AMD Athlon X4 845 Review: A Perfect Budget CPU For Gaming And Multitasking

[24601]

Learn reality. At least in the tech field, competition at the low end drives prices down at the low end, but competition at the high end drives innovation and drives prices up at the high end.

So yes, you end up with much better hardware for the price, but you also end up with higher prices as standard. Look up what happened to prices last time AMD became competitive. When there's no competition, it's a good course of action for a company to make gradual changes in its products, and keep prices the same. When there's real competition, there's a jump in performance and the companies try to outdo each other in the high end market.

If Zen is as fast per core as an Intel chip and has more cores, you think AMD will price it under a Core i7? Maybe the slowest one, but it will release CPU's all the way to $1000, and Intel will reciprocate by releasing more high end chips. Instead of rarely released halfheartedly supported enthusiast platform the $500+ CPU's will suddenly become a mainstream battleground. And I won't be surprised if we see the top end go up to $1500, if AMD is able to provide real competition to Intel.

You propose collusion and calling it competition.

By competition I mean competition. As in race to the bottom commoditization like proper capitalism.

Capitalism is about reaching the zero profit bound as quickly as feasible as violently as possible.

The real gross margins on semiconductors are factored at about 20 USD dynamic wafer cost per chip for something the size of Broadwell-E. The high costs you guys keep crowing about are fixed costs, and easily blown through by recklessly increasing volume.

Considering how inexpensive debt has been since 2008, a proper capitalist duel between companies should lead to them going billions in debt in the short term, not sitting on mountains of liquid assets.

The massive cut in capex going into the 14nm cycle should have been the wake-up call to all of you that Intel has official transitioned fully to IBM style monopoly pricing.

 

[StrangerGuy]

845/860/4100 etc. are analogous to core 2 quads. If you thought they were "viable" you'd be using one. You probably aren't.

The only people suggesting these things that you are suggesting are AMD fanatics who don't really care about viability.

Seeing as you say you are in the market for Skylake-E, you probably should be a person who would see the non-viability of 845/860/4100.

And if you need 5 years to save up for a 6600k/6700k you have bigger problems.



Learn capitalism. Competition is one of the only reliable drivers of lower prices in a capitalist system. "Monopoly prices" is not a buzz word, it's what happens when a monopoly prices things in their rational interest.

AMD hasn't had anything truly competitive since Athlon64 days, which is why we are in this mess right now.

Frankly, I don't understand the sub-$200 CPU penny-pinching mentality. If Intel continues their glacial pace it's not like the 6600/6700K will be made suddenly obsolete. If people want to game and are so cash strapped they might as well buy a console than a half-assed PC.

 

[deasd]

Then the 880k is still the only Athlon to buy. It comes with twice the heatsink as the 845, and is already overclocked, as well as having twice the L2 cache, which games love. Well, the vast majority of games do, at least.

Are there any gaming bench prove this? I don't have any impression about L2 size cause impact on gaming since Conroe & Penryn.

 

[The Stilt]

Are there any gaming bench prove this? I don't have any impression about L2 size cause impact on gaming since Conroe & Penryn.

In Bullet physics going from 2MB per CU to 1MB per CU makes around 12% difference. Bullet is used various applications, games and benchmarks.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=38214094&postcount=1111

 

[myocardia]

...

 

[ET]

You propose collusion and calling it competition.

I'm just saying how things usually turn out. If you think that Intel and AMD are in collusion, or AMD and NVIDIA, or Apple and Samsung, that's fine. In the end, tech companies want the highest margin, and having another company in the market makes that easier. If you live in theory, that's fine, but if your theory doesn't match the observed reality, its predictive power is zero.

 

[24601]

I'm just saying how things usually turn out. If you think that Intel and AMD are in collusion, or AMD and NVIDIA, or Apple and Samsung, that's fine. In the end, tech companies want the highest margin, and having another company in the market makes that easier. If you live in theory, that's fine, but if your theory doesn't match the observed reality, its predictive power is zero.

