AMD Kaveri Review: A8-7600 and A10-7850K Tested
by Ian Cutress & Rahul Garg on January 14, 2014 8:00 AM ESTCPU Performance
I often make a big song and dance about real world benchmarks being the main focus of a reviewer. Synthetics often stress parts of the CPU and distort advantages that a CPU might have and thus not affect you or me in the same manner when using the machine normally. For 2014 I have updated my usual benchmarking set, to include more video encoding and an image converter that takes 2D images and performs algorithms to convert the data into a 3D model. Some 2013 benchmarks are still here, showing what can be done, and to bring parity to previous CPU reviews, some synthetics