(April 19) - UPDATE #4 - Managed to get a few minutes to test Mantle on the 7970. Hope this helps some of you.
Battlefield 4:
Mantle = 25-45 FPS, holds steady lows around 25 fps on operation locker in the insane firefights and on siege of shanghai on 64 player madness. Average closer to 35 FPS. Definitely playable and a big difference in feeling from the Geforce 750 TI.
D3D = 20-30 fps, it quite a bit slower than with Mantle enabled but it was not a direct comparison as it was a different (64 player) map. Felt more like the 750 TI.
StarSwarm Results:
D3D
===========================================================
Oxide Games
Star Swarm Stress Test - �2013
C:\Users\minipacket\Documents\Star Swarm\Output_14_04_19_1512.txt
Version 1.10
04/19/2014 15:12
===========================================================
== Hardware Configuration =================================
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
CPU: AuthenticAMD
AMD Athlon(tm) 5350 APU with Radeon(tm) R3
Physical Cores: 4
Logical Cores: 4
Physical Memory: 8522588160
Allocatable Memory: 140737488224256
===========================================================
== Configuration ==========================================
API: DirectX
Scenario: ScenarioFollow.csv
User Input: Disabled
Resolution: 1920x1080
Fullscreen: True
GameCore Update: 16.6 ms
Bloom Quality: High
PointLight Quality: High
ToneCurve Quality: High
Glare Overdraw: 16
Shading Samples: 64
Shade Quality: Mid
Deferred Contexts: Disabled
Temporal AA Duration: 16
Temporal AA Time Slice: 2
Detailed Frame Info: Off
===========================================================
== Results ================================================
Test Duration: 360 Seconds
Total Frames: 5066
Average FPS: 14.07
Average Unit Count: 4145
Maximum Unit Count: 5587
Average Batches/MS: 187.35
Maximum Batches/MS: 356.38
Average Batch Count: 14179
Maximum Batch Count: 61072
===========================================================
Mantle:
===========================================================
Oxide Games
Star Swarm Stress Test - �2013
C:\Users\minipacket\Documents\Star Swarm\Output_14_04_19_1520.txt
Version 1.10
04/19/2014 15:20
===========================================================
== Hardware Configuration =================================
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
CPU: AuthenticAMD
AMD Athlon(tm) 5350 APU with Radeon(tm) R3
Physical Cores: 4
Logical Cores: 4
Physical Memory: 8522588160
Allocatable Memory: 140737488224256
===========================================================
== Configuration ==========================================
API: Mantle
Scenario: ScenarioFollow.csv
User Input: Disabled
Resolution: 1920x1080
Fullscreen: True
GameCore Update: 16.6 ms
Bloom Quality: High
PointLight Quality: High
ToneCurve Quality: High
Glare Overdraw: 16
Shading Samples: 64
Shade Quality: Mid
Deferred Contexts: Disabled
Temporal AA Duration: 16
Temporal AA Time Slice: 2
Detailed Frame Info: Off
===========================================================
== Results ================================================
Test Duration: 360 Seconds
Total Frames: 13027
Average FPS: 36.18
Average Unit Count: 3930
Maximum Unit Count: 5488
Average Batches/MS: 656.85
Maximum Batches/MS: 2311.84
Average Batch Count: 21514
Maximum Batch Count: 132474
===========================================================
That's an insane difference and shows a best case scenario for Mantle.
END
--
(April 19) - UPDATE #3 - Over the past few evenings I have tested additional games and finally discreet Geforce 750 TI testing. Next update (hopefully testing completed tonight) I will finally test out Mantle.
Gaming (APU):
Trials Evolution:
40-60+ FPS at 800x600, low settings and playable at 1280x800 but a little choppy in spots.
Doom 3:
35-60FPS at 1024x768, medium settings, perfectly playable.
Sleeping Dogs:
Fully playable at 640x480 / 800x600 (30-35 FPS). 1024x768 (22-25 FPS) was playable but not very comfortable.
Crysis:
Crashes shortly after launch, not sure why, skipped to next game.
Renegade Ops:
1680X1050, plays perfect at default settings, runs around 30-40 FPS, looks great.
Bioshock Infinite:
This game was a little too demanding for the APU. Average FPS = 23.89, Min FPS = 14.87, Max FPS = 66.72
---
Gaming and Power (Geforce 750 TI)
Idle power = 22 Watts!
Furmark + p95 = 99 Watts.
Furmark = 88 Watts.
FFXI scored 6220 and uses 42-47 watts. Results in "Very High".