You can't have it both ways. Either you're madly in love with capitalism and want the companies to fight it out in a gruesome duel, or you should be in favor of nationalizing the entire tech sector due to the complete pointlessness of monopolies in capitalist systems. There really isn't a middle ground if you want efficient progress to take place.

 

[deasd]

In Bullet physics going from 2MB per CU to 1MB per CU makes around 12% difference. Bullet is used various applications, games and benchmarks.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=38214094&postcount=1111

Bullet is not a game......

Here is an article explaining it all in a fairly easy to understand way. Note that while they are only discussing level 3 cache in the article, having half as much level 2 cache is also going to have performance losses, as Mr Stilt noted in his observations.

So it's just a deduction but not a conclusion.

 

[myocardia]

So it's just a deduction but not a conclusion.

If it is a deduction, it has to be a conclusion, in this instance (see 5a and 5b)

 

[deasd]

If it is a deduction, it has to be a conclusion, in this instance (see 5a and 5b)

LOL. Sorry my English not good enough.

Anyway I'll mark this question of L2 cache as a memorandum and wait for detailed benchmark, especially some realworld gaming comparison between BristolRidge/Carrizo and other CONs arch.

 

[The Stilt]

Bullet is not a game......

It's used pretty intensively in games, such as GTA V for example.
Which is the reason why AMD CPUs perform so badly in it.

 

[ET]

Either you're madly in love with capitalism and want the companies to fight it out in a gruesome duel

Thinking about it some more, it's clear to me why the kind of competition we have in the tech market raises prices, and is pure capitalism. Let me explain to you 'fanboy capitalism':

Prices in capitalism are affected by supply and demand, right? When supply is high and demand is low, prices are low, and vice versa.

Now, you'd think, naively, that competition means more supply and therefore would lower prices, but competition actually raises demand and therefore increases prices.

There's a huge pent-up demand for high end AMD CPU's, don't you agree? The moment AMD produces a good high end chip, legions of AMD fanboys will rush to buy it. What about Intel fanboys? They will not just stand idle and make do with inferior Intel chips, no, they will rush and buy higher end Intel chips which beat AMD ones.

You see where this is going? Suddenly there's a much higher demand for higher end chips, and so prices go up. And that's pure capitalism. And as long as each company continues to leapfrog the other, demand will continue.

 

[Headfoot]

One of the big competitors to Intel for consumers is Intel's second hand market and existing install base. Intel isn't competing against consumers with no substitute -- their existing systems are the substitute. For my secondary/guest systems I buy used because its cheaper and the performance is acceptable on stuff like OC'd i5-760 and forward for browsing and light gaming.

Tablets and phones provide an acceptable substitute for many for browsing use cases.

Where Intel really has no competition is in commodity x86 server spaces, where their old / used stock isn't competitive at all due to old memory, poor perf/watt, and the fact businesses are used to a 3 year write off period for data center gear. Also high end desktop, where maximum performance is the name of the game.

 

[ET]

In Bullet physics going from 2MB per CU to 1MB per CU makes around 12% difference. Bullet is used various applications, games and benchmarks.[/URL]

Thanks for the detailed test. I knew there'd be a penalty; it's good to have it quantified. Still waiting to see how the benchmark turn out. I hope that AMD does it right this time, and review sites already have Bristol Ridge CPU's benchmarked and waiting for release.

 

[DrMrLordX]

One of the big competitors to Intel for consumers is Intel's second hand market and existing install base. Intel isn't competing against consumers with no substitute -- their existing systems are the substitute. For my secondary/guest systems I buy used because its cheaper and the performance is acceptable on stuff like OC'd i5-760 and forward for browsing and light gaming.

Tablets and phones provide an acceptable substitute for many for browsing use cases.

Where Intel really has no competition is in commodity x86 server spaces, where their old / used stock isn't competitive at all due to old memory, poor perf/watt, and the fact businesses are used to a 3 year write off period for data center gear. Also high end desktop, where maximum performance is the name of the game.

