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

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The problem with AMD focusing so much on the on board graphics is that it is pretty much giving up on having its CPUs used in systems with its discrete GPUs. The only advantage these SOCs have is in small form factors without discrete graphics and even then we don't know how they compare to Intel's Iris graphics yet.I'd also really like to see the high end Kaveri compared to a discrete 7750. Rumors kept saying that the two were comparable, but the results here don't suggest that. I can run Skyrim at 1080p with ultra settings using a 7750 without a hitch, but the best Kaveri is barely playable at medium.
 
@ingtar33: the programmers are not entirely at fault here. Not every problem is parallelizable and even if it is, the "management" costs IRL often outweigh the speed boost of parallelism. See Amdahl's law for more info.

@lowguppy: Iris Pro is far superior to Kaveri at 720p (128MB L4 cache can be fully utilized here). The A8-7600 is comparable to R7 240 (the slowest DDR3 version).
 
i was going to read the article, i actually read the release when these were debuted by toms. i skipped into this article right to the benchmark configuration and looking at the hardware and then this:"Benchmark ConfigurationGaming"the second i saw this i automatically knew this new APU was hardware only comparable to 2005. my second thought was why the waste of modern gpu windows 8 and 2100+mhz what ever ram. 3rd thought but should have been Tom's hardware sole and only focus APU = mobile, instead what did Tom's do? took AMD's money for a review and called intel and did an under the table deal with Intel for some more cash to pit this made for mobile market (laptop/tablet) to pit this part against a hgher end Intel performance desktop part.if AMD is not feeling righteous indignation, then the people in charge of their marketing department and the corporate execs must be led by the neanderthals or ATI execs (the ones who were in charge of Ati driver approval)4th thought Toms has no idea of a comparable way to benchmark this, which i can easily solve by saying " pit this against any i5m / i7m mobile processor in any laptop and not plugged into the wall, because part of the test is to see how far down the battery goes in terms of the benching and how many recharges it takes to complete as well as how much time. recharging time included as the stop watch never stops until the benchmarks are all complete!seriously Tom's if you're going to do an APU review just pit the 1.3 Ghz snap dragon processors in there vs the the 4Ghz i7 3970x as long as you are making a completely worthless and irrelevant review. oh and a leading desktop Intel and AMD CPU from 2005 as long as 2005 era benchmarks are being used.i'm shocked Chris even let this article happen, let alone the test. seriously comparing apples to sunflower seed was a great idea? SERIOUSLY. this damages readers respect and Toms credibility and relevance in the tech world. i am beyond disappointed, this is just the last nail in the coffin i have for tomshardware.com. i thought the 2013 Q4 system builder marathon was bad just looking at the budget base but now being jaded enough to see it for what it really was = a way for vendor publicity and last ditch measure to save toms sinking page hits numbers, but knowing how toms works it was also a way to put parts into cherry picked _ _ _ kissers reward.i think i'll take up being a political media critic from now on. same b.s. but more challenging to find the faults/violations. should be able to get a journalism degree out of it, only need to know how to use spell check these days.'We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.'
 


Troll..... At least read the article before spewing unintelligible garbage like this.
 
After reading through this and other available articles on the Kaveri release as well as keeping up with all of the comments over the last several days, I have gone out and looked at various options of building a very small form factor PC with the following guidelines: Low Profile, no more than single slot case expansion slot, low power, low budget.

Based on these options, it would be a great read to see benchmark testing for the following configurations:

1. Overclocked & Standard A10-7850
2. A8-7600 in both power modes.
3. I3 with R7-240 or GT-640 (GDDR5 variant)
4. Athlon II X4 750/760K with R7-240 or GT-640
5. Athlon II X4 750/760K with 7750 (if you can still find a single slot low-profile version out there) - otherwise the R7-250
6. Pentium G with R7-240 or GT-640 (GDDR5 variant)
7. Pentium G with 7750 or equivalent
8. A10-7850 & A8-7600 crossfire

The purpose of this is a low-budget, entry level PC or HTPC that can do light to moderate gaming. A much better mix of games, old and new, should be included, as well as standard productivity benchmarks.

Particular attention should be paid to BF 4 since this is the first game with Mantle and will be an early indication of expected performance gain through that technology.

I'm sure you guys could do a better job of designing the details, but you get the idea. What are the platform options within a budget for a purpose-built PC, and how do they perform?
 
If you want to build a steam machine in MINI-ITX, this is the processor to use. Keep in mind Mini ITX is NOT Micro-ATX. My power supply is external and it's smaller than a Wii and runs HEAVEN (the most taxing) unigine bechmark in the 25fps+ range. second GPU, no ugly 400W power supply, no big space. Just a unit smaller than the Wii and has the between XBOX 360 / PS3 and XBONER / PS4. Not to mention, anything even remotely compariable on intel's side is 4x's the price.
 
No one else thinks this is a little weird?The 7600 matches the performance of the 6800, witch is epic and to be expected.However, 128 more shader units and 400 more MHz only nets 4 more FPS?The 7600 consumes more power average power then the 7850?The 7600, and the 7850 follow nearly the same identical power track in wattage over time?No way. I'm sorry. something is wrong here.
 
@pico1180:
In this case the GPU is a bottleneck in gaming. And the GPU difference between 7850 and 7600 is small - 720 MHz and 30% more shaders working with a slow memory (which mainly affects pixel shaders). 4 FPS gain is not that surprising.

The fact that both CPUs have similar power consumption with disabled cTDP is not that surprising given that they also perform similarly. The 7850 is slightly faster and that is why the total energy consumed per task is lower (higher efficiency).

