Battle At $140: Can An APU Beat An Intel CPU And Add-In Graphics?

[madooo12]

dual graphics (with the same 6670) could've made the APU beat that CPU at every single workload

 

[Guest]

the author tries to make us think that the comparison is even, but the Intel motherboard is 100 dollars more expensive than the AMD motherboard. I think this changes the lite of thing gratly.

 

[Reynod]

The Intel mainboard price is higher for a start ...

The AMD APU was severely affected by poor RAM ... not a fair contest.

Intel also does not have a comparable APU (the GPU's on the i3's area a joke for gaming) so this is the best they can do ... compete using the opposition's graphics card with their cheap CPU ... against a product which is much more preferrable for an OEM to sell to a customer anyway (cheaper mobo + APU and no discrete card required) vs Intel's solution.

The AMD system does the job as a low end gamer and general purpose PC ... it is cheaper, has fewer parts, and Intel can't compete in this space without looking silly.

You could also chuck in a 6670 for the AMD system for free once you pocketed the cash difference on the price of the motherboards.

The second GPU will also work in Asymmetric CF with Llano's ondie GPU ... why didn't you mention that?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4476/amd-a83850-review/6

 

[robot_army]

[citation][nom]peroludiarom[/nom]I will say that its really unproffessional to use 1600mhz DDR3 with Liano, while manufacturer says its support 1866mhz! I recently got 3870K for my frend, and not even 1866 will show much bettter numbers in CPU and GPU, but 1866mhz even bottleneck the APU when you overclock. For best results i was using 2000mhz ddr3 ram.Also i'm sick to watch so poor ddr3 bandwidth performance on AMD overclocked processors here! Please start to overclock the memory controller - the whole world already knows this, but not Toms! With PII 555(x4) i got 16,5g/s in Sandra for my everyday overclock, and you show 12-14gb/s for PII 980?? Also using cheaper MB is already know that bottleneck Overclocking and even standart performace!Please Toms, bench again with right settings![/citation]

Totally hit the nail on the head, tou overclocked the GPU by almost 50% but only see a 10% increase in performance! there is a massive memory bottleneck here, not to mention the fact that the discrete card gets a bonus 1GB of ram(as the APU uses system ram as GPU ram), and i bet the APU was only set to use 512MB as graphics ram.

A good concept by tom hardware, but maybe could have been carried out a little better.....

 

[noob2222]

I have a challenge for you don. I would like to see someone investigate the impact of "havok physics engine" on AMD hardware. Basically finding what settings have to be turned off to run the game without "physics" and test intel vs amd at that setting.

If your wondering, its because 3 of your titles (wich heavily favor intel) are havok software imbedded (intel owns Havok). Starcraft II, Just cause 2, and Skyrim. May be an impossible to find challenge tho, not like it can be just turned off like Nvidia's physics engine.

Interesting article tho, definately a good value find on the 6670 at $70, most of them are $80-95, wich would have broke the comparison. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&N=100006662&isNodeId=1&Description=6670&x=0&y=0

Totally hit the nail on the head, tou overclocked the GPU by almost 50% but only see a 10% increase in performance! there is a massive memory bottleneck here, not to mention the fact that the discrete card gets a bonus 1GB of ram(as the APU uses system ram as GPU ram), and i bet the APU was only set to use 512MB as graphics ram.

A good concept by tom hardware, but maybe could have been carried out a little better.....

a lot of these articles just raise more questions, as you pointed out, A8 = motherboard memory. The more memory you supply to the gpu, the more you starve the system. Would need another article to investigate how much memory is needed for gaming on the A8 APUs.

 

[tipoo]

Off topic, but I really hope you review AMD's FX 4170! At 4.2GHz and a low price it should be a better value than the 8 or 6 core ones at lower speeds and even beat them at many workloads, most sites only test the top end ones which is unfortunate.

 

[bustapr]

hey toms, I think its better if you remove the 0-20fps(or 30) parts of the graphs on some benchmarks. Just so you have more room to show the full line benchmarks instead of have most of a line cutoff at te 60 fps mark.

 

[tipoo]

Tomshardware already did a Bulldozer memory bandwidth performance scaling article if I recall, I'm curious why BD wasn't fed with the speed it takes to use all of its performance.

