[Techspot] BAD, BAD APU AMD A12-9800 Review: Infecting The AM4 Platform

[escrow4]

Naughty AMD!

"If you can't already tell, we're not impressed with the A12-9800 and we strongly recommend you avoid purchasing any of the Bristol Ridge CPUs. We've thought long and hard and we can't come up with one valid reason or situation where these CPUs make an ounce of sense.

You wouldn't buy any of them as placeholders, which makes about as much sense as using a Kaby Lake-X CPU as a placeholder. Sure the Athlon X4 950 is cheap at $60, but it delivers the exact the same performance as the A12-9800 with a discrete GPU. The G4560 can be had for around $90 and it's worlds better in every single way when compared to the Athlon.

In order to use the Athlon X4 950 or the A12-9800 you need to buy a new AM4 motherboard along with some new DDR4 memory. Let's say you go with an ultra cheap A320 board for $50and 8GB of DDR4 for $70, that means the A12-9800 upgrade package will set you back $230. The same motherboard and memory combo with the Ryzen 3 1200 plus the GeForce GT 1030 will cost $300, so that's 30% more money for over twice the CPU power, and twice the GPU power."

https://www.techspot.com/review/1486-amd-a12-9800/page3.html

It started off so promising . . . . .

 

[NTMBK]

This product might have made sense a year ago. It's silly launching it now, when far better Zen CPUs are here. Where's Raven Ridge already!

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah, I broke down and bought an A8-9600, just to see if they are any good. Honestly, not really. I paired mine up with a 1TB 2.5" Seagate FireCuda (SSHD), which is 5400 RPM in that form-factor.

It's a good bit of performance for the money, but the G4560 is faster, even with the A8-9600 OCed to 3.90Ghz, it seems. Though, I personally preferred the AMD iGPU, even for desktop tasks, but some things took longer, it seemed. Also, my build had some sluggishness, that was not explained by CPU utilization. (It was seeming sluggish, even when CPU usage was less than 10% in Task Manager.) I put that down to the SSHD.

(my thread here, with some subjective experiences)
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/ryzen-3-bristol-ridge-am4-owners-thread.2518017/

It was indeed a "placeholder" purchase, and went along with a Hot Deal on an Asus Prime B350M-E motherboard that I picked up for $60, with a fairly full complement of video outputs, along with an M.2 socket.

Edit: Actually, I had my friend in mind, that has an Athlon II X4 640 3.0Ghz CPU, and a GT610 video card, that I was going to build this and offer to him, as a replacement. With that old a rig, this system is indeed an upgrade, and he could ditch the video card, and save on his electric bill. (I was thinking that he could then upgrade to a Ryzen 5 or Raven Ridge APU in the future, easily, and have a much more state-of-the-art rig than he has now.)

 

[Malogeek]

Don't really like price+perf comparisons with CPU+dGPU combos since the main use case of APUs is to avoid the need for a dGPU.

 

[Spjut]

How does the IGP compare to the older Radeons? Would an HD 5850 be competetive?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Don't really like price+perf comparisons with CPU+dGPU combos since the main use case of APUs is to avoid the need for a dGPU.

They were looking at it from a pretty much price/performance ratio gaming perspective ONLY. Which, if they were a little more fair, they might have considered the USFF PC / HTPC aspects of it a bit more. In that role, I think that it could shine, and find a niche, until true Zen-based APUs (Raven Ridge) appear. Some chassis (extremely small, think ITX or smaller, where you actually cannot even fit a video card), then these APUs are still better in the graphics dept, than Intel is. (HD630, is still somewhat pathetic.)

So yeah, they do have a (niche) point to their existence.

And they ARE cheaper, in terms of absolute price, but the Ryzen 3 1200 smokes all of them, especially overclocked. (Think, 2X performance.) But then you need to add a dGPU, an additional cost.

Edit: Oh yeah, and glad to hear from you again, @escrow4 , been wondering what you've been up to in the PC space.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Bristol Ridge is 2015's APU (Carrizo) with slightly better yields/clockspeeds. And it wasn't all that great back then either. But hey, it'll still have its defenders, Probably.

