AMD Kaveri Review: A8-7600 and A10-7850K Tested
by Ian Cutress & Rahul Garg on January 14, 2014 8:00 AM ESTIntegrated GPU Performance: Sleeping Dogs
Sleeping Dogs is a benchmarking wet dream – a highly complex benchmark that can bring the toughest setup and high resolutions down into single figures. Having an extreme SSAO setting can do that, but at the right settings Sleeping Dogs is highly playable and enjoyable. We run the basic benchmark program laid out in the Adrenaline benchmark tool, and their three default settings of Performance (1280x1024, Low), Quality (1680x1050, Medium/High) and Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
Sleeping Dogs, Performance Settings
All the AMD APUs tested for this review manage to go above 30 FPS for Sleeping Dogs, with the top end APU nudging at the door of 60 FPS average.
Sleeping Dogs, Quality Settings
The GCN based Kaveri take the top two IGP spots, and Iris Pro is moving down the list by comparison.
Sleeping Dogs, Xtreme Settings
Iris Pro struggles a lot at 1080p in Sleeping Dogs.
Integrated GPU Performance: Company of Heroes 2
The final gaming benchmark is another humdinger. Company of Heroes 2 also can bring the house down, even at very basic benchmark settings. To get an average 30 FPS at any settings using integrated graphics is a challenge, let alone a minimum frame rate of 30 FPS. For this benchmark I use modified versions of Ryan’s batch files more suited for integrated graphics: 1280x1024 on minimum; 1680x1050 on Low and 1920x1080 on Medium.
Company of Heroes 2, Performance Settings
COH2 is demanding enough that even at 1280x1024 and low settings, no platform we tested today can hit 30 FPS average. The 95W Kaveri part does however outshine Richland by almost 25%.
Company of Heroes 2, Quality Settings
Company of Heroes 2, Xtreme Settings
With COH2 extreme settings, the Intel solutions are moving up the minimum FPS ranks to beat AMD.
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fteoath64 - Sunday, January 19, 2014 - link
"Now we need a new one, a fully HSA compliant HyperTransport." Yes! The dedicated people working on new SuperComputers are doing exotic Interconnects close or exceeding 1TBytes/sec speeds but limited by distance naturally. I see that for HyperTransport 3.0 one can implement 10 channels for high aggregated bandwidth, but that will use more transistors. In a budget conscious die size, using eSRAM seems to be a good trick to boost the bandwidth without overt complexity or transistor budget. The downside is eSRAM suck constant power so it becomes a fixture in the TDP numbers. Iris PRO uses 128MB of eDRAM while Xbox One uses 32MB eSRAM. I think the least amount would be somewhere around 24MB for the x86 to be effective in getting effective RAM bandwidth high enough!.The cascading effect if that the memory controller becomes complex and eats into the transistor budget considerably. Seems like a series of moving compromises to get the required performance numbers vs power budget for TDP.
I am actually very excited to see an Arm chip implementing HSA!!.
Samus - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
I don't get why AMD can't compete with Intel's compute performance like they were absolutely able to do a decade ago. Have they lost all their engineering talent? This isn't just a matter of the Intel manufacturing/fab advantage.zodiacfml - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
oh no, after all that, I just came impressed with the Iris Pro. I believe memory bandwidth is needed for Kaveri to stretch its legs.duploxxx - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
impressed with iris pro? for that price difference i would buy a mediocore CPU and dedicated GPU and run circles around it with any game....oaf_king - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
I can point out some carpola here: "I am not sure if this is an effect of the platform or the motherboard, but it will be something to inspect in our motherboard reviews going forward." This sure discounts the major performance benefits you can achieve without faulty hardware. Search the real benchmarks on WCCF tech for A-10 7850 and be amazed. I can STRONGLY DOUBT the CPU has any issue running at 4ghz on a stock cooler/900mhz GPU. Yes the GPU overclock seems skipped over in this Anand review also, but should really pull it into the "useful" category for gaming!oaf_king - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
recall AMD had some leaks suggesting 4ghz CPU / 900Mhz GPU. Is that possible after all? Apparently not all motherboards are faulty. If the TDP tops out at 148 at 4ghz, given the conservative power envelopes already placed on the chip, I'm sure it gets very good performance for between zero and ten extra dollars, and a couple seconds in the BIOS.Fox McCloud - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
Maybe I was skim reading and missed it, but what are the idle power consumption figures for the A8-7600? I need a new home server and I have a iTX system, and mother boards with 6x SATA are slim. It seems the manufacturers only put them on AMD ITX boards, as Intel seem to max out at like 4. I wonder what power figures would be like if under clocked also. I might re-read the review!Excellent review as always guys. So in-depth, informative, technical and unbiased. This is why I love this site and trust your expert opinion :)
Zingam - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
AMDs PR: "The processor that your grandparents dream of!" FYEAHA!keveazy - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
My i5 4440 costs the same as the a10-7850k. I don't think amd will ever compete. By the time they release something that would declare a significant jump, Intel would already have something new to destroy it by then.duploxxx - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
compete to do what? general tasks in a day, just buy an SSD... cost? did check your motherboard price? GPU, did you check the 4600 performance vs a10? it runs circles around it unless you want to be stuck on low resolution with your gorgeous fast cpu.you see customers fool themselve not knowing what to buy for what. hey i have the best benchmarking cpu, but on daily tasks i can't even count the microseconds difference.