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

[cangelini]

We've spent the days following CES benchmarking two of AMD's new Kaveri-based APUs. Do the Steamroller x86 architecture, GCN graphics design, and HSA-oriented features impress, or do they come up short against Intel's value-oriented Haswell-based parts?

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

 

[vipervoid1]

Somethings with Diagram u provided at page 9 ~ Core i5 4760k @@Please fix that ~

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Yeah, almost all the diagrams refer to the 4760K.

Given that AM3+ looks like it's done, it would have been nice to see a 6-core chip. Still, one of these may end up in my next laptop.

 

[cangelini]

Will get the charts fixed shortly--thanks for the catch!

 

[spp85]

A10-7850k is slower than A10-6800K ?? WTF. Its all hype than actual performance to the table. Even on OpenCL GPU accelerated apps doesn't have any advantage with A10-7850k over i5 or sometimes i3 CPUs. Hopeless is what I feel about AMD CPUs.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

A10-7850k is slower than A10-6800K ?? WTF.

I got the opposite impression. Which graph are you looking at?

 

[Jaroslav Jandek]

Thank you for the article (especially the power consumption measurements), Chris. It is definitely an improvement over Richland but kind of boring (disappointingly expectable).

I really like where AMD is going (HSA, GCN and TrueAudio).Too bad the manufacturing process of GlobalFoundries just can't match Intel's.

Also, it would be interesting to see the new Bay Trail Pentium or Celeron CPUs (whichever is closer in performance) in the Efficiency graphs.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

I'm fairly sure that this is on TSMC's 28nm node. GlobalFoundries can't do that yet; this is on the same process used for AMD GPUs currently.

 

[Jaroslav Jandek]

I'm fairly sure that this is on TSMC's 28nm node. GlobalFoundries can't do that yet; this is on the same process used for AMD GPUs currently.

28nm SHP from GlobalFoundries. AMD bought over $1 billion worth of wafers from them in december...

I guess you have been reading the articles from a year ago about AMD still using TSMC despite promises of GlobalFoundries' new 28nm SHP process.

 

[jacobian]

I don't really believe into the whole HSA smoke-screen. By the time HSA-enabled apps take off, you will be ready to upgrade from your CPU again. The one terrible truth that stands out right now is that at current prices, the flagship Kaveri A10 doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Kaveri A8? Maybe. Richland A10-6790K? Perhaps. But the Kaveri A10 at $180 is a just a joke, specially after all that hype.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

CPUs are usually released at ridiculous prices, and come down over a month or two.

 

[vertexx]

While the gaming enthusiast may not have much here to get excited about, I think the real story here is the A8-7600. Especially at 45W, the numbers are quite impressive for this part.

Of course, the other part of this story will be the adoption of HSA and Mantle. In this regard, I think AMD is playing its cards right. If you want to provide incentive for game developers to invest in developing for Mantle, that economic incentive is not going to come from providing a high-end part that tries to compete with high-end discrete GPUs. That economic incentive, and I believe it's huge, is in lowering the cost of entry to play your game.

With the A8-7600, I believe AMD is providing a tremendous market opportunity and incentive if, with the combination of Kaveri plus embedded technologies (Mantle & True Audio), you can provide a playable gaming environment for the mass market. Admittedly, it may not be a "playable gaming environment" from an enthusiast standpoint, but as an entry point, it is quite good enough. It will be important for AMD to show that the release of Mantle for BF4 impacts performance for the Kaveri APUs in particular. More specifically, they will need to show that Mantle makes BF4 playable on a 7600. If they are successful in that regard, then I think they may really have something exciting here.

I'm hoping AMD is successful in this, because it's obvious that the desktop CPU performance race has reached a point of diminishing returns. Kudus for AMD for potentially changing the game in the industry.

All that said, they screwed up the pricing for the high-end. It needs to be $30 cheaper, and what is even the point of the 7700K? The 7850K at ~$145 and the 7600 where it is would have made much more sense if they want to incent adoption of this technology. The other point is they need to get motherboard manufacturers on-board with bringing more ITX FM2+ motherboards to market at different price points.

 

[Au_equus]

There appears to a typo or at least a contradiction on the table (first page), which lists the A10-7700K with 512 shaders. The paragraph below then says it has 384 shaders.

 

[Nossy]

Basically at this point it is not worth the premium $50-60USD or so over Richland and Trinity. At $180, you can get an i5 3570k at some places like Microcenter. Another disappointing release from AMD.

 

[The_Trutherizer]

I'm extremely excited to see the results from more HSA compliant apps myself. Some of the benchmarks I have seen are beastly.I'm really starting to think that the APU is a superior approach. With x86 performance past a certain point CPUs with traditional cores will be relegated to specialised servers in the eyes of consumers. I mean how quickly do you want to open an excel spreadsheet or encode or decode music and video? 0.5s or 0.3s?

 

[nezzymighty]

With the A8-7600, I believe AMD is providing a tremendous market opportunity and incentive if, with the combination of Kaveri plus embedded technologies (Mantle & True Audio), you can provide a playable gaming environment for the mass market. .... they may really have something exciting here.

@ vertexx ... finally a non troll or die hard Intel/AMD fan that is making sensible points...I used to be a gamer and spent thousands, being a die hard fan of one today's chip makers. Now, as a mainstream user that has to use their money towards real life applications (rather than FPS) like a house, family, children, eating, paying bills, etc... I tend now to look for a solution to spend the disposable income on a solution that is cheap but encompasses the ability to do a little of everything...Well done AMD... please keep the innovation coming, and competition alive too keep prices down for all to enjoy...

 

[rolli59]

Well if this is the future from AMD they are going to leave Intel alone in the high end gaming space.

 

[styrkes]

This measly increase in performance is just shoddy. Wonder what amazing story and hype AMD will put out for their next APU. I'm pretty much done with all this new advanced technology that's supposed to bring increased efficiency, performance, etc. etc. They've been doing this ever since they released their first APU. The next time AMD releases their next APU, I'll just jump straight into the benchmarks, see if that's any good.

 

[styrkes]

This measly increase in performance is just shoddy. Wonder what amazing story and hype AMD will put out for their next APU. I'm pretty much done with all this new advanced technology that's supposed to bring increased efficiency, performance, etc. etc. They've been doing this ever since they released their first APU. The next time AMD releases their next APU, I'll just jump straight into the benchmarks, see if that's any good.

 

[Trachu]

A8-7600 paired with R9-240 looks like a good deal. I belive this is a great Chance for AMD here if it sorts Crossfire performance things right Here lays the whole reason to buy APU instead of plain CPU.Why you have not commented about it in your final words when you thought about the alternatives?

 

[logainofhades]

Basically at this point it is not worth the premium $50-60USD or so over Richland and Trinity. At $180, you can get an i5 3570k at some places like Microcenter. Another disappointing release from AMD.

Yesterday there was an HD7770 so low that you could get that and an FX 6300 for like $5 more than what newegg is asking for the 7850k. You can get an HD 7750 in that general price range with an FX 6300 now. In desktop, APU's still hold no appeal to me at all. Mobile, they have promise for sure.

 

[de5_Roy]

lots of good stuff, and thanks chris, for the exceptional review right after ces.

the a8 7600 steals the spotlight from a10 7850k. seems like amd is aiming for high ipc, power efficient(\o/) uarch with kaveri. something i could not say before with trinity and richland. and well done amd, in that regard. kaveri still maintains best igpu performance for price over intel, and they seem to be good for 900p gaming. i woulda liked to see some 900p gaming benches since 1080p is still beyond the reach. the long-neglected video codec engine (vce) received an upgrade - finally some good news on that. presence of xdma engine in kaveri, frame pacing support for dual gfx(finally!!) even better. the last one will be really beneficial for laptops.

hsa adoption seems isv dependent. amd should dilligently push for application support to bring out kaveri's full potential. they'll also have to outperform intel's opencl perf. what's up with that anyway? is it because of the L3 cache acting as buffer? i never thought that a haswell dual core core i3 (and i5 4430/3350p to a lesser extent), which i considered overpriced before a10 7850k, 7700k were introduced, to outperform richland and kaveri in so many cpu-based and in some opencl workloads. that just feels weird.

now the bad stuff - a10 7850k, 7700k are overpriced. the standout a8 7600 has performance, power efficiency and price trifecta( as long as it holds the price) but won't launch till later. newegg and other retailers are charging rather high price for top kaveri apus, i saw 7850k selling for $190 and 7700k for $170. for desktop cpu performance, these two just makes those overpriced haswell core i3 and i5 cpus better value (wtf, another thing i thought i'd never type). 7850k/7700k's pricing is made worse by amd's own fx6300, 6350, 8320 cpus - all selling for lower prices. both intel i3//i5 and amd's fx are better for gaming with discreet gfx cards.
where are the hsa-boosted softwares? amd should have had at least 3-5 apps ready at launch to show off hsa's promise.
mantle is m.i.a. too, but that's dice's fault. and amd's, for making mantle exclusive to dice.
the lack of raw cpu performance will cause a lot of c.a.l.f. to freak out. after all the time their !@#$ing, ranting about "real gamers and enthusiasts don't care about power consumption/efficiency"... well, amd cares about power efficiency. HAHAHA

 

[wiyosaya]

Not on Newegg yet?? - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113359The better price on the A10-7850K alone is at Amazon, although there appears to be a wait for it - http://www.amazon.com/AMD-AD785KXBJABOX-A10-7850K-APU/dp/B00H7Z7YMI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389884494&sr=8-1&keywords=a10-7850

 

[logainofhades]

Not on Newegg yet?? - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113359The better price on the A10-7850K alone is at Amazon, although there appears to be a wait for it - http://www.amazon.com/AMD-AD785KXBJABOX-A10-7850K-APU/dp/B00H7Z7YMI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389884494&sr=8-1&keywords=a10-7850

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007671%20600484725&IsNodeId=1&name=Socket%20FM2%2b

 

[refillable]

I am not really Impressed, However It may change when HSA Supported Software Will come. I'm Talking about the 7850K, the only reviewed overclockable CPU. The GPU on this is just barely like ~10% faster than 6800K and I would say that's quite bad. In the CPU Benchmark though, Things gone worse. In some test, even with the implementation of OpenCL, This Processor is sometimes slower than its Predecessor, the 6800K and if it beats its Predecessor, you are looking for at most 10% increase.This impression of disappointment was added up by the price. I mean it's $190 on newegg! This is Ridiculous! FX6300+HD7750/R7 250 is going to kick this APU's out of the water surely and is not that much more expensive.What I also dislike is the Hype, Which is 'Bulldozer Like'. Anyway as I said years ago (of course I got a lot of disagreements), APU is not going to be a choice for gamer, as a CPU+GPU are much more efficient. I am really Looking forward for the successor of the 2012 Vishera, which AMD seems to not care about anymore. Rumors even say that AMD is not developing FXs anymore, I do hope this is not true anyway, eventhough it's still logical.I really Hope Mantle and HSA would help this Processor, let see how these goes. But for now, I won't recommend this Processor. Good Luck!