Let Bristol Ridge be a reminder of how vital it was for AMD to abandon Con cores.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Don't really like price+perf comparisons with CPU+dGPU combos since the main use case of APUs is to avoid the need for a dGPU.

That only applies in very isolated cases like a SFF system, where there isnt room for a discrete card. Otherwise, what is the point of "avoiding the need" for a dGPU when it gives highly superior performance for the same on only slightly higher price? I have argued for a long time that APUs are a very poor gaming solution, and the availability of current gen more efficient and better performing dGPUs only makes it a worse solution than before.

 

[ao_ika_red]

It should be a good product if only they launched it along with mobile Carrizo 2 years ago. But in 2017, it's almost impossible to ignore Ryzen 3 even if its ownership cost is more than double of BR.
From my perspective, the only reason why BR was launched in 2017 is to allow it rides along Ryzen euphoria. I notice in my local facebook group that some casual users think that BR is a part of Ryzen family.

 

[crashtech]

The only rationale for defending this product would be some sort of nostalgia combined with brand loyalty. It's an unfortunate release, imo.

 

[EXCellR8]

ouch, not really much of a market for these anyway... SFF for web browsing, moderate streaming and flash games? I mean, the Ryzen 3 1200 is basically the same price though... was actually thinking about picking one of those up at some point.

I'm wondering if these are primarily because OEM's wanted to offer entry level AM4 products or something.

 

[DrMrLordX]

The weird thing is that the A12-9800 has been available since fall 2016! Just not in many markets. You could get them in A320 board bundles in Germany, Japan, and a few other places. AMD knew there wasn't much of a market for the chips a year ago, so why now? It's really odd.

 

[ao_ika_red]

The only rationale for defending this product would be some sort of nostalgia combined with brand loyalty. It's an unfortunate release, imo.

Based on this video from TechEpiphany , its FP64 performance looks very interesting (565 GFLOPS). I wonder how it would perform on Einstein and Milkyway@home.

 

[cbn]

Based on this video from TechEpiphany , its FP64 performance looks very interesting (565 GFLOPS).

Yes, that got me interested in using DDR4 ECC UDIMMs on an AM4 board with it:

https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...dge-apu-to-work-with-ddr4-ecc-udimms.2518936/

I wonder how it would perform on Einstein and Milkyway@home.

A good question.

How much would (or could) relative lack of memory bandwidth be a concern with these programs?

 

[amd6502]

Also, my build had some sluggishness, that was not explained by CPU utilization. (It was seeming sluggish, even when CPU usage was less than 10% in Task Manager.) I put that down to the SSHD.

The SSHD's take a while to learn what to cache, and after updates (eg browser or system updates) often need to re-learn. In linux using one of these cheap SSHDs (for /) in conjunction with a tiny SSD (for /usr/) is a super cheap way to get pretty snappy performance. I wish I knew what the windows equivalent setup was.

From my experience with building an Athlon 845, my advice is to get the lowest latency 2400 memory; get the lowest CAS number you can find at a reasonable price. Definitely avoid getting higher than 2667 memory for a BR build, as the need to downclock to an acceptable frequency for BR's memory controller will do bad things to the memory latency (since BR has no L3 and only a smaller L2 it really appreciates low latency memory).

I don't know if the BR memory controller or mobos allow for OCing and running the DDR4 at 2667 or not. Would be interesting to know.

According to TechEpiphany/BR the iGPU frequency is unfortunately not adjustable and overclockable (unlike in fm2). If it were, my guess is that the 512 SPs A12 might almost keep up with a rx550 or a 1030 when OCd with DDR4-2667.

The excellent DP might give BR further niche uses. I think these A series are quite good for general purpose low cost builds. If some years down the line this is no longer true, the upgrade path has already protected the investment in the bulk of money spent on the computer---the total cost ~$400 minus the cost of an entry level cpu ($50-$100 approx). So I happen to completely disagree with the elitist attitude of this Steven Watson. Most people are not avid gamers nor CPU snobs who obsess about benchmark numbers.

 

[beginner99]

This product might have made sense a year ago. It's silly launching it now, when far better Zen CPUs are here. Where's Raven Ridge already!

Raven Ridge Desktop was planned H1 2018 anyway but given the lack of info also on RR mobile I guess both are delayed. But even with that the release of BR doesn't make much sense. People that know better won't buy it and people that don't will get pissed once they figure out they got "scammed".

