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

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NUKEDKW

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This is rather an dissapointment. I kinda expected this kind of performance level but, kinda hoped for more performance.
 

Jaroslav Jandek

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ISO would disagree, energy efficiency is a big thing.
This is of course a point applicable when you are buying/upgrading a system. $10 annually was just an example - accounting PC is like $5 but a render PC (10+ h/d) eats $130-$300 extra on the CPU side alone. We have saved thousands of dollars on electricity each year just by making good decisions. And that money could be spent elsewhere - for example on faster workstations (or free coffee). Also, it is not just consumed electricity but the radiated heat that you then need to dissipate using AC, therefore using additional power.

When you are deciding on a budget PC with a $110 CPU it is not a small issue anymore. By that logic, you can work for a week and buy a great gaming PC instead of a budget gaming PC and have superior experience. Yet, a lot of people have crappy gaming PCs because they have set a budget for themselves.

True. Unfortunately, (as mentioned in my post) energy prices are increasing faster than inflation devaluates currency.

The point is: if you save some money - however small amount - you can either buy something else that you need/want or buy something more efficient with higher performance.
I, of course, understand that not everybody needs or wants to save money, but this post is obviously not aimed at those people. I personally just like using less energy for various reasons (pollution, independency on grid, etc.).
 

logainofhades

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Only way energy efficiency of a CPU truly matters is if you leave your system on 24/7. If it is only on for a few hours in the evening or during the day, that little bit of time will affect your power bill very little or not at all. A single really cold day in the winter or a very hot day in the summer, causing you to use your heat or ac more than normal, would have a bigger impact on your power bill than a PC ever will. If you are into F@H, then yes it would matter. For just general use PC or gaming rig that is on only a small portion of any given day, not so much. I did the whole energy efficient thing back in the core 2 days. Went from a very hot and overclocked X3210 Kentsfield quad to a wolfdale E8190 dual core. I saw 0 benefit on my power bill. It was roughly the same price as it usually was from month to month during the summer.
 

Monochrome_Night

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I have an old 720p screen that's not getting much use. I think I'm gonna get an A8 when it comes out and use the 45w setting to build a slim budget rig. I'll call it a PS3.5.
 

ANTI GOOGLI

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The a10-7850 is faster than fx-8350 in games. A forum member at overclock.net started a thread and he stated than is gtx 670 has more gpu usage at 4.6ghz than is fx-8350 at 4.9 ghz ( gpu usage jumped from 64% to 89%) in Guild Wars 2. This is just an example. So if anyone is interested in "real" performance, check this thread :http://www.overclock.net/t/1459225/i-have-custom-looped-kaveri-and-am-your-guinea-pig
 

Jaroslav Jandek

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Here in germany electricity costs ~$0.36 / kWh.
Let's compare power consumption of the most talked about CPUs i5-4670K (79W / 132W @ $240) and FX-8350 (89W / 283W @ $200). That is 10-151W difference (121W in gaming) which when using it for 3 hours/day/year equates to $4 idle, $60 peak and $48 gaming per year (divide by ~2 for US). Wouldn't you say that is quite significant? And that is just 3 hours of usage in the evening (P * 3 * 365 / 1000 * 0.36) !

Not to be completely off-topic. I have just seen some HSA media encoding / decoding algorithms and they perform very well (~100% performance boost). So in the coming years, HSA might become very enticing!
 

mohit9206

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I figure quite a few people including me would be disappointed by this article as Tom's took a few extra days to bring this review and its the same as every other review out there.I and others were expecting a detailed video game bechmark analysis with cheaper pentiums and athlons and i3's with cheap discrete graphics like R7 240 and 250 compared to the Kaveri APU's.Sure in the conclusion it is said that the author would prefer an Athlon X4+7750 but i wanted detailed benchmarks comparing low end CPU's+discrete graphics comapred to Kaveri and not some useless Intel integreted graphics compared with Kaveri APU.Toms lets us down yet again.
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1982131/tomshardware-review-kaveri.html
Am sorry that Toms let this guy down and me too(2nd post). I however do really appreciate the dual graphics analysis :) There is so much promise in dual graphics its only too bad that most veterans here in Toms forums always advice newcomers looking for advice against dual graphics setup with APU :(
 
I used to be really big on trying to minimize power use. A couple of my personal project builds were to see how low I could go on the power use (one of the more interesting was an AMD 4850e and a HD4670; its performance was a GREAT data point even though I ultimately found the CPU to be too weak). Over the last few years however, review articles have consistently shown that in the long run, the lower TDP parts are simply slower, but may not save any power. I still believe in avoiding power waste, but power use is perfectly fine.
 

vertexx

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I agree - I was also disappointed with the 2 day delay and with the lack of depth and thoroughness of this article. It's almost as if it was an afterthought. Maybe too many "meetings" at CES, eh?
 

