AMD A10-7850K And A8-7600: Kaveri Gives Us A Taste Of HSA

[RedJaron]

Page two told me what to expect. AMD promised SR up to 20% improved performance, but the single thread is still no better than PD. However the 3ds benchmark showed good improvement. It looks like the architecture improvements are mainly about the cores and compute units being better able to share info, not necessarily process it better.

 

[Kewlx25]

That's about a $20-$25 difference in power over the entire year when running 24/7.

Which is essentially negligible.

That's a $100 difference after 4 years and $25 on the first year. Don't forget to tack on about $50 to the price of the CPU when comparing.

I am excited about the performance though.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

That's about a $20-$25 difference in power over the entire year when running 24/7.

Which is essentially negligible.

That's a $100 difference after 4 years and $25 on the first year. Don't forget to tack on about $50 to the price of the CPU when comparing.

I am excited about the performance though.

Note the 'when running 24/7' part. Does your computer run at 100% load all the time, or is it off or in standby much of the time, with most of the rest idle?

24/7 only really counts if you're mining or folding. Idle is what matters, and that's usually a fraction of load.

 

[smeezekitty]

The electric bill is no less than $1500 a year here for various reasons. Trust me $25 doesn't make a bit of difference

 

[technoholic]

Sorry but this is yet another flop from AMD. They changed from Piledriver to Steamroller + upgraded the GPU side from VLIW 4 to GCN 1.1 + HSA + Mantle + bla bla bla AND the result is WHAT? Single digit improvement here and there at the flagship level. Low power part is somewhat ok but i would expect better from the flagship 7850k. AMD needs to stop creating hype and do actual work. They need to stop being lazy and improve stuff already. They worked on this one 4 years, i can't believe it really. 4 years of work for this sht?

 

[Kewlx25]

That's about a $20-$25 difference in power over the entire year when running 24/7.

Which is essentially negligible.

That's a $100 difference after 4 years and $25 on the first year. Don't forget to tack on about $50 to the price of the CPU when comparing.

I am excited about the performance though.

Note the 'when running 24/7' part. Does your computer run at 100% load all the time, or is it off or in standby much of the time, with most of the rest idle?

24/7 only really counts if you're mining or folding. Idle is what matters, and that's usually a fraction of load.

It has a 20 watt load difference when idle. The $25/year assumed idle all the time. Put it under load and the difference is about double.

 

[NotTechie-1334934]

FM2 sockets cant support FM2+ APUs?

 

[Someone Somewhere]

I'd put the difference between the 4670K/4430 and the 7850K at idle at about 10-15W.

There's 8766 hours in a year, so 24/7 idle is a difference of ~131.5 kW·h per year (assuming 15W). The amount you pay depends on your electricity price, but I think it's somewhere around $13 a year.

 

[vertexx]

FM2 sockets cant support FM2+ APUs?

Correct. FM2+ has two extra pins that the FM2 does not. FM2+ socket supports FM2 CPU but not the other way around.

 

[tduanebarr]

I'd really like to see how overclocking plays out with the new APUs. It seems they are more efficient, if they are run faster they may be quite a bit better I'd think. Too bad prices are crazy high on the line right now.

 

[Slatteew]

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/174632-amd-kaveri-a10-7850k-and-a8-7600-review-was-it-worth-the-wait-for-the-first-true-heterogeneous-chip/5Here is taste of what HSA can do when it is taken advantage of. HSA JPG Decode graph.http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_a8_7600_apu_review,13.htmlAnother showing the HSA capability, and even compares to the current top Extreme i7 from Intel. Results may surprise you.Overall, an integrated component, such as an APU, cannot properly be benchmarked with today's current methods. Once HSA is taken advantage of by the 45+ HSAfoundation members, software adoption will take off.

 

[boytitan2]

This seems like the apu limits.They have pushed far as they can but until ddr4 or for what I hope happens ddr4 gets skipped and we move on to ddr5 ram I don't see Integrated graphics competing with. It is kinda sad when you think about it this thing could be as power as a 7750 or 7770 if it had dd5ram like its console counterparts running gddr5.

 

[ericore]

Great Review, you obliterate Anandtech's.You show the true performance, well done.