Your points just highlight how Intel and various other companies have failed to make PC/workstation upgrades compelling to the consumer over the last 4-5 years. If people are able to say, "why bother upgrading", then the fault lies squarely at the feet of those whose business it is to design and sell interesting PC products.

That mobile devices are also eating into desktop sales further highlights the point.

The 845 is an example of a product that does very little to excite. Granted, there's no change in platform and it's a direct-port of a mobile product (so it has fewer PCIe lanes than Kaveri), so it needs to be excused somewhat from having to "excite". Had they spent some time reworking the power management for desktops and given us an unlocked multiplier, it would have been a more interesting product.

 

[ET]

Anyone who complains about video card power use but hasn't replaced all incandescent bulbs with LED light bulbs is a hypocrite. Save 100 watts for $5.

If I haven't replaced all with LED, but some instead with CFL, am I allowed to complain?

 

[DrMrLordX]

If I haven't replaced all with LED, but some instead with CFL, am I allowed to complain?

Considering the fact that you are actually arguing in favor of monopolism (ugh), it doesn't matter what kind of lightbulbs you use. But hey you can complain anyway. No big whoop.

But I'll tell you one thing, that 845 sure isn't going to break Intel's grasp on the desktop PC scene, that's for sure.

For those of you who were looking for some evidence that Carrizo might be inferior to Kaveri in gaming, take a look at this:

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/569307-athlon-x4-845-review-excavator/

I don't know if you trust ONOTech so take it for what it's worth, though it seems pretty clear that a stock 860k is faster in games. I don't know what you should expect to pay for an 860k now, but they've been available for as little as $40-$60 USD at various times over the past year. So realistically speaking, the 845 isn't saving you much money, and it underperforms in games (except for Crysis 3).

 

[24601]

Thinking about it some more, it's clear to me why the kind of competition we have in the tech market raises prices, and is pure capitalism. Let me explain to you 'fanboy capitalism':

Prices in capitalism are affected by supply and demand, right? When supply is high and demand is low, prices are low, and vice versa.

Now, you'd think, naively, that competition means more supply and therefore would lower prices, but competition actually raises demand and therefore increases prices.

There's a huge pent-up demand for high end AMD CPU's, don't you agree? The moment AMD produces a good high end chip, legions of AMD fanboys will rush to buy it. What about Intel fanboys? They will not just stand idle and make do with inferior Intel chips, no, they will rush and buy higher end Intel chips which beat AMD ones.

You see where this is going? Suddenly there's a much higher demand for higher end chips, and so prices go up. And that's pure capitalism. And as long as each company continues to leapfrog the other, demand will continue.

Any deviation from pure rational self-interest on the part of consumers is a failure of capitalism and presents market distortions, and this is amplified massively the less rational the consumer (like in your example of "fanboy capitalism")

However, such does not preclude the far greater importance of the obvious collusion Intel and AMD have partook during the Core 2 Duo era, where Intel purposefully ignored AMD to the greatest extent that it could instead of the proper capitalist action of decapitating them.

A shakey monopoly pricing has been in place for Intel ever since the 45nm Yorkfield in 2008. The Nehalem institution of the I5/i7 system was simply the institutionalization of the complete irrelevance of AMD at that point. The 1723 USD Broadwell-E i7-6950x is the first concrete solidification of the signal that Intel sent with the massive capex cut for the 14nm generation that they were now going IBM style monopoly pricing, going all in for exponential pricing increases in the desktop space from here on out.

I just hope Skylake-E HEDT on the Purley platform is the last hint of monopoly stability pricing as opposed to the first step of exponential pricing creeping into the lower core counts.

I want me a Skylake-E chip and Purley mobo as my last CPU and Mobo purchase of my life and i don't want to have to pay 6,000+ USD for it.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

It's used pretty intensively in games, such as GTA V for example.
Which is the reason why AMD CPUs perform so badly in it.

Oh, yeah.... The majority of FX chips are generally 1 to 3 frames per second below a 4790K in modern resolutions/settings. That's totally unplayable to all the Intel fanboys.
But hey, let's play GTA V at 640x480 in low detail to make that Intel boner seem larger.

