AMD trims prices across its APU lineup

[AtenRa]

And in these GPU limited scenarios you describe the frame rate is a fluid 60 FPS?

You cannot always have 60fps because you are igpu limited.

Edit: in the vast majority of games, raising the iGPU above 720MHz will increase fps, also increasing Memory bandwidth will gain performance as well. The CPU even at 3GHz for the 7850K is more than enough to drive the iGPU even at 1000MHz or above.

 

[DrMrLordX]

.....Through AMDmsrTweaker, which is something I think most people are not going to use.

What AMD needs is a very simple utility with a GUI that allows someone to disable CPU downclocking under iGPU load.

Anyone who really gets their panties in a wad can get up off their butts and fix the problem. It's an old issue. AMD is not going to release any applications to change the behavior. Hell if it's that much of a problem, someone could take amdmsrtweaker and pack it with a script to read p3 and then alter p4 and p5 to conform. It wouldn't be that hard to do so.

 

[cbn]

So after downloading BF4 I did some informal testing of my Athlon x4 860K at stock settings (which means mostly turbo to 4.0 Ghz in BF 4 64 player) and also at 3.0 Ghz (with turbo disabled). Here is what I found using the spawn area of Goldmont Railway as the test map:

At 1280 x 720 low settings, the Athlon x4 860K at both stock settings (3.7 Ghz base/4.0 Ghz turbo) and downclocked to 3.0 Ghz appeared to yield the same frame rate with the R7 250X GPU clockspeed reduced to 500 Mhz and the memory bandwidth reduced to 560 Mhz (2240 Mhz effective).

With the CPU downclocked to 3.0 GHz, I could gain FPS by either increasing GPU clock back up to 1000 Mhz or increasing memory clock to 1125 Mhz (4500 Mhz effective).

So in the spawn areas of BF4 64 player using Goldmont Railway, it appears my downclocked R7 250X is a bottleneck.

 

[cbn]

Anyone who really gets their panties in a wad can get up off their butts and fix the problem. It's an old issue. AMD is not going to release any applications to change the behavior.

I think "anyone" would be too much of a generalization. AMDmsrtweaker is not something I think most people would find simple to use.

 

[cbn]

On these APUs, does the amount of iGPU load factor into the downclocking of the CPU?

In other words, does 1280 x 720 low result in less CPU downclocking than 1280 x 720 high. This, of course, depending on the game.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I think "anyone" would be too much of a generalization. AMDmsrtweaker is not something I think most people would find simple to use.

Who said it was simple? If it's that big of a problem for the end user, they'll figure it out. Most people don't even notice it since you have to have monitoring software running during the iGPU load to even see the downclock anyway. Those that do, will look for a solution.

On these APUs, does the amount of iGPU load factor into the downclocking of the CPU?

In other words, does 1280 x 720 low result in less CPU downclocking than 1280 x 720 high. This, of course, depending on the game.

No. It's all or nothing.

 

[Shehriazad]

I used the 7850K for a bit and never experienced any throttling of any sort...given I slapped a $20 aftermarket cooler on there and manually locked the clocks @ 4.5 Ghz and 900 Mhz iGPU...

But neither did it overheat nor throttle/downclock...and that's with some shabby $20 Scythe Katana.


Like how did people manage to make it throttle? Use silent mode in bios, have all clocks on auto and then place it on top of a toaster? I gave away my 7850K after a few months to my friend who is using it with a standard AM3 fan has no such issues..but then again, he also does not use auto clocks, I set it up for him at a toasty 4.3 + 900(AM3 cooler isn't exactly the best xD).

AMDs auto clocks are trash on Kaveri to begin with....just manually lock them into 4 Ghz if you don't want to OC or anything, the stock cooler is very much capable of that...unless you're living in hell and your ambient temp is 40°c.

 

[TheELF]

Throttle is not caused only by temps,it's mainly a tdp thing ,to stay within the specified tdp it will throttle the vga or the cpu depending on which one needs more power.
So obviously the motherboard and how it handles power output,and how high a tdp it can handle,plays a big role.

 

[Shehriazad]

Throttle is not caused only by temps,it's mainly a tdp thing ,to stay within the specified tdp it will throttle the vga or the cpu depending on which one needs more power.
So obviously the motherboard and how it handles power output,and how high a tdp it can handle,plays a big role.

Well, I did only use Kaveri with ITX standard boards...with the highest chipset and obviously not some $50 board...mainly because all the FM2+ ITX boards start at like $100 and up.

 

[monstercameron]

I used the 7850K for a bit and never experienced any throttling of any sort...given I slapped a $20 aftermarket cooler on there and manually locked the clocks @ 4.5 Ghz and 900 Mhz iGPU...

But neither did it overheat nor throttle/downclock...and that's with some shabby $20 Scythe Katana.


