APU Wars - Ongoing APU Review by AtenRa

[meester]

The A8-7600 is a very nice chip. It's the sweet spot for the current gen of AMD APUs, in that A6, A4 are dual core, and there's a nice upgrade over the previous A8s in terms of graphics hardware. I am not sure how well it overclocks.

But the A10-5600K is interesting also, due to pricing.

 

[frozentundra123456]

HD7770 is a 640 cores, 16 ROPs, GDDR5 dGPU 80W TDP alone.
A8-7600 is a 384 Cores, 8 ROPs, DDR-3 iGPU up to 65W TDP(entire package).

And before you say anything else, there are both AMD and NVIDIA dGPUs sold today with lower performance than both the A8-7600 and HD7700.

You have done a lot of work, and the data is interesting, so I dont want to get into an argument. But TBH, the comparison of an apu should include a bargin cpu plus dgpu of the 250x category. That is the elephant in the room that you are ignoring. Obviously you can set up a thread to eliminate that comparison, but in the real world, one would be foolish to not make it.

It is pretty obvious that an APU will game better than an Intel IGP. The question is, how adequate of an experience can it provide, and how does it compare to the most powerful solution in a similar price bracket.

But I will not post anymore in this thread, because I dont want to be accused of derailing it.

 

[AtenRa]

You have done a lot of work, and the data is interesting, so I dont want to get into an argument. But TBH, the comparison of an apu should include a bargin cpu plus dgpu of the 250x category. That is the elephant in the room that you are ignoring. Obviously you can set up a thread to eliminate that comparison, but in the real world, one would be foolish to not make it.

It is pretty obvious that an APU will game better than an Intel IGP. The question is, how adequate of an experience can it provide, and how does it compare to the most powerful solution in a similar price bracket.

But I will not post anymore in this thread, because I dont want to be accused of derailing it.

Well this thread is about the APUs as a product alone. This thread is about the performance of the APUs not only in gaming but in general. As you can see i have included all kind of benchmarks from synthetics to CPU to GPGPU and Gaming.
I can do what you are asking but i will make a different thread for that

 

[USER8000]

The R7 250X which is a rebranded HD7770 costs the same as an A8 7600 in the UK.The IGP has the performance of a £50 graphics card. Any chance you can test Crossfire with an R7 250 GDDR3?

 

[cbn]

What speed were the A8-7600's CPU cores dropping to on the gaming benchmarks at 65 watt TDP? At 45 watt TDP?

 

[AtenRa]

The R7 250X which is a rebranded HD7770 costs the same as an A8 7600 in the UK.The IGP has the performance of a £50 graphics card. Any chance you can test Crossfire with an R7 250 GDDR3?

noted

 

[AtenRa]

What speed were the A8-7600's CPU cores dropping to on the gaming benchmarks at 65 watt TDP? At 45 watt TDP?

If I remember correctly lowest is 2.4GHz, ill check tomorrow to confirm.

 

[Shivansps]

Well i was kinda expecting these results, especially on the gaming part, personally im more interested on the low end of the sprectum, like an A4-7300 vs G1840 vs 5350.

 

[SPBHM]

The R7 250X which is a rebranded HD7770 costs the same as an A8 7600 in the UK.The IGP has the performance of a £50 graphics card. Any chance you can test Crossfire with an R7 250 GDDR3?

250 runs at 1000Mhz, the 7600 IGP at 720, but if both are using DDR3 the memory is a bottleneck so performance should not be to different I guess,

in any case a 7770 gddr5 is way faster, probably a better experience than 7600 + R7 250 DDR3 dual graphics.

still if you can grab the cheapest possible 240-250 (excluding 64bit please) it might not be a bad choice for dual graphics.

 

[monstercameron]

250 runs at 1000Mhz, the 7600 IGP at 720, but if both are using DDR3 the memory is a bottleneck so performance should not be to different I guess,

in any case a 7770 gddr5 is way faster, probably a better experience than 7600 + R7 250 DDR3 dual graphics.

still if you can grab the cheapest possible 240-250 (excluding 64bit please) it might not be a bad choice for dual graphics.

this kind of dual graphics has always been a bad value proposition. An asymmetrical xfire would have been a massive value add to apus...maybe it' just too much of a hassle to support...

