleast the top model has graphics performance equivalent to 750Ti.
Zen better triple up the igp performance from Kaveri to have any impact on the APU market.

That is something that got me thinking, these few AAA titles you mention, do they not have to confirm to certain quality rules set up by Microsoft and Sony ?
Is there not some demand that the game must run fluidly and never dip below 50fps or something ?
Of course, these titles seem to be designed with the more powerful pc in mind. I wonder how efficient the code is that is being used by the game studio's who made these titles.

 

[Orvogg]

Would HBM2 be sufficient as system memory? Would it be bad, poor or disastrous for CPU workloads?

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[Pottuvoi]

Would HBM2 be sufficient as system memory? Would it be bad, poor or disastrous for CPU workloads?

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I do not know how different the latency is, but I doubt it's much worse to what we see with current memory tech..
It certainly should give some nice boost in terms of power efficiency and bandwidth. (Which would make it better for APUs.)

 

[sm625]

Don't worry if AMD launches a dual core Zen APU with HT,with similar performance to a Broadwell chip,and HBM which pushes it closer to HD7770 GDDR5 level performance EVEN for £50 ,

I hope AMD doesnt make a dual core Zen APU die. When two extra cores only costs 12 square mm, there is no reason to go with less than 4. Harvested parts will hopefully be triple cores.

 

[therealnickdanger]

I always like the idea of IGP/APU, but I always walk away disappointed. If every game were as polished and scalable as a Valve or Blizzard game, then I think that IGP would be a lot more practical, but PC gaming is far too schizophrenic. I would rather place a $100 GPU into an older, Core 2 Duo PC found in the trash than spend $100 to convert to an IGP setup. :/

There is probably a scenario where I would recommend an IGP build to someone, but I can't think of it.

 

[LTC8K6]

If you are not gaming, then the APU in a 7850K is way too much for your needs, and if you are gaming, then it's really not enough for your needs.

 

[William Gaatjes]

If you are not gaming, then the APU in a 7850K is way too much for your needs, and if you are gaming, then it's really not enough for your needs.

That might very well change when more HSA applications appear.

 

[therealnickdanger]

That might very well change when more HSA applications appear.

We've been hearing something similar for about 10 years. By the time HSA is mainstream, the 7850K will be long OOP.

 

[Orvogg]

I do not know how different the latency is, but I doubt it's much worse to what we see with current memory tech..
It certainly should give some nice boost in terms of power efficiency and bandwidth. (Which would make it better for APUs.)

I do wonder how a 4C8T Zen APU with Polaris grafics and 8GB HBM2 would stack up. Put an SSD where RAM would have been and we have a 1 card computer with some grunt.

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