BF4 Multiplayer Team DM and Conquest 32 players large ran 25-40 FPS at 1280x800 on low settings. Upping the resolution and or details dropped the FPS even more therefore this game while playable with reduced settings unfortunately is generally too taxing for the APU. Hopefully mantle can help here on the Radeon cards.
BF3 Multiplayer, 64 player conquest. 30-45 FPS at 1280x800 low settings. Although the fps were not a lot higher than BF4 the game actually felt much better so the 5350 seems to be enough for casual game or two.
Both BF4 and BF3 only use around 45Watts therefore you can tell the videocard isn't able to stretch it legs with this 5350 driving it.
Crysis 3:
1920x1200 on high with FXAA enabled = 25-70 FPS. Some dips in spots but totally playable and looks amazing. This game consumes most of what the Geforce 750 TI can dish out as it uses up to 85 Watts.
Sleeping Dogs:
1920x1200, high details, 28-45 FPS and used between 80-87 Watts! Perfect example of maxing out the video card, the 5350 is fast enough here to fully let the 7750 TI stretch its legs. This game looks amazing at higher resolutions.
Fallout New Vegas:
35-68 FPS, Ultra details, 1920x1200, perfectly playable and only consumed around 50 Watts which points to a CPU limitation however the game was perfectly playable and looks amazing.
Trials Evolution:
2304x1440 running highest details the game runs a solid 60FPS and consumes 72 watts from the wall. This is another game where the 5350 is plenty fast to drive a card like the 750 TI.
Rengade Ops:
2304x1440, 85-110 FPS! Crazy fast and consumes 75W. Same conclusion as Trials Evo.
QuakeLive:
COM_MAXFPS set to '250' - online CA was sitting between 160-250FPS in a 4 on 4 match (dm6 & trinity).
Offline practice on Asylum was also now consistently above 100fps, no more lag! 35Watts @ 1920x1200
Although overkill, the 750 TI and 5350 is fast enough to drive this game for competitive reasons.
That's it for this update.
END
---
(April 16) - UPDATE #2 - More Pico power and APU gaming results added. Next update will be to run the remaining APU game fps tests (have about 6-7 more games) and then move into discreet graphics card gaming.
Power:
Prime 95 + Furmark = 36W
Gaming:
Borderlands 2, all graphic settings to low except textures on high:
640x480 = 30-40 fps
800x600 = 25-35 fps (played an hour or so, a little slow in spots but totally playable, comparable to last gen console)
1024x768 = 20-25 fps, playable but not enjoyable.
BF4 (multiplayer) - Large Conquest - 1024x768, all set to low:
D3D = 13 FPS
Mantle = 15 FPS
Unfortunately this game is too demanding on the APU. It will be interesting to test with the discreet cards and if Mantle helps out.
Skyrim:
Playable at medium settings - 1024x768, 4x aniso, FXAA 24-30 FPS. Huge improvement over e350.
Defense Grid:
40+ FPS at 1680x1050 with medium detail settings. Older indy game but has good graphics and one of the most fun tower defence games. Much faster than e350.
XCOM Enemy Unknown: 25fps at default settings, 1024x768. Due to the nature of the game it's totally comfortable playing at these settings and the game looks amazing.
Trine 2: 20-22 FPS with Max details set at 1024x768. I didn't test this game very long but lowering the detail would easily make it more playable fps wise.
Left 4 Dead 2: High settings @ 1280x800 = 25-45 FPS on average, totally playable but may want to turn down resolution or details to get above 30 fps minimum.
End
--
160W Pico Killawatt Results:
50% load = 22W
Idle = 14/15W
Prime 95 all cores loaded = 30W
Various games = 22-32W
Either this AsRock board isn't as efficient as the others or the power supply is still to large for this combination. That being said these results are not too far off from my old Zotac e350 which I believe used a 60W adapter.
When I have more time I will test with a 60W 19v DC notebook adapter and compare the results.
--
Gaming on the APU:
I'm starting with some lighter games as I kicked off a download of 150+GB of games which will take some time to complete.
Super Meat Boy:
Played perfectly at default resolution, no dropped frames or weird dips. Compared to my old Zotac e350 this is a huge improvement.
Jamestown:
Also played great, no random slowdowns or dips in the frames (beyond what the game engine produces to avoid bullet hell) and was a great improvement over my older Zotac e350.