 

[AtenRa]

Llano A8-3870K added 20th Feb 2015 in the OP.

edit: 3D MARK and PC Mark 8 will be updated later for all systems with latest versions.

 

[creed3020]

Thanks for adding the FM1 platform data and the A8-3870.

Nice, but sad to see that this APU isn't far behind the current offerings by much. I use an A8-3850 for my HTPC and went for the top SKU available at the time.

I guess the major improvement for the newer APUs would be perf/watt, as my chip is 100w and the newer ones are mostly lower TDPs.

 

[PG]

System Hardware and software used.

Motherboard : ASUS A88XM-Plus
Memory : 2x 4GB 2133MHz Kingston Genesis 11-12-11 1.65V
HDD : Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB SATA-6
PSU : Thermal Take TR2 380W 80plus Bronze.

Is this the exact RAM used?

http://www.kingston.com/datasheets/KHX2133C11D3K4_8GX.pdf

"Kingston's KHX2133C11D3K4/8GX is a kit of four 256M x 64-
bit (2GB) DDR3-2133 CL11 SDRAM (Synchronous DRAM)
1Rx8 memory modules, based on eight 256M x 8-bit DDR3
FBGA components per module. Each module kit supports
Intel®XMP(Extreme Memory Profiles). Total kit capacity is
8GB. Each module kit has been tested to run at DDR3-2133 at
a low latency timing of 11-12-11 at 1.65V."


If so, that is single rank RAM, and Kaveri would even perform better with dual rank. I think that makes the numbers even more impressive.

Thanks for all the work and the results, it's really interesting and helpful.

 

[AtenRa]

Is this the exact RAM used?

http://www.kingston.com/datasheets/KHX2133C11D3K4_8GX.pdf

"Kingston's KHX2133C11D3K4/8GX is a kit of four 256M x 64-
bit (2GB) DDR3-2133 CL11 SDRAM (Synchronous DRAM)
1Rx8 memory modules, based on eight 256M x 8-bit DDR3
FBGA components per module. Each module kit supports
Intel®XMP(Extreme Memory Profiles). Total kit capacity is
8GB. Each module kit has been tested to run at DDR3-2133 at
a low latency timing of 11-12-11 at 1.65V."


If so, that is single rank RAM, and Kaveri would even perform better with dual rank. I think that makes the numbers even more impressive.

Thanks for all the work and the results, it's really interesting and helpful.

The kit is the KHX2133C11D3T3K4/16GX with 4x 4GB dimms but i used only the 2 of them.

 

[AtenRa]

[FONT=&quot][FONT=&quot][FONT=&quot]Latest 3D Mark and PC Mark 8 versions adde[FONT=&quot]d in the OP with A8-3870K on [/FONT]03[FONT=&quot]-10-2015 [/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT]

 

[Shehriazad]

Is it feasible for you to benchmark a system using an Athlon 5350?
Some nice "top dog" 7700 or 7850 would also be neat...but I guess there are a bunch of benchmarks for it out there.

 

[AtenRa]

Is it feasible for you to benchmark a system using an Athlon 5350?
Some nice "top dog" 7700 or 7850 would also be neat...but I guess there are a bunch of benchmarks for it out there.

Yea i will bench the Kabini but i will have to change the Gaming settings. So i was thinking about having the same games but with lower resolutions and Image Quality. That will also work for entry Intel APUs like Celerons, Pentiums etc.

I will also do the 7850.

 

[monstercameron]

Yea i will bench the Kabini but i will have to change the Gaming settings. So i was thinking about having the same games but with lower resolutions and Image Quality. That will also work for entry Intel APUs like Celerons, Pentiums etc.