 

[RupertJr]

why there is no overclock test? supposing AMD might release a non APU version of steamroller then they should use another manufacturing process in order to be able to increase the cpu mhz? since now AMD has used SHP process shall they return to SOI process ? Would this change imply a complete redesign?

 

[Slatteew]

why there is no overclock test? supposing AMD might release a non APU version of steamroller then they should use another manufacturing process in order to be able to increase the cpu mhz? since now AMD has used SHP process shall they return to SOI process ? Would this change imply a complete redesign?

They were trying for 22nm, but they would not have had good clock rates on the GPU.....so they opted to balance it out with the 28nm.

 

[ingtar33]

The most disapointing thing about this new APU is the low overclock headroom. This looks like the end of the k10 lineup, when the PhenomII just didn't clock up well. The increase in IPC is almost completely negated by the poor clock speeds, leaving this cpu to be about the same as one of those silly high clocked richlands. Its a nice chip, and useful in some builds. but it's basically priced out of the market. 150 for the flagship would be good. 170+ is not. at that price it is sitting between i3s and i5s, and between their own fx8320 and fx8350... and it can't match any of them. sad. I can't help but wish there was more to this release... unfortunately it looks like there is not.

 

[Slatteew]

The most disapointing thing about this new APU is the low overclock headroom. This looks like the end of the k10 lineup, when the PhenomII just didn't clock up well. The increase in IPC is almost completely negated by the poor clock speeds, leaving this cpu to be about the same as one of those silly high clocked richlands. Its a nice chip, and useful in some builds. but it's basically priced out of the market. 150 for the flagship would be good. 170+ is not. at that price it is sitting between i3s and i5s, and between their own fx8320 and fx8350... and it can't match any of them. sad. I can't help but wish there was more to this release... unfortunately it looks like there is not.

Here is a different look at the APU based on it being an actual APU with HSA:
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/174632-amd-kaveri-a10-7850k-and-a8-7600-review-was-it-worth-the-wait-for-the-first-true-heterogeneous-chip/5
is taste of what HSA can do when it is taken advantage of. HSA JPG Decode graph and HSA LibreOffice Calc http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_a8_7600_apu_re... showing the HSA capability, and even compares to the current top Extreme i7 from Intel. Results may surprise you.
Overall, an integrated component, such as an APU, cannot properly be benchmarked with today's current methods. Once HSA is taken advantage of by the 45+ HSAfoundation members, software adoption will take off. These benchmarks do not do it justice. It is trying to separate out the components like tradition CPU + GPU computers, but this is NOT meant to be separated into that, and until the Software gets more mainstream, we can expect people to make it look back with improper benchmarks.......sadly.

 

[jbheller]

It looks like a good step forward for AMD. I'm hoping that the price drops a little more over the next few months and that drivers that support crossfire with the R7 260X come out. If I could get a A10-7850K and and R7-260X both for $300, I could build a pretty capable mid range gaming box (and steam box) for a very reasonable price. At this price point the steam box concept will work. People don't want to spend $1500 on a lounge room PC. The A8-7600 will be useful for this function too. Much lower TPD and a cheaper price will make the steam boxes cheaper to produce and easier to cool.

 

[Ricardo Sanchez]

how long before the mobile variants come out?

 

[fteoOpty64]

As it is, the 7850K is not worth the price considering the performance is almost just 6800K ball-park. But overclocked to 4.4Ghz, this is a beast to be had. It is after all what a K class chip is supposed to do. Overclocked 7850 has the expectation performance squeezed out of it. Check out benchmarks from other sites to see ...

 

[Jaroslav Jandek]

For the people that argue about power consumption:
You have to consider the cost of ownership of HW. If a $110 CPU costs $10 more annually and you usually keep a CPU for 2 - 4 years, you can add $20 - $40 to that CPU. In effect, it becomes a $130 - $150 CPU (18% - 36% price premium). Knowing that, you can instead choose another more efficient CPU even at a much higher price.
Energy prices are increasing - so the cost of ownership you calculate is usually very optimistic.
In Europe, we pay about twice as much for electricity as those in the U.S.A on average.
Most people ignore this but if you have a company with hundreds of PCs and some servers, you tend to notice the money drain and then apply it to your own household.
Having said that, I have bought an inefficient but cheap PC for my sister 5-6 years ago that she only uses like once per week and a tablet. So the cost of ownership is very low in this case. Both are getting replaced by a single Windows tablet this year anyway.