Quake Live:
Plays great. Ran tests at 1024/768 - the FPS dipped as low as 45 on the more stressful maps (Asylum) but it mostly sat between 85-120 FPS (120 FPS cap). This should be more than good enough for the casual game of quake but I feel the CPU is still holding it back for serious competitive gaming. Again compared to the older Zotac this was night and day faster.
--
Canned Benchmarks:
I'm not going to run many of these but they're good for comparison reasons.
FFXIV A Realm Reborn: 1280x800 with standard settings scored 1993 points - "slightly low".
--
*I'm not sure if I should start a new thread or piggyback off someone else's so please move or delete OP if I'm in violation.*
I received my Athlon 5350 and AsRock AM1H-ITX motherboard last night and wanted to share my initial impressions. I will list in a bullet point format my thoughts and hope to use this thread to perform additional testing based on any feedback I get.
- 5350 - Wow look how small this is! the APU box is roughly half the size/weight of the FM1/2 APU's.
- AsRock motherboard is pretty standard , nothing special other than the special SATA power cable that connect into a motherboard header to power 2 SATA devices. Considering the board has 4 SATA ports in total this is a bit of a let down. However if used in combination with a Pico power supply this works out perfectly as you can combine the two on board headers with 2 headers from the Pico power supply which in turn will power up to 4 SATA devices. Think of a low powered NAS powered by only a Pico power supply.
-Instead of using an external DC power adapter I'm currently powering the chip and board with a Pico 160W Pico ATX adapter. The Pico units are much more efficient than standard power supplies so this should work out well efficiency wise when I add in a low powered GPU for testing. Depending on what I end up using this chip and board combo in I may use the external DC power instead and it must be stated that it's really nice to have the option and represents the flexibility you get when only having to deal with such low powered systems.
-One last observation about the motherboard I thought was strange, there is no +12v motherboard power adapter. I guess the 24 pin ATX power adapter sends enough power to board where it's not longer needed.
-added in 2*4GB of DDR3 2133Mhz memory (don't have the brand off the top of my head, will look when I get home tonight).
-added a 180GB Intel 520 SSD to the first native port.
-Power the unit on and checked the voltages were correct, disabled third party SATA controller, adjusted memory voltage to correct voltage and then set motherboard to boot UEFI, attached external USB-DVD and then I proceeded to install Windows 8.1. Windows installed a little slower than I'm normally used to but not by much, in all around 25 minutes.
-Installed device drivers from motherboard DVD, installed windows updates. Rebooted several times, noted the boot up times were basically indistinguishable from my SSD equipped A10-6800K system which was a nice surprise.
-Observed clock speeds while installing device drivers and updates, noticed under normal load of the CPU speed liked to bounce between 1.0-1.8 Ghz or so.
- Ran some basic seat of the pants browsing tests and noticed how quick everything loaded again essentially indistinguishable from my 6800K system I last built. Ran a few 1080P youtube videos, observed about 20-30% CPU usage but no jitter or weird stuttering happens while playback running.
-Went back to BIOS to see if I could up the bclk but was disappointed to find out there are no controls available to do this. I was able to adjust the CAS timing from 2 to 1 under the RAM settings but I didn't bother tightening the rest of the timings yet. Note this board has the ability adjust memory voltage but nothing for the APU.
And that was about it for the testing for an evening. Not much was done however given what little I have done with the unit there were no real road blocks or surprises. Everything felt snappy enough from the seat of the pants.
Time permitting I plan on performing the following tests this week:
-Hook up to Killawatt and record wattage use. I'll measure both external 60w or 90w power brick as well as the existing PICO power supply and 600w EVGA bronze PS.
-Install steam and handful of older games from library for APU testing
-Install Radeon 7970GHz for more demanding game testing (BF4, Crysis 3 etc).
-Test mantle with/without multiplayer BF4
-Unigine benchmarks.
-Focus on lower power gaming, install Geforce 750 TI (ordered yesterday, should arrive before end of week), re-run demanding game tests and compare to 7970 results to see if there is any appreciable difference. See if Pico power supply is enough to power this card.
-Play with RAM timings to see if any speed improvements can be made.
-Netflix high quality HD playback tests via traditional browser, check for dropped frames etc.
-Winrar/7zip decompression speed testing.
-Install in a Radeon 290 to see if GCN 1.1 makes a difference for mantle tests.
-Check for DPC latency issues (Not sure what to use on Windows 8.1, if anyone knows please let me know).
-Install and run a couple VM's, observe if the host system bogs down whole VM's under load.
If there are any specific test you want run and it's not too time consuming please let me know. Given the hardware I have on hand I'm in a good position to test multiple different combinations for this AM1 platform.
