Who Controls the User Experience? AMD’s Carrizo Thoroughly Tested
by Ian Cutress on February 4, 2016 8:00 AM ESTBenchmark Results: Web and Synthetic
Here are our results from our web and synthetic tests. A reminder of our systems:
| System Overview | |||||
| µArch | APU | Base / Turbo MHz |
Memory | Channel | |
| HP Elitebook 745 G2 | Kaveri | A10 PRO-7350B (19W) | 2100 / 3300 | 8 GB | Dual |
| HP Elitebook 745 G3 | Carrizo | PRO A12-8800B (15W) | 2100 / 3400 | 4 GB | Single |
| Toshiba Satellite E45DW-C4210 |
Carrizo | FX-8800P (15W) | 2100 / 3400 | 8 GB | Single |
| HP Pavilion 17z-g100 |
Carrizo | A10-8700P (15W) | 1800 / 3200 | 8 GB | Single |
| Lenovo Y700 | Carrizo | FX-8800P (15W) | 2100 / 3400 | 16 GB | Single |
Google Octane 2.0
Lots of factors go into web development, including the tools used and the browser those tools play in. One of the common and widely used benchmarks to judge performance is Google Octane, now in version 2.0. To quote: 'The updated Octane 2.0 benchmark includes four new tests to measure new aspects of JavaScript performance, including garbage collection / compiler latency and asm.js-style JavaScript performance.' We run the test six times and take an average of the scores.
Octane splits hairs between the Kaveri and A10-8700P, but the Toshiba has the higher skin temperature and can turbo for longer than the Elitebook G3.
Mozilla Kraken 1.1
Kraken is a similar tool to Google, focusing on web tools and processing power. Kraken's tools include searching algorithms, audio processing, image filtering, flexible database parsing, and cryptographic routines.
Kraken mirrors Octane, except this time the A10-8700P gets a jump on the Kaveri.
WebXPRT 2013/2015
WebXPRT aims to be a souped up version of Octane and Kraken, using these tools in real time to display data in photograph enhancement, sorting, stock options, local storage manipulation, graphical enterfaces and even filtering algorithms on scientific datasets. We run the 2013 and 2015 versions of the benchmark.
In both versions of the benchmark, the Kaveri system beats all the 15W Carrizo platforms. It was inevitable that at some point during the benchmarking that those extra four watts of thermal headroom in the chip might allow the CPU to turbo for longer – as WebXPRT is by nature a bursty workload, if it can use this to its advantage then we’ll surely see a regression.
I want to pull out some power numbers a little early here to show what I mean. Here are the two Elitebooks in WebXPRT 2013, whose scores differ by 6%:
These power numbers were taken under the ‘all else equal rule’, so each screen was at the same brightness and almost zero applications requesting run time in the background. Here we see that the Carrizo system is drawing less power on average in idle and load (a common theme), but suffers from higher peak power draw and a much larger average-to-idle change in power (which can be overshadowed by onboard components coming out of sleep). It means we get the very uneasy metric of 1208.7 J of energy consumed for the Kaveri over idle and 1932.8 J of energy consumed for Carrizo, though it does depend on how much idle is truly idle across the whole SoC and platform.
This might be where the performance deficit lies though – in a Carrizo system that boasts lower power at idle and lower power draw on average, in a bursty workload environment it is actually wasting time and power to switch things on and off constantly.
Cinebench 15/11.5
Cinebench is a widely known benchmarking tool for measuring performance relative to MAXON's animation software Cinema 4D. Cinebench has been optimized over a decade and focuses on purely CPU horsepower, meaning if there is a discrepancy in pure throughput characteristics, Cinebench is likely to show that discrepancy. Arguably other software doesn't make use of all the tools available, so the real world relevance might purely be academic, but given our large database of data for Cinebench it seems difficult to ignore a small five minute test. We run the modern version 15 in this test, as well as the older 11.5 due to our back data.