I hate to break it to you -- but if you crank the resolution and detail settings even higher -- namely 4k.... AMD FX is usually the faster CPU....
Even a mighty 5960x dips to lower frame rates (which is why I swapped the monitors connected to my FX and i7 4790K respectively -- My
4790K is happiest at 1440p while my overclocked FX-8370 plays nicer at 2160p). I originally had my 4k monitor connected to the i7, but
the FX just is smoother when you are cranked up to 4k resolution.

 

[ET]

The 1723 USD Broadwell-E i7-6950x is the first concrete solidification of the signal that Intel sent with the massive capex cut for the 14nm generation that they were now going IBM style monopoly pricing, going all in for exponential pricing increases in the desktop space from here on out.

I actually see this price as a preemptive response to Zen. Intel is preparing the market for Zen's 8-core, 16 thread $1000 CPU by marking its territory with a 10-core one at a higher price.

 

[The Stilt]

Oh, yeah.... The majority of FX chips are generally 1 to 3 frames per second below a 4790K in modern resolutions/settings. That's totally unplayable to all the Intel fanboys.
But hey, let's play GTA V at 640x480 in low detail to make that Intel boner seem larger.

Great that you provided a link to this always as botched GamersNexus.net "test". You recon that a R9 270X causes no GPU bottle neck, at 1440P?

 

[SpaceBeer]

The 1723 USD Broadwell-E i7-6950x is the first concrete solidification of the signal that Intel sent with the massive capex cut for the 14nm generation that they were now going IBM style monopoly pricing, going all in for exponential pricing increases in the desktop space from here on out.

I just hope Skylake-E HEDT on the Purley platform is the last hint of monopoly stability pricing as opposed to the first step of exponential pricing creeping into the lower core counts.

I want me a Skylake-E chip and Purley mobo as my last CPU and Mobo purchase of my life and i don't want to have to pay 6,000+ USD for it.

If you really need 10c/20t, 25MB cache processor, it means you need it for highly parallel workload, but probably not GPU supported. So for that price you can go for 2 x 8c/16t, 20 MB chache, such as E5-2640 v3. Yes, they have lower base clock (and IPC), but you'll get 60% more cores and cache and overall faster machine. If you need 10c/20t CPU just to say you have 10c/20t CPU and maybe play GTA V, then the 1800$ price is ok

On topic: Of course 845 is nothing special (it's based on bad old architecture ), but it's good enough for entry level builds with ~100$ GPUs. Maybe 860k is a better choice, but if you want to OC it, you'll also need better ($$$) motherboard. For this one, 40$ A68H is just fine

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

Great that you provided a link to this always as botched GamersNexus.net "test". You recon that a R9 270X causes no GPU bottle neck, at 1440P?

Way to move the goalposts -- That chart, sir, is a benchmark for a Titan with 12 GB of VRAM.

Me thinks a thousand dollar Titan isn't going to bottleneck too many games. But thanks for the laugh.

Just give it up, nobody is buying your snake oil today. FX chips are better at running GTA 5 at ultra settings / 4k+ resolutions.

 

[The Stilt]

Way to move the goalposts -- That chart, sir, is a benchmark for a Titan with 12 GB of VRAM.

Me thinks a thousand dollar Titan isn't going to bottleneck too many games at 1440p. But thanks for the laugh.

Just give it up, nobody is buying your snake oil today.

Yeah, my bad. Was looking the wrong chart from their site.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Oh, yeah.... The majority of FX chips are generally 1 to 3 frames per second below a 4790K in modern resolutions/settings. That's totally unplayable to all the Intel fanboys.

Who said anything about Vishera? We're talking about Carrizo and how its small L2 cache affects gaming performance. In fact, it's not that great. It's a SuperPi monster though.

On topic: Of course 845 is nothing special (it's based on bad old architecture ),

Since when was Excavator old? They only released it last year. It's the newest uarch AMD has on the market.