Battlefield 4:
Mantle = 25-45 FPS, holds steady lows around 25 fps on operation locker in the insane firefights and on siege of shanghai on 64 player madness. Average closer to 35 FPS. Definitely playable and a big difference in feeling from the Geforce 750 TI.
D3D = 20-30 fps, it quite a bit slower than with Mantle enabled but it was not a direct comparison as it was a different (64 player) map. Felt more like the 750 TI.
StarSwarm Results:
D3D
===========================================================
Oxide Games
Star Swarm Stress Test - �2013
C:\Users\minipacket\Documents\Star Swarm\Output_14_04_19_1512.txt
Version 1.10
04/19/2014 15:12
===========================================================
== Hardware Configuration =================================
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
CPU: AuthenticAMD
AMD Athlon(tm) 5350 APU with Radeon(tm) R3
Physical Cores: 4
Logical Cores: 4
Physical Memory: 8522588160
Allocatable Memory: 140737488224256
===========================================================
== Configuration ==========================================
API: DirectX
Scenario: ScenarioFollow.csv
User Input: Disabled
Resolution: 1920x1080
Fullscreen: True
GameCore Update: 16.6 ms
Bloom Quality: High
PointLight Quality: High
ToneCurve Quality: High
Glare Overdraw: 16
Shading Samples: 64
Shade Quality: Mid
Deferred Contexts: Disabled
Temporal AA Duration: 16
Temporal AA Time Slice: 2
Detailed Frame Info: Off
===========================================================
== Results ================================================
Test Duration: 360 Seconds
Total Frames: 5066
Average FPS: 14.07
Average Unit Count: 4145
Maximum Unit Count: 5587
Average Batches/MS: 187.35
Maximum Batches/MS: 356.38
Average Batch Count: 14179
Maximum Batch Count: 61072
===========================================================
Mantle:
===========================================================
Oxide Games
Star Swarm Stress Test - �2013
C:\Users\minipacket\Documents\Star Swarm\Output_14_04_19_1520.txt
Version 1.10
04/19/2014 15:20
===========================================================
== Hardware Configuration =================================
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
CPU: AuthenticAMD
AMD Athlon(tm) 5350 APU with Radeon(tm) R3
Physical Cores: 4
Logical Cores: 4
Physical Memory: 8522588160
Allocatable Memory: 140737488224256
===========================================================
== Configuration ==========================================
API: Mantle
Scenario: ScenarioFollow.csv
User Input: Disabled
Resolution: 1920x1080
Fullscreen: True
GameCore Update: 16.6 ms
Bloom Quality: High
PointLight Quality: High
ToneCurve Quality: High
Glare Overdraw: 16
Shading Samples: 64
Shade Quality: Mid
Deferred Contexts: Disabled
Temporal AA Duration: 16
Temporal AA Time Slice: 2
Detailed Frame Info: Off
===========================================================
== Results ================================================
Test Duration: 360 Seconds
Total Frames: 13027
Average FPS: 36.18
Average Unit Count: 3930
Maximum Unit Count: 5488
Average Batches/MS: 656.85
Maximum Batches/MS: 2311.84
Average Batch Count: 21514
Maximum Batch Count: 132474
===========================================================
That's an insane difference and shows a best case scenario for Mantle.
END
--
(April 19) - UPDATE #3 - Over the past few evenings I have tested additional games and finally discreet Geforce 750 TI testing. Next update (hopefully testing completed tonight) I will finally test out Mantle.
Gaming (APU):
Trials Evolution:
40-60+ FPS at 800x600, low settings and playable at 1280x800 but a little choppy in spots.
Doom 3:
35-60FPS at 1024x768, medium settings, perfectly playable.
Sleeping Dogs:
Fully playable at 640x480 / 800x600 (30-35 FPS). 1024x768 (22-25 FPS) was playable but not very comfortable.
Crysis:
Crashes shortly after launch, not sure why, skipped to next game.
Renegade Ops:
1680X1050, plays perfect at default settings, runs around 30-40 FPS, looks great.
Bioshock Infinite:
This game was a little too demanding for the APU. Average FPS = 23.89, Min FPS = 14.87, Max FPS = 66.72
---
Gaming and Power (Geforce 750 TI)
Idle power = 22 Watts!
Furmark + p95 = 99 Watts.
Furmark = 88 Watts.
FFXI scored 6220 and uses 42-47 watts. Results in "Very High".