Cinebench shows the spread of performance relating to the microarchitecture advantages of Carrizo compared to Kaveri, as well as the benefits that a 35W part can give over a 15W part. That being said, this spread of results, while perhaps an academic answer to ‘which is the fastest’ is not often seen in the real world.
x264 HD 3.0
The x264 HD 3.0 package we use here is also kept for historic regressional data. The latest version is 5.0.1, and encodes a 1080p video clip into a high quality x264 file. Version 3.0 only performs the same test on a 720p file, and in most circumstances hits its limit on high end processors, but still works well for mainstream and low-end. Also, this version only takes a few minutes, whereas the latest can take over 90 minutes to run.
As with Cinebench, we get an ideal academic spread of data.
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Ian Cutress - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
It is. It was correct in the table :P fixed!Intel999 - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
So what I had originally thought would be an advantage for Carrizo, the same motherboard for both Carizzo and Carizzo-L, turned out to screw AMD since OEMs refuse to provide any semblance of sufficient memory on the Carizzo non L chipsets.As for Zen, I can promise you that it will be a failure in laptop configurations if OEMs continue to reign it in with poor configurations such as single channel memory, HDDs and low quality screens.
The only way to get a quality AMD system in this day and age is to go to a custom PC builder and give him the specs you require. Unfortunately, 90% of PC consumers wouldn't know what specs to give the builder and I'm sure Intel has coerced a lot of custom builders to push their CPUs through kickbacks.
reepca - Saturday, February 13, 2016 - link
Could you name a custom PC builder that can build a laptop with Carrizo for me...? Or when you say "PC" do you mean "Desktop" (already gottaone)?junky77 - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
My Y700 has 4GB of vRAM and GPU-Z show M385XAlso, no talk about DX12?
Bateluer - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
Any idea when we'll see the X4 845 arrive for desktops?mrdude - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
Amazing article, Ian! Took the better part of an hour to read it between chores and emails, but it was time well spent :)That said, I feel like one aspect regarding AMD's race-to-the-bottom has been ignored: AMD's own role in it. For decades, and with only a couple of notable exceptions, AMD has marketed itself as the cheaper alternative with 'good enough' performance. Well, unfortunately they've succeeded and this is the result. Carrizo processors on lagging nodes being sold, if only to decrease OEM investments, for dirt cheap and can only just compete with Intel's low end/mid-tier chips. If their engineers are proud of their efforts, then perhaps they need a reality check and take a look at those benchmarks. The APU is so lopsided and bandwidth starved that it should have never made it past the initial stages of design. (Why on earth are they selling 512SPs if they can't feed them? Is the company more worried about chewing up GloFo wafer commitments than designing a balanced design?)
For AMD to command more volume, higher profit margins, and dictate minimum design/spec requirements, AMD also has to start making class-leading products. 'Good enough' should never be uttered within corporate offices else risk being fired. Unfortunately, mediocrity has been the staple of AMD's CPU side for as long as I can remember. CEOs and chief architects have come and gone, and things still haven't changed. After the X2 derivatives of the A64/K8 the company admitted defeat, if not outwardly than certainly tacitly.
I'm not hopeful. Those days are long gone. It's been far too long since AMD has made something that has piqued my, or consumers', interest. They've got nothing but recent failures to point to. Unless Zen comes out and actually beats out Intel's comparable chips in cost, single-threaded, multi-threaded, and power consumption, every person within AMD should admit defeat. The goal is perfection, and personally it seems they still don't understand that.
wow&wow - Monday, February 8, 2016 - link
"they still don't understand that."Because the paychecks are automatically deposited, no feeling about whether having paychecks or not since having them is a given : )
Lolimaster - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
AMD PLEASE, start selling mobiles devices under your brand.4 of 5 "design wins" shown here are complete sh*t, the Lenovo supposed to be at least decent got serious problems of throttling because they designed the cooling for a 15w TDP.
You're screwing yourself AMD letting OEM's troll you time and time again.
wow&wow - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
A must read for AMD employees, particularly those who define, approve, or market products, tests needed for those : )thatthing - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
my Lenovo y700 came with 8gb ram in two 4gb sticks. Sandra and cou z show duel channel. memory test is very similar to my desktop kaveri system with ddr1600. also my r9m385x has 4gb memory. amd's specs list it as 896 shader, which I would agree with as it performs like my 7790 in firestrike