What is interesting is the fact that the A10-7850K runs at such a lower power (relatively speaking) - maybe it is the motherboard's fault. Considering it should be designed for 95W TDP probably means, it should be very overclockable.
 
To me as for Desktop and small micro ATX desktop as such as HTPC. This kind of stuff is not worth it. A APU is wasting space and performances used up onboard memory. Why do I want a built on GPU in the CPU if there a PCIe 3.0 slot and they make video card as a desktop and micro ATX desktop. Talk about a wasted power and wasted bandwidth it just going to sit there if I upgrade a video card and when I know the onbaord GPU in the CPU shuttering trying to keep up with the faster parts just a heat belly up work load that not going to play nice. I rather get all the CPU cores such as 12 or 16 core and 24 and 32 cores CPU work horse and then buy me a small video card. I upgrade every 2 to 3 years knowing they will build a better parts and hardware. I am disappointed in AMD CEO and marketing side. If they could build a better CPU that have 8,12 and 16 core or more cores that used 15, 45 to 65 to 95 watts and we all know we can buy a 65 TDP video card that would 8 x faster as faster than what it was built on GPU that is in the CPU. This APU is great for a tablet or small laptop or a phone maybe if they could strink it die and pins and become a snap dragon. Plus they need a major work on there software and driver side for that matter as for HSA. And for server no one want that slow hardware. Everyone in the server business needed the top end to handle all the bandwidth we can get. They need to improve the chipset and new blue print for the motherboard for the G34 side for servers. It good idea if they made this a smaller APU for mobile side of work. They are wasting money on cheap stuff that maybe 3,000 people will buy when they don't know enough about computer. They need to quit making to many cheap stuff that no one going to buy it barely stepping on the plate. If they could make this that cheap as hardware side then something tell me that they could do better.Sorry I am ranting on AMD. I used to love them. But they kept making awkward road maps and didn't completed the work as they did came up with.
 
Firstly, paragraphs. Makes it a whole lot easier to read.

People want integrated graphics because they don't want to spend money, energy, and space on a dGPU. For the average person playing Farmville and watching Youtube, it's plenty.

APUs aren't for servers. No suprises there. Many servers don't have any form of video. You want server, go look at Opteron, or an ARM chip.

Most people want integrated graphics - and it's not as big a drain as you make it out to be. Vishera is an example of what you get with the GPU removed from the equation. The Vishera dies are half again the size (319 vs 246 mm^2), so you could expect maybe six cores if you turned the iGPU into CPU.

AMD already has chips for tablets etc. Temash, IIRC. You can't put a desktop/laptop chip into a small tablet or phone; you want an SoC. Too high a TDP and too many support chips needed.

 

This. The average person is not an intense gamer, and doesn't render video. AMD is going for the bulk of the market with these chips. I think it is a smart move, and I hope they do well with it. Just because I (and many others) prefer Intel for [gaming] builds does not mean AMD has screwed up.
 


If it can be calculated, then it can be threaded; else, it can't be programmed. :)
 


I'd rather go with a slightly bigger m-itx case and use a real GPU. This would outgame a 7850k for a very similar price as what newegg is selling them for now.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Pentium G3220 3.0GHz Dual-Core Processor ($64.97 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: XFX Radeon R7 260X 1GB Video Card ($122.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $187.95
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-01-20 10:14 EST-0500)
 
For the people that want a slim case with a powerful dedicated GPU: you can use a PCI Express Extension cable and put your GPU next to the motherboard.

Being parallelizable means being able to benefit from parallelization. Unfortunately, it is useless to parallelize most algorithms (as I said). That is the reason why single core performance is so important in most applications. I recommend reading the linked article (and its references).
 
2 specific comparisons I'd like to see areA10-7850k benchmarked against the Athlon 760k + Radeon 7750A10-7700k vs A8-7600k vs Athlon X4 750k+R7 250In addition to some intel+discrete comparisons.
 


Source (proof)?

What about, say, scrypt? A few millions rounds of chained SHA2?
 


Good point. We are PC gamers not eco-freaks. If you are worried about power bills get a more efficient refrigerator, stop using the dryer so much - go hang your clothes on the line, and turn off a few lights in your house.
 
The biggest potential for this APU might be as a dual power unit for laptops. Running on battery at max 35 watt and plugged in at 65 watt or similar. At the low resolution 1366x768 you could get ok performance in many games without discrete graphics.
 
The performance of the 45W option is pretty impressive; if we can get a low-profile, fanless R7 reasonably soon then the two paired together could make a sweet little lightweight console type system.In fact, with the attention on Steam Machines I'm hoping someone will be considering something just like that, as the demands of the console form factor may help push GPU vendors to produce better low-profile options more quickly.
 
Wow... now we will see another year of Intel enjoying lack of Innovation because their competition is... inferior? Though I have to give credit that the main reason of an APU is for it's graphics which AMD is much better at. However, I see most of us running Dedicated GPUs so the APU seems relatively useless to most of us.
 

there's plenty of innovation coming from both intel and amd if you know where to look. kaveri is not inferior. i could go into detail why.. just read the review. it coulda had more info but seems like amd didn't give reviewers much time this time around. subsequent articles will have detailed and more focussed analyses.

it used to be with llano and trinity, but not anymore with kaveri. now the main reason for a kaveri apu is hsa. igpu is still much better for price and performance but hsa is just as vital, if not more. all hsa needs is proper execution from amd. otherwise... you (by that i mean kaveri owners) still get to play with the apu.

most of us don't drive the pc market, and kaveri is not really aimed at most us. it's main focus is laptops, mobile, aio desktops, thin clients, smaller form factor pcs etc. like all apus - for general users. always has been.

yes. nor do they care about what's running inside the box. as long as it can do the job they want the pc to do, they'll be okay with it.
 
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