Like how did people manage to make it throttle? Use silent mode in bios, have all clocks on auto and then place it on top of a toaster? I gave away my 7850K after a few months to my friend who is using it with a standard AM3 fan has no such issues..but then again, he also does not use auto clocks, I set it up for him at a toasty 4.3 + 900(AM3 cooler isn't exactly the best xD).

AMDs auto clocks are trash on Kaveri to begin with....just manually lock them into 4 Ghz if you don't want to OC or anything, the stock cooler is very much capable of that...unless you're living in hell and your ambient temp is 40°c.

It does cpu throttle under gpu load no matter if cool and quiet is disabled.

 

[Shehriazad]

It does cpu throttle under gpu load no matter if cool and quiet is disabled.

Again....not once has it throttled on my Asrock FM2A88X ITX+...that being while both iGPU AND CPU were overclocked and running 2400 Mhz ram modules.

Like someone else said above...this might have to do with chipsets and boards/brands?

Because that board held up like a champ (even though before I only had terrible experience with Asrock boards...but this ITX board was the only one to come with an m.Sata slot).

As a little side note....there was a time I had dGPU problems with that board and after writing with Asrock support for a while they actually sent me a custom Bios that fixed the problem...that was pretty badass of them xD.




Long story short....I believe you guys when you say that this chip will possibly throttle on some chipsets/boards...but no matter how hard I tried, I could not get it to throttle at all on my or my friends' ITX board.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Here's the quick n' dirty on "how to get Kaveri to throttle":

Board Specific

Board-specific throttling can happen for one of three reasons, not all of which are mutually exclusive:

1). Board overvolts, throwing processor into an overheat quickly, causing throttling due to high thermal margin
2). Board exceeds its own power delivery capabilities (VRMs), throttles down processor. Pretty rare, shouldn't happen anymore with current UEFI revs and on the latest crops of boards. We hope!
3). User tries to pull more power through the socket than the socket/pinouts can handle. You get what is often called "cTDP throttling", which is where the CPU runs slower than monitoring software can detect. Usually happens when the user tries to push Kaveri APUs past 4.5 ghz with lots of volts. Not as common with Kaveri CPUs (860k, etc).

Firmware/microcode Specific

1).iGPU throttling: CPU will retire to p5 state under some arbitrarily-intense iGPU workload. Only documented under Windows operating systems. Does not matter what load is imposed on the VRMs and/or socket, nor does temperature matter. It just does it. Can be disabled.
2). Power throttling: CPU will retire to p4 state if some bit of microcode somewhere determines that the package (CPU + iGPU) is drawing too much total power to be "safe". Happens under intense combined CPU + iGPU load on boards with overbuilt sockets. Can be disabled, though the OS scheduler may still struggle to deal with whatever software is causing such ridiculous loads. Example: Run Prime95 custom (768k min/max ffts, run inline) + Furmark. Ouch. Not recommended!

Thermal Specific

1). Thermal margin causes CPU to throttle. Your CPU is overheating! Cool it down.
2). Package temperature exceeds manufacturer maximum. See #1
3). CPU temperature exceeds manufacturer maximum. See #1.

Note that "package temperature" and "CPU temperature" are not always easy to monitor with this chip. Thermal margin is usually your go-to since this will typically run past its limit before anything else. Typically.

Long story short: early in Kaveri's lifespan, you saw a bunch of reviews from Ian Cutress on Anandtech showing Kaveri in various throttling states on various different boards, which made it look awful. End users have experienced far less throttling. Various UEFI updates, and people not having such an awful early sample like Curtress', have led to less throttling. About the only throttling that turns up frequenctly is the stupid iGPU thing. Honestly I have to say, I'm surprised Shehriazad hasn't experienced that, but hey, kudos to him if you have not. A few people claimed to have been able to disable it on certain motherboards by disabling APM and some other features, but that was never confirmed.

 

[AtenRa]

@Shehriazad

Ask your friend to run Luxmark 2 or 3 in a CPU + iGPU mode and watch the CPU clocks through CPUz.
I believe he will see the CPU to throttle down to 3GHz during the benchmark.

 

[monstercameron]

I can confirm the the 3ghz throttling on my KAVERI, stranger yet also my 860k does not respect clock setting from the bios and throttles. It may be a board issue -Asus a78m-a.

 

[CriticalOne]

And Intel's response is...

Nothing. They don't need one.

People who are generally satisfied with an iGPU are going to go with something like a i3 4330 for around the same price. For non-gamers, the HD 4600 is already pretty powerful and those types of casual users don't really need more. Instead, they get a CPU that is more powerful.

People who want to game regularly on their computers should try to aim higher than a R7 iGPU. A 7750 nowadays struggles with low settings and then you have the fact that the R7 is slower than it. People should be looking at an minimum of a 2GB 260X or a 2GB 750 for regular AAA gaming today.

 

[Phynaz]

Nothing. They don't need one.

Somebody finally caught on