 

[Bouowmx]

Based on this video from TechEpiphany , its FP64 performance looks very interesting (565 GFLOPS). I wonder how it would perform on Einstein and Milkyway@home.

Likely abysmally because there is insufficient memory bandwidth, especially if there is another CPU project running.

 

[VirtualLarry]

People that know better won't buy it and people that don't will get pissed once they figure out they got "scammed".

Tell me again, how exactly are they getting "scammed"? Is everything non-Intel a "scam"?

Worst-case, would be someone already on an FM2+ Carrizo product, and they invest in an AM4 motherboard and DDR4, and buy an AM4 APU, and get... the same silicon, pretty-much, only with DDR4.

To those people, maybe that's a scam, but I call it a side-grade, with some upgrade possibilities, that FM2+ didn't have.

I guess, I fail to see how this APU is actually a bad thing, I mean, it doesn't perform as well as some other CPUs (both AMD and Intel), but that hardly qualifies this APU as a "scam".

(Now, replacing a Ryzen CPU in a retail-box and returning it to the retailer, with a Celeron with a sticker on it, now THAT'S a SCAM.)

 

[amd6502]

Make that general purpose builds that can do casual gaming on the side, quite well. Generally 720p/768 higher settings.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/709idk/amds_a89600_murdering_the_pentium_g4560_in_fifa_18/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjkmzXi3JQU

http://bit.ly/2wMyAqo Titanfall2 on the A8 looks amazing, esp for such a cheap APU.

A few games even run decent on 1080p (overwatch, tombraider)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV_FbbkkWz4KHNzMlmYO04A/videos

Almost gtav at 1080 lo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lSkMxQ9jcs

And a whole slew at 900p.

For a general purpose and budget build it's total BS of techspot.com/Steven Watson to label BR APUs as universally junk.

 

[beginner99]

Tell me again, how exactly are they getting "scammed"? Is everything non-Intel a "scam"?

yeah like putting the word in quotes isn't clear what it means. Getting sold for dumb.

 

[whm1974]

I would call BR APUs a scam because they are hardly any better then the APUs they replaced aside from maybe a better iGPU.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I would call BR APUs a scam because they are hardly any better then the APUs they replaced aside from maybe a better iGPU.

Does that make the entire Kaby Lake family a "scam" too? Same CPU cores, just a somewhat updated media encode / decode block. Same CPU performance.

 

[NTMBK]

Make that general purpose builds that can do casual gaming on the side, quite well. Generally 720p/768 higher settings.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/709idk/amds_a89600_murdering_the_pentium_g4560_in_fifa_18/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjkmzXi3JQU

http://bit.ly/2wMyAqo Titanfall2 on the A8 looks amazing, esp for such a cheap APU.

A few games even run decent on 1080p (overwatch, tombraider)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV_FbbkkWz4KHNzMlmYO04A/videos

Almost gtav at 1080 lo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lSkMxQ9jcs

And a whole slew at 900p.

For a general purpose and budget build it's total BS of techspot.com/Steven Watson to label BR APUs as universally junk.

People keep comparing IGP performance to the G4560, which makes no sense. For about $5 more you can get the G4600, which has roughly double the GPU performance of the G4560 (GT2 instead of GT1). That also gives "good enough to run Overwatch" performance, but then you also get a competent CPU- meaning that when you eventually save up enough to add a dedicated GPU, you have a decent budget gaming system.

 

[kwalkingcraze]

A12-9800 is based on the dreaded Bulldozer cores but with major improvements, and it's the best AMD can do. We have to respect that. You can't fight what's inferior architecture in first place. The original FX-4100 was a piece of junk at launch, it feels slower than my Phenom 570 at 4.3GHz in some occasions.

 

[kwalkingcraze]

I would call BR APUs a scam because they are hardly any better then the APUs they replaced aside from maybe a better iGPU.

Excavator is very-similar to Trinity. A6-5400K or A8-5600K is all you ever need for the entire FM2 and early-AM4 socket, until Raven Ridge is released. Both can be overclocked up to 4.9GHz at 1.55V CPU voltage. A10-7890K is a waste of time and money.