 

[badtaylorx]

knowing full well the performance boost that comes with faster memory,,, you guys should have slipped in a faster set for the overclocked results... i would have liked to see that

 

[peroludiarom]

Tipoo as far as i know, Liano is not bulldozer based chip, so there is nonsense in your response.
And there is material for additional article how graphics and cpu in Liano scale with RAM speeds in stock ,and overclocked mode.

 

[tipoo]

[citation][nom]peroludiarom[/nom]Tipoo as far as i know, Liano is not bulldozer based chip, so there is nonsense in your response. And there is material for additional article how graphics and cpu in Liano scale with RAM speeds in stock ,and overclocked mode.[/citation]

Whoops, need my coffee, I did know that. But Llano has also shown scaling beyond 1600mhz DDR3 especially with the GPU on board.

 

[dealcorn]

[citation][nom]peroludiarom[/nom]I will say that its really unproffessional to use 1600mhz DDR3 with Liano, while manufacturer says its support 1866mhz![/citation]

Good point but they would have to change the title of the article to "Can AMD Beat Intel at Triple the Price?" The tested configuration uses 8 GB of RAM. Today Pricewatch will sell you an 8 GB kit of DDR3 1600 for $43. Their best shot at DDR3 1800 costs $328 ($284 more) and will only get you a pair of 4 GB kits. That is kind of a stiff premium when comparing $140 parts. Presumably the premium grows as you move towards 1866.

 

[peroludiarom]

[citation][nom]tipoo[/nom]Whoops, need my coffee, I did know that. But Llano has also shown scaling beyond 1600mhz DDR3 especially with the GPU on board.[/citation]

Yes it show scaling and it is BIG one! With overclocked GPU and CPU, it shows scaling also beyond 2000mhz speeds and low CLs. This what we point into - in this benchmark AMD liano is crippled by low ram speeds, and low memory controller speeds(in overclocked mode)!

 

[yannigr]

There is no reason to do this article another AMD vs Intel article. You want to see if the APU is a good choice? OK, but Intel is not the only alternative to an APU. AMD does have processors in the market for $70.

 

[beavermml]

all the talks about Intel MB is more expensive than AMD one is too exaggerated.. in my place the cheapest Intel 1155 mb is MYR190 while the cheapest AMD FM1 is MYR250..

a simple google search return this
http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/components/motherboards/amdfm1allchipsetmotherboards/?o=1
and this
http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/components/motherboards/intel1155h61chipsetmotherboards/

and then the fanboy will tell that the AMD will have more features.... ( USB3.0 etc etc )..
but from the pages itself the cheapest Intel mobo with USB3 is 59.99 while the AMD itself is 63.07... now can someone please tells me which is cheaper?

someone who bought expensive mobo will stuck it with cheap processor? even it is true, im sure it will upgrade the CPU itself later..

 

[peroludiarom]

[citation][nom]beavermml[/nom]all the talks about Intel MB is more expensive than AMD one is too exaggerated.. in my place the cheapest Intel 1155 mb is MYR190 while the cheapest AMD FM1 is MYR250..a simple google search return thishttp://www.novatech.co.uk/products [...] oards/?o=1and thishttp://www.novatech.co.uk/products [...] herboards/and then the fanboy will tell that the AMD will have more features.... ( USB3.0 etc etc ).. but from the pages itself the cheapest Intel mobo with USB3 is 59.99 while the AMD itself is 63.07... now can someone please tells me which is cheaper? someone who bought expensive mobo will stuck it with cheap processor? even it is true, im sure it will upgrade the CPU itself later..[/citation]

Your opinion is not in connection that we talk about - expensive motherboard leads to performance increase. So if you whant legit benchmark Toms shoud use MBs in same price range! That we point out, not what is cheapest MB in market at all !

 

[beavermml]

[citation][nom]peroludiarom[/nom]Your opinion is not in connection that we talk about - expensive motherboard leads to performance increase. So if you whant legit benchmark Toms shoud use MBs in same price range! That we point out, not what is cheapest MB in market at all ![/citation]

is that so? is there is articles to proof that.. i dont know about that.. all i know about llano is it is very good with memory scaling...

 

[peroludiarom]

[citation][nom]beavermml[/nom]is that so? is there is articles to proof that.. i dont know about that.. all i know about llano is it is very good with memory scaling...[/citation]

Hey are you angry (bird)
Be happy - why toms and other sites benchmarks the MB in given price range, and not all MB for given platform ??? Your posts are comic.