I will also do the 7850.

i kinda want to see the power consumption under various levels of load...especially to compare it to celerons and pentiums

 

[DrMrLordX]

Some nice "top dog" 7700 or 7850 would also be neat...but I guess there are a bunch of benchmarks for it out there.

I don't have many (read: any) actual game benchmarks to show for it, but I do have a slew of benches for my 4.7 ghz 7700k. Bear in mind those are all running Catalyst 14.12. Ice Storm got a major speed boost from Win10's Catalyst 15.2 .

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

Thanks for adding the FM1 platform data and the A8-3870.

Nice, but sad to see that this APU isn't far behind the current offerings by much. I use an A8-3850 for my HTPC and went for the top SKU available at the time.

Not too much of a shock to me. Clock for Clock, the Stars/K10 cores were probably one of the fastest AMD ever designed.

 

[TheProgrammer]

Well this thread is about the APUs as a product alone. This thread is about the performance of the APUs not only in gaming but in general. As you can see i have included all kind of benchmarks from synthetics to CPU to GPGPU and Gaming.
I can do what you are asking but i will make a different thread for that

Yes, thanks for this. I'm looking into APUs only and am looking to make my next machine with no discrete video card. I've had a lot of video hardware and at this point for my habits, it's really unnecessary. The only way I'll buy another standalone video card is for VR. For Borderlands and League of Legends I would be fine today with a top end A10 or Crystalwell enabled Intel iGPU. I'm looking forward to ridding my system of a GPU as much as I was ridding my system of my Sound Blaster, which my last one had its own bugs in hardware and software.

I'm really interested in getting an HSA 1.0 compliant chip, and hoping Skylake is. Doubtful but with ARM chips and AMD adopting it, may as well. Being a software developer, I find a lot of appeal in this future.
HBM APUs will be the time when they rise up and it's what I'm really looking forward to. My definition of an ideal APU is HSA compliant, but any single chip CPU/GPU as you have it here would count.

I hope someday you're sent AMD/Intel hardware to expand on this, because you did a great job and it's what many of us are looking for. We don't care what a bargain CPU and GPU can do. I have a fast CPU and GPU already. It always appears as an attempt to put a slant on something we already realize (even though I realize it not always is the intent). Many today are interested in APUs for the technical aspect and building on their potential in the software world.

You just did a better job than 10 of 10 hardware review sites out there. Thanks again!

 

[DrMrLordX]

I'm really interested in getting an HSA 1.0 compliant chip, and hoping Skylake is. Doubtful but with ARM chips and AMD adopting it, may as well. Being a software developer, I find a lot of appeal in this future.
HBM APUs will be the time when they rise up and it's what I'm really looking forward to. My definition of an ideal APU is HSA compliant, but any single chip CPU/GPU as you have it here would count.

Intel is not a part of the HSA alliance/consortium/whateveryouwanttocallit. To my knowledge, neither Gen8 nor Gen9 graphics are designed with HSA in mind. They apparently have some features similar to what you'll find in GCN iGPUs from Kaveri onward which could make them useful for things like using pointers to things in system memory instead of requiring copying of data into the frame buffer, but it'll be up to Intel to provide their own software stack for that sort of functionality. I haven't seen them release anything for Gen8 like that yet. This is Intel we're talking about, though, so rest assured that if they want to do it, they'll do it and do it well.

For the time being, if you really want to get something like the i7-5775C or i7-5675C and program for the iGPU, then you'd best stick with OpenCL.

 

[AtenRa]

Trinity A10-5800K added 15th April 2015 in the OP.

ps : Due to a lot of new patches in WarThrunder, the performance is not on par with the older version i have used to benchmark the first APUs and thus i have decided not to use that game for any new APUs added from now on. I will just leave the original graphs for reference only.

 

[AtenRa]

AIDA Cache & Memory and GPGPU section was added in the OP.

 

[Blitzvogel]

You sure are doing a good job with all this. It's just unfortunate that AMD lacks CPU performance to keep their APUs competing decently against Intel's offerings in more important arenas.