BF4 Multiplayer Team DM and Conquest 32 players large ran 25-40 FPS at 1280x800 on low settings. Upping the resolution and or details dropped the FPS even more therefore this game while playable with reduced settings unfortunately is generally too taxing for the APU. Hopefully mantle can help here on the Radeon cards.
BF3 Multiplayer, 64 player conquest. 30-45 FPS at 1280x800 low settings. Although the fps were not a lot higher than BF4 the game actually felt much better so the 5350 seems to be enough for casual game or two.
Both BF4 and BF3 only use around 45Watts therefore you can tell the videocard isn't able to stretch it legs with this 5350 driving it.
Crysis 3:
1920x1200 on high with FXAA enabled = 25-70 FPS. Some dips in spots but totally playable and looks amazing. This game consumes most of what the Geforce 750 TI can dish out as it uses up to 85 Watts.
Sleeping Dogs:
1920x1200, high details, 28-45 FPS and used between 80-87 Watts! Perfect example of maxing out the video card, the 5350 is fast enough here to fully let the 7750 TI stretch its legs. This game looks amazing at higher resolutions.
Fallout New Vegas:
35-68 FPS, Ultra details, 1920x1200, perfectly playable and only consumed around 50 Watts which points to a CPU limitation however the game was perfectly playable and looks amazing.
Trials Evolution:
2304x1440 running highest details the game runs a solid 60FPS and consumes 72 watts from the wall. This is another game where the 5350 is plenty fast to drive a card like the 750 TI.
Rengade Ops:
2304x1440, 85-110 FPS! Crazy fast and consumes 75W. Same conclusion as Trials Evo.
QuakeLive:
COM_MAXFPS set to '250' - online CA was sitting between 160-250FPS in a 4 on 4 match (dm6 & trinity).
Offline practice on Asylum was also now consistently above 100fps, no more lag! 35Watts @ 1920x1200
Although overkill, the 750 TI and 5350 is fast enough to drive this game for competitive reasons.
That's it for this update.
END
---
(April 16) - UPDATE #2 - More Pico power and APU gaming results added. Next update will be to run the remaining APU game fps tests (have about 6-7 more games) and then move into discreet graphics card gaming.
Power:
Prime 95 + Furmark = 36W
Gaming:
Borderlands 2, all graphic settings to low except textures on high:
640x480 = 30-40 fps
800x600 = 25-35 fps (played an hour or so, a little slow in spots but totally playable, comparable to last gen console)
1024x768 = 20-25 fps, playable but not enjoyable.
BF4 (multiplayer) - Large Conquest - 1024x768, all set to low:
D3D = 13 FPS
Mantle = 15 FPS
Unfortunately this game is too demanding on the APU. It will be interesting to test with the discreet cards and if Mantle helps out.
Skyrim:
Playable at medium settings - 1024x768, 4x aniso, FXAA 24-30 FPS. Huge improvement over e350.
Defense Grid:
40+ FPS at 1680x1050 with medium detail settings. Older indy game but has good graphics and one of the most fun tower defence games. Much faster than e350.
XCOM Enemy Unknown: 25fps at default settings, 1024x768. Due to the nature of the game it's totally comfortable playing at these settings and the game looks amazing.
Trine 2: 20-22 FPS with Max details set at 1024x768. I didn't test this game very long but lowering the detail would easily make it more playable fps wise.
Left 4 Dead 2: High settings @ 1280x800 = 25-45 FPS on average, totally playable but may want to turn down resolution or details to get above 30 fps minimum.
End
--
160W Pico Killawatt Results:
50% load = 22W
Idle = 14/15W
Prime 95 all cores loaded = 30W
Various games = 22-32W
Either this AsRock board isn't as efficient as the others or the power supply is still to large for this combination. That being said these results are not too far off from my old Zotac e350 which I believe used a 60W adapter.
When I have more time I will test with a 60W 19v DC notebook adapter and compare the results.
--
Gaming on the APU:
I'm starting with some lighter games as I kicked off a download of 150+GB of games which will take some time to complete.
Super Meat Boy:
Played perfectly at default resolution, no dropped frames or weird dips. Compared to my old Zotac e350 this is a huge improvement.
Jamestown:
Also played great, no random slowdowns or dips in the frames (beyond what the game engine produces to avoid bullet hell) and was a great improvement over my older Zotac e350.
Quake Live:
Plays great. Ran tests at 1024/768 - the FPS dipped as low as 45 on the more stressful maps (Asylum) but it mostly sat between 85-120 FPS (120 FPS cap). This should be more than good enough for the casual game of quake but I feel the CPU is still holding it back for serious competitive gaming. Again compared to the older Zotac this was night and day faster.