 

[beavermml]

.. im not angry at all.. it just pissed me off when peoples keep complaining about the difference in mobo prices.. for me, if i want to build budget gaming build i will surely bought intel+gpu+h61+normal ram which can be upgraded later with an i3 compared to AMD APU+mobo+expensive ram

and i really dont know that with more expensives mobo the performance will increase.. i do know that more expensive mobo tends to OC better and have better features which in someway increase the performance.. do we have articles that compare performance between all chipset ( outside of OC ).

sorry about the posting before... its too childish of me

 

[Sybock]

Couldn't you pair an A6 with a discrete GPU at that price? It would still be a quad, plus you could crossfire.

 

[peroludiarom]

[citation][nom]beavermml[/nom].. im not angry at all.. it just pissed me off when peoples keep complaining about the difference in mobo prices.. for me, if i want to build budget gaming build i will surely bought intel+gpu+h61+normal ram which can be upgraded later with an i3 compared to AMD APU+mobo+expensive ram and i really dont know that with more expensives mobo the performance will increase.. i do know that more expensive mobo tends to OC better and have better features which in someway increase the performance.. do we have articles that compare performance between all chipset ( outside of OC ).sorry about the posting before... its too childish of me[/citation]

No problems... there are many articles about performance difference between mobos, even here in Toms, but you should go there and search carefully the reviews and benches. Chip-sets also gives difference of course. Just go there and look out for this info.

Also we scream about that the bench is not-so fair, obvious because RAM used for Liano is lower than manufacturer says it support. For GPU in Liano is MORE than Critical to have higher speed of ram, because this will increase performance with more than 10%. For this also you can check http://www.anandtech.com/show/4476/amd-a83850-review/4 here, and then Please go back here and write that im write THIS time!

And for the final - my opinion is: that is not professional benchmark, and its a shame for toms (which is one of my favorite sites).

 

[peroludiarom]

Also you can go here and see one more professional review of how to scale Liano (just use Google translate: Bulgarian to english):

http://megahardware.info/reviews/processors-and-motherboards/amd-a8-3870k/3/

So when we are exploring capabilities of full unlocked processors, we should done our job with little more thinking.

 

[ubercake]

The good thing to see is the progress AMD is making with their APUs. It would be nice to get to a point where you can have really good gaming-level 1080p video performance playing on high or ultra settings at 60Hz without the added expense, heat or power consumption of discrete video solutions. I'd pay double or triple the $140 for something like that.

 

[ivaroeines]

On the last AMD vs Intel test i wrote a piece that accused Toms hardware of being biased against AMD, to me this article/test manage to confirm my suspicions. Here are the things that make me think that Toms hardware is biased.

1. Toms indicates that the Intel motherboards are cheaper than AMD ones while on the test they use a Intel motherboard that is more expensive than the AMD one, this is normally no real problem. The problem is that they should use motherboards that have roughly the same specs, the cheap intel motherboards listed on newegg only support DDR3 1333 ram, if you want a Intel motherboard that support DDR3 1600 which all AMD boards supports you have to go up in price by 70%.

2. The power usage benchmark shows that the Intel system uses 107 watts fully loaded, if you count in the fact that a HD 6670 alone uses around 65 W fully loaded the rest of the system uses around 42 W, this with a cpu with a tdp of 65 W, i find that strange. My conclusion here is that either Toms changed the cpu during the test or they use a different cpu than the listed one. My guess is that they used the G620T ( like some have indicated before me ) in this test, well this is most likely a slower cpu than the G620 but dont know if its slower, but it is more expensive than the G620. Either way it sets some question marks on the whole test.

3. Toms claim that the G620/HD 6670 is $10 cheaper than the A8 3870K, my own search on newegg says that the price difference is less than a $1.

As a end note, i dont dispute the fact that Intel makes better cpu's than AMD, they do, but Toms hardware need to take a look at how they conduct their tests, im starting to question whether i should trust them any more.

 

[beavermml]

yup.. i know about the relation of memory speed and AMD APU. it scales so well.. for me, when toms stated that it limited the budget to $140, it just occurs to me that all the price for mobo and ram should be the same at all.. yet the tom used expensive mobo for intel ( toms also stated that expensive mobo has no real performance impact albeit more features )...

i agree that this article is not so professional too.. im just losing it when i read alot of articles before ( not this one ) and people keep complaining the prices of mobo between Intel and AMD..

im back here and u r right..