Jaroslav Jandek

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I wonder if these articles are using the same efficiency benchmarks: Kaveri, Bay Trail and Ivy Bridge-E. That would mean J1750 (49.5 Wh) >> A4-4000 > i5-4670K >= i3-4330 (96 Wh) > A8-6500T > i7-4770K > A10-7850K > A10-6800K > FX-8350 (315 Wh) > A10-5800K in terms of efficiency (performance per watt). So low TDP parts are actually the least wasteful.
 

jardows

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What so many people who visit Tom's and other tech sites do not realize, are the concerns of the average user. Smaller form factors and lower power consumption while still providing an adequate computing environment is more important to the average user than whatever benchmark may say or how awesome this or that game is. Yes, a cheap Intel processor + add-on video card can provide similar or even better performance, but it uses more electricity, requires a larger computer case, and will generate more heat/noise.For general, everyday computing, you cannot discount the need for video power. Browser based games usually don't need a powerful video card, but show significant lags with older generation integrated video. The AMD APU's will likely provide a better experience for these casual games than the relatively poor performance on comparably priced Intel processors. I currently recommend AMD APU's for a general home computer, even though I use Intel for myself. My needs utilize the Intel CPU power, and I don't care about the more electricity and case size required for the add-on card. Average computer users have different needs.
 

Kai Dowin

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Cheap Intel CPU + dGPU can provide a huge performance boost with the same price. We aren't talking about benchmarks, but about doubling the playable resolution.

If the user thinks that a relatively small farm factor (because you can put a dGPU on a ITX case as well) and US$5 a year on energy is worth the huge performance drop, than the APU will fit it's needs.

About heat and noise, you're right, but also dramatizing the issue. No low end GPU is hot and noisy. All of them are dead silent. Their cooler is ridiculously small. And they don't need a huge case by any means. They might not fit a NUC, but they fit nicely a ITX case.

-

Now if you're talking about daily usage that don't actually game (but use flash based gaming and that sort of stuff), than Intel's HD 4600 has plenty of power to it. In fact, I never game and the Intel HD 3000 never gave me any problem on my portable machine, even with heavy flash based games like Tibia.
 


That is bloody expensive electricity. It is about $0.09 here

But still I think it is being way overfactored
 

vertexx

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The A6 now has me looking forward to my next HTPC build - been wanting the smallest of small form factor for the bedroom TV. We've cut cable/satellite, so most content comes off the web or via our Plex home media server (8TB box running on a Xeon E3 that also runs multiple VMs of Minecraft server for the kids and their friends).

Here's the build using the A8-7600 running in 45W mode:

- CPU: AMD A8-7600 - $120
- CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-L9a - $43 (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009VY1R9O/?tag=pcpapi-20)
- Motherboard: ASRock FM2A88X-ITX+ - $100 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157464)
- Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Z Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2400 - $90 (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0088JQY7I/?tag=pcpapi-20)
- Storage: Crucial M500 240GB mSATA Internal Solid State Drive - $150 (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BQ8RKT4/?tag=pcpapi-20)
- Case: Streacom F1C - $76 (http://www.shop.perfecthometheater.com/HTPC-F1C-OD-Black-Left-Button-Ultra-small-aluminum-chassis-HTPC-F1C-OD-B-LB.htm)
- Case Fan: Noctua A-Series NF-A6x25 60mm - $15 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835608032)
- Power Supply: picoPSU-120 + 102W Adapter Power Kit - $52 (http://www.mini-box.com/picoPSU-120-102W-power-kit)
- Optical Drive: Panasonic UJ-225 Blu-Ray Burner Writer - $75 (http://www.ebay.com/itm/Panasonic-UJ-225-Blu-Ray-Burner-Writer-BD-RE-Slot-in-Slim-Internal-DVD-Drive-New-/271284081572?_trksid=p2054897.l4276)
- OS: Dual boot Ubuntu/Steam OS

Total: $721. Not intended to necessarily be a budget build, but a perfect mini-ITX HTPC with a tiny footprint, will run almost silently, will stream content, will play any of my Linux steam games, and overall will pack a good punch in such a small package.

It's going to be awesome - perfect for the application.

Of course, I could go for a Gigabyte BRIX pro for a couple hundred bucks more...... But that would be too boring.
 

102w PSU sounds like its pushing it at best
 

vertexx

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I think I'll be fine in 45W mode. No drives, just SSD. The Blu Ray burner pushes it up a bit, but think I'll be fine.

I did have the wrong Noctua cooler for AMD, but I modified that.
 

logainofhades

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This one would be more fun for less $$ though.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4430 3.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($184.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ECS H81H3-I/HDMI (V1.0) Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard ($55.42 @ Mwave)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($72.25 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital RE3 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($50.44 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R9 270 2GB Video Card ($190.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Cooler Master Elite 130 Mini ITX Tower Case ($49.99 @ Microcenter)
Power Supply: Silverstone Strider Plus 500W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($64.99 @ NCIX US)
Optical Drive: Pioneer BDC-207DBK Blu-Ray Reader, DVD/CD Writer ($45.37 @ OutletPC)
Total: $714.42
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-01-17 14:24 EST-0500)
 

Wolf525

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The Kaveri series APU's are clearly made with future software in mind, with current benchmarking Intel will always come out on top due to their superior single thread ipc. This story will change with the Beta Cat 13.35 driver release at the end of this month. This driver impliments Mantle and HSA to the Kaveri series APU's, we will be able to see the improvements this brings. I believe Kaveri was down clocked due to Global Foundaries having problems producing Kaveri at the stated 1050tflops, this is why it ended up at 856 gflops. Remember if you do OC Kaveri, remember to OC both the CPU part as well as the GFX part. I alreadt have mine at cpu boost 4.2ghz and gfx 847 mhz, this kicks out combined to near 1 tflops. As the future software compatable with Kaveri will execute using the gfx cores to more effect it pays dividence to overclock the gfx side more than the cpu side. I know this may sound Irish, no pun intended, but this is why AMD paid more attention to the gfx side of the Kaveri APU.
 
Energy efficiency only matters depending on the usage scenario:

Energy Efficiency matters in: laptops and smaller mobile devices where battery capacity is very limited, servers, rendering farms, or other cases where one or multiple machines are running near 100% 24/7, or in a developing or underdeveloped country where electricity is still relatively expensive.

Energy Efficiency does not matter in: the one or two household desktops for daily use and/or gaming. In fact, in these cases performance should be the ONLY metric (provided sufficient cooling is utilized). I would MUCH RATHER pay $10 per year (actually it'll be less), for faster I/O, faster processing time, better graphics, and for the occasional bursts of rendering or calculations to run faster, then to run at some 'energy cost optimum' and sit around sipping coffee.
 

Well the part about Kaveri seems to be true, the link seems to be off topic

A very clever spamming?
Energy efficiency only matters depending on the usage scenario:

Energy Efficiency matters in: laptops and smaller mobile devices where battery capacity is very limited, servers, rendering farms, or other cases where one or multiple machines are running near 100% 24/7, or in a developing or underdeveloped country where electricity is still relatively expensive.

Energy Efficiency does not matter in: the one or two household desktops for daily use and/or gaming. In fact, in these cases performance should be the ONLY metric (provided sufficient cooling is utilized). I would MUCH RATHER pay $10 per year (actually it'll be less), for faster I/O, faster processing time, better graphics, and for the occasional bursts of rendering or calculations to run faster, then to run at some 'energy cost optimum' and sit around sipping coffee.
+1
 

vertexx

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@logainofhades That's a good one, except my wife would never let that CM case anywhere near our bedroom.

I actually have a similar build in one of the boys' rooms, except I opted for an I3 but upgraded to the R9 270x, all in the Silverstone sg05. That has turned out as a perfect build for them.

For this build, the idea of having that much capability in such a minimalist box running on 100 watts is really the point.

All that said..... Point well taken.....
 

shafe88

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I think AMD APU's would perform a little better, if they lowered the clock slightly to make some thermal head room for some L3 cache, which would boost performance in certain apps. But what AMD does have offers well balanced performance. An AMD APU sure would make a supper tiny mid-range gaming rig that cant support discreet graphics.
 


I don't disagree HSA is promising. But seeing as software designers still don't even code properly for multicored cpus... 8 years after they hit the market.... i think we could be waiting 10 years or more for HSA to come to market significantly... and likely only in a format that intel pushes. The sad reality is, AMD doesn't have the market leverage to encourage adoption of HSA.
 
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