--
Canned Benchmarks:
I'm not going to run many of these but they're good for comparison reasons.
FFXIV A Realm Reborn: 1280x800 with standard settings scored 1993 points - "slightly low".
--
*I'm not sure if I should start a new thread or piggyback off someone else's so please move or delete OP if I'm in violation.*
I received my Athlon 5350 and AsRock AM1H-ITX motherboard last night and wanted to share my initial impressions. I will list in a bullet point format my thoughts and hope to use this thread to perform additional testing based on any feedback I get.
- 5350 - Wow look how small this is! the APU box is roughly half the size/weight of the FM1/2 APU's.
- AsRock motherboard is pretty standard , nothing special other than the special SATA power cable that connect into a motherboard header to power 2 SATA devices. Considering the board has 4 SATA ports in total this is a bit of a let down. However if used in combination with a Pico power supply this works out perfectly as you can combine the two on board headers with 2 headers from the Pico power supply which in turn will power up to 4 SATA devices. Think of a low powered NAS powered by only a Pico power supply.
-Instead of using an external DC power adapter I'm currently powering the chip and board with a Pico 160W Pico ATX adapter. The Pico units are much more efficient than standard power supplies so this should work out well efficiency wise when I add in a low powered GPU for testing. Depending on what I end up using this chip and board combo in I may use the external DC power instead and it must be stated that it's really nice to have the option and represents the flexibility you get when only having to deal with such low powered systems.
-One last observation about the motherboard I thought was strange, there is no +12v motherboard power adapter. I guess the 24 pin ATX power adapter sends enough power to board where it's not longer needed.
-added in 2*4GB of DDR3 2133Mhz memory (don't have the brand off the top of my head, will look when I get home tonight).
-added a 180GB Intel 520 SSD to the first native port.
-Power the unit on and checked the voltages were correct, disabled third party SATA controller, adjusted memory voltage to correct voltage and then set motherboard to boot UEFI, attached external USB-DVD and then I proceeded to install Windows 8.1. Windows installed a little slower than I'm normally used to but not by much, in all around 25 minutes.
-Installed device drivers from motherboard DVD, installed windows updates. Rebooted several times, noted the boot up times were basically indistinguishable from my SSD equipped A10-6800K system which was a nice surprise.
-Observed clock speeds while installing device drivers and updates, noticed under normal load of the CPU speed liked to bounce between 1.0-1.8 Ghz or so.
- Ran some basic seat of the pants browsing tests and noticed how quick everything loaded again essentially indistinguishable from my 6800K system I last built. Ran a few 1080P youtube videos, observed about 20-30% CPU usage but no jitter or weird stuttering happens while playback running.
-Went back to BIOS to see if I could up the bclk but was disappointed to find out there are no controls available to do this. I was able to adjust the CAS timing from 2 to 1 under the RAM settings but I didn't bother tightening the rest of the timings yet. Note this board has the ability adjust memory voltage but nothing for the APU.
And that was about it for the testing for an evening. Not much was done however given what little I have done with the unit there were no real road blocks or surprises. Everything felt snappy enough from the seat of the pants.
Time permitting I plan on performing the following tests this week:
-Hook up to Killawatt and record wattage use. I'll measure both external 60w or 90w power brick as well as the existing PICO power supply and 600w EVGA bronze PS.
-Install steam and handful of older games from library for APU testing
-Install Radeon 7970GHz for more demanding game testing (BF4, Crysis 3 etc).
-Test mantle with/without multiplayer BF4
-Unigine benchmarks.
-Focus on lower power gaming, install Geforce 750 TI (ordered yesterday, should arrive before end of week), re-run demanding game tests and compare to 7970 results to see if there is any appreciable difference. See if Pico power supply is enough to power this card.
-Play with RAM timings to see if any speed improvements can be made.
-Netflix high quality HD playback tests via traditional browser, check for dropped frames etc.
-Winrar/7zip decompression speed testing.
-Install in a Radeon 290 to see if GCN 1.1 makes a difference for mantle tests.
-Check for DPC latency issues (Not sure what to use on Windows 8.1, if anyone knows please let me know).
-Install and run a couple VM's, observe if the host system bogs down whole VM's under load.
If there are any specific test you want run and it's not too time consuming please let me know. Given the hardware I have on hand I'm in a good position to test multiple different combinations for this AM1 platform.
Last edited: