APU Wars - Ongoing APU Review by AtenRa

[coffeemonster]

It's just unfortunate that AMD lacks CPU performance to keep their APUs competing decently against Intel's offerings in more important arenas.

areas like... mobile?
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i3-5010U-vs-AMD-A8-6410
"No winner Declared Too close to call"
Their competitiveness in "more important areas" has to do with OEM availability, not CPU performance.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Oh, you "forgot" the single threaded score. Intel is more than 30% faster in passmark, and that of course is only an i3 without turbo.

 

[AtenRa]

Oh, you "forgot" the single threaded score. Intel is more than 30% faster in passmark, and that of course is only an i3 without turbo.

A8-6410 is puma core.

 

[burninatortech4]

Has there been any concrete information on the hard release date of the Carrizo/Carrizo-L silicon?

Thanks for the APU reviews OP. They're very informative.

 

[jpiniero]

Has there been any concrete information on the hard release date of the Carrizo/Carrizo-L silicon?

AMD is shipping the final version. As to when you will be able to buy a Carrizo laptop, well that's up to the OEMs.

 

[cbn]

I have a general question for AtenRA:

How do AMD APUs perform in GPGPU with single channel RAM vs dual channel RAM? (I'm thinking mainly of the A8-7600)

 

[DrMrLordX]

cbn, that's going to depend on the application in question. Stuff like GPUPI is completely unaffected by memory bandwidth. If you are dealing with OpenCL applications, a large working set will potentially be laggy at the beginning of the workload since there will have to be memcopy from system memory to the frame buffer. Repeated swapping of data into and out of the frame buffer will exaggerate the problem.

HSA will get you around that unless you've got to swap data into and out of system memory.

Going back to the general topic of APUs, it looks like AMD may be ready to bring Puma to AIO desktops:

http://www.cpu-world.com/news_2015/2015040701_AMD_E1-6015_and_A8-7410_APUs_spotted.html

That article only mentions notebooks, but all E1 and E2 processors will find their way into AIOs eventually. E2s based on Puma/Carrizo-L will probably show up in short order.

 

[Blitzvogel]

areas like... mobile?
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i3-5010U-vs-AMD-A8-6410
"No winner Declared Too close to call"
Their competitiveness in "more important areas" has to do with OEM availability, not CPU performance.

According to Intel's website, the i3-5010U has an HD 5500 IGP, which is much better than what is in the Beema A8. My only reservation would be the amount of TDW that i3 will be putting out in it's entirety when the graphics are running full tilt. I've been having fun dealing with TDW issues with my new Lenovo Yoga 2. Even with a fan equipped lap desk, the iGP goes down to 499 MHz to stay within the thermal limit that an ultrabook creates when it can't have "real" cooling.

 

[Shivansps]

Tomorrow i gona have a A8-7600 and a R7 240 DDR3 to play with for a while, i think i gona test Dual Graphics...

 

[Abwx]

Oh, you "forgot" the single threaded score. Intel is more than 30% faster in passmark, and that of course is only an i3 without turbo.

The A8 6410 has 20% better MT perfs than Haswell and 10% better than Broadwell when all are restricted to a strict 14-15W, i guess that it more than compensate for any ST score, if ST was that important there would be a i1 with 1C/2T...

Tomorrow i gona have a A8-7600 and a R7 240 DDR3 to play with for a while, i think i gona test Dual Graphics...

Hardware.fr did a test with this GPU and a 7850K, the dual graphic scores are marked "DG" :

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/913-10/gpu-dual-graphics-jeux.html

Possible that given the 7600 smaller IGP the R240 could be of better benefit than with a 7850K, at least with these few tested games.

 

[Erenhardt]

The A8 6410 has 20% better MT perfs than Haswell and 10% better than Broadwell when all are restricted to a strict 14-15W, i guess that it more than compensate for any ST score, if ST was that important there would be a i1 with 1C/2T...




Hardware.fr did a test with this GPU and a 7850K, the dual graphic scores are marked "DG" :

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/913-10/gpu-dual-graphics-jeux.html

Possible that given the 7600 smaller IGP the R240 could be of better benefit than with a 7850K, at least with these few tested games.

Yep, but that is 14.1 (bet) drivers. There were multiple performance drivers for apu and dualgraphics.

 

[Abwx]

Yep, but that is 14.1 (bet) drivers. There were multiple performance drivers for apu and dualgraphics.

Yes, you are right, at least this will allow us some comparison between thoses old results and what some members could get from updated rigs.

 

[AtenRa]

Intel Core i3 3225 with HD4000 (Simulation from Core i7 3770K) added in the OP 04-28-2015

 

[Shivansps]

OK... this is the thing, Dual Graphics it does work well on DX11, no so much on DX9, but still a few games i tested showed improvement on DX9.

I did not have time for a real good test, and i was unable to use a full hd monitor, so there is some margin of error.

The R7 240 2GB DDR3 and the R7 of the A8-7600 with DDR3-1600 memory performs about the same.

All tests at 1366x768 and 15.4 Beta.

Civ Beyond Earth (DX11, High x2AA)
Dual Graphics:
Min, Max, Avg
20, 63, 53.197

IGP
Min, Max, Avg
8, 42, 32.187

ME3 (DX9, max, no AA)

Dual Graphics
Min, Max, Avg
28, 62, 55.449

IGP
Min, Max, Avg
27, 50, 33.811

Skyrim (DX9, High 2xAA)

Dual Graphics
Min, Max, Avg
23, 61, 44.450

IGP
Min, Max, Avg
19, 39, 29.040

Planet Explorers (DX9, Mid, Unity Game)
Dual Graphics
Min, Max, Avg
26, 32, 29.085

IGP
Min, Max, Avg
27, 35, 31.147

3Dmark
Dual
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/6786869

r7 240
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/6786338

A8-7600
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/6786660

 

[AtenRa]

Nice thx, could you run the same with the r7 240 alone ?

 

[Shivansps]

Nice thx, could you run the same with the r7 240 alone ?

I did some quick tests on Skyrim and ME and it was performing the same or worse, so i did not run the benchmaks at all on the 240 to save a little time.

The IGP on the 7600 is just better than the R7 240 DDR3 version.

 

[AtenRa]

ok thx

ill try to bench some CF myself if ill find the time and report it here.

Right now i want to finish the 7850K and start the low power APUs.

 

[coffeemonster]

That article only mentions notebooks, but all E1 and E2 processors will find their way into AIOs eventually. E2s based on Puma/Carrizo-L will probably show up in short order.

Oh how I'd love to see a Puma Athlon like that jaguar based 5350 to play with.

 

[DrMrLordX]

It would be nice. AMD should have started pushing Beema into the AiO space (and AM1) ages ago. At least the Carrizo-L parts will have higher clockspeeds.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I would love to see a A10-6700 in that list as well.

 

[AtenRa]

Teaser :biggrin:





Bioshock Infinity 1080p Low

A10-7850K Overclocked to 4.35GHz, iGPU at 970MHz, Memory at 2424MHz
Min = 20,58fps
Avg = 41,45fps

A10-7850K Overclocked to 4.3GHz, iGPU 720MHz, Memory at 2400MHz
+ CrossFire R7 250 2GB DDR3

Min = 21,32fps
Avg = 62,67fps

-----------------

Hitman Absolution 1080p Low

A10-7850K Overclocked to 4.35GHz, iGPU at 970MHz, Memory at 2424MHz
Min = 27,13fps
Avg = 33,16fps

A10-7850K Overclocked to 4.3GHz, iGPU 720MHz, Memory at 2400MHz
+ CrossFire R7 250 2GB DDR3

Min = 34fps
Avg = 43,20fps

-----------------

Metro Last Light Redux 1080p Low

A10-7850K Overclocked to 4.35GHz, iGPU at 970MHz, Memory at 2424MHz

A10-7850K Overclocked to 4.3GHz, iGPU 720MHz, Memory at 2400MHz
+ CrossFire R7 250 2GB DDR3

 

[Enigmoid]

How does the 250 do on its own? Just to get an idea of scaling.

 

[frozentundra123456]

How does the 250 do on its own? Just to get an idea of scaling.

Right now, on new egg, R7 250x is only a few dollars more than the 250. An athlon X4 with the 250x would offer at least equal performance to the dual graphics, no concerns about scaling or microstutter, and be cheaper than 750k plus R7 250. Plus you would not have to overclock or use high speed memory.

 

[AtenRa]

How does the 250 do on its own? Just to get an idea of scaling.

A10-7850K 4.3GHz + R7 250 2GB DDR3 (only dGPU)

Bioshock 1080p Low
min = 15,18fps
avg = 32,43fps


A10-7850K default, iGPU only, 2133MHz memory

Bioshock 1080p Low
min = 17,70fps
avg = 35,47fps

 

[LTC8K6]

There are ddr5 versions of the 240 and 250. How would they compare as dgpus vs the ddr3 versions?