@ Jaroslav Jandek, Refer to the A8 7600.Remove the GPU part, and we've got an awesome low power chip. If AMD works with that and manages to superclock it due to the very low TDP, I say we'd have a winner.

Sure, it would be low power (depends on your definition of low). You should actually read the article and look at the efficiency graphs... If you consider low power, you must consider the performance at that power level. You can have a very low power CPU but if it is slow, it will end up consuming more energy per task. That is what the efficiency graph tells you.
The A8-7600 is slightly less efficient than A10-7850K, because it is so slow - it consumes 11.7 more Wh running the benchmarks. And of course, Intel CPUs are almost twice as efficient - after all, they only need to power half as many transistors on a better manufacturing process.

 

[bandrei]

i was hoping also in review, with a discrete video card, i am curios how bad is 7850k + 280x (290x, 270x..) vs 4670k + 280x (290x, 270x..). the only reason i would go on such solution FM2+ is because on AMD there isn't any mITX mainboards for AM3+, which for an AMD fan boy like me it will be an end of the journey. I want mITX + high end CPU from AMD like mITX + FX 8350. of course an FX + mITX will require a fery good case like Bitfenix or...

 

[Kai Dowin]

For the people that argue about power consumption:
You have to consider the cost of ownership of HW. If a $110 CPU costs $10 more annually and you usually keep a CPU for 2 - 4 years, you can add $20 - $40 to that CPU. In effect, it becomes a $130 - $150 CPU (18% - 36% price premium). Knowing that, you can instead choose another more efficient CPU even at a much higher price.
Energy prices are increasing - so the cost of ownership you calculate is usually very optimistic.
In Europe, we pay about twice as much for electricity as those in the U.S.A on average.
Most people ignore this but if you have a company with hundreds of PCs and some servers, you tend to notice the money drain and then apply it to your own household.
Having said that, I have bought an inefficient but cheap PC for my sister 5-6 years ago that she only uses like once per week and a tablet. So the cost of ownership is very low in this case. Both are getting replaced by a single Windows tablet this year anyway.

@ Jaroslav Jandek, Refer to the A8 7600.Remove the GPU part, and we've got an awesome low power chip. If AMD works with that and manages to superclock it due to the very low TDP, I say we'd have a winner.

Sure, it would be low power (depends on your definition of low). You should actually read the article and look at the efficiency graphs... If you consider low power, you must consider the performance at that power level. You can have a very low power CPU but if it is slow, it will end up consuming more energy per task. That is what the efficiency graph tells you.
The A8-7600 is slightly less efficient than A10-7850K, because it is so slow - it consumes 11.7 more Wh running the benchmarks. And of course, Intel CPUs are almost twice as efficient - after all, they only need to power half as many transistors on a better manufacturing process.

Well, I do acknowledge what you're saying about a corporative environment. The company I work for currently has 80 PCs powered 24/7 on our office.

US$10 per CPU a year means that we could save US$800 a year. However, calculate this against the cost of changing platforms, the necessary logistic and manpower to do so and it becomes quite irrelevant. Specially if you consider that US$800/year is a small fraction of what we spend in, lets say, free coffee. Not that isn't good to consume less energy, it's just not so big.

Let's look into a household than. US$10 a year? One year has 8760 hours. Someone can make US$10 working nearly 1h30m in most states, receiving a minimum wage. I know that it adds to the overall cost of the platform, but it's quite a small issue.

And despite I agreeing with your line of thought, you must take into account that a immediate cost of US$40 is one thing, US$40 diluted in four years is another.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

The other thing is that in cold areas (where you tend to heat the house in the winter, and don't need aircon in the summer), $10 of electricity going into your PC is $10 of electricity not fed into the heater.

You may not actually be saving power by saving power, just moving where it's used.

This is incorrect for obvious reasons if you have a heat pump or woodburner.

 

[AJSB]

What i would love to know is if we set a A8-7600 to cTDP to 45W, we can still adjust manually core and gpu voltage like in other APUs or if it will be automaticlly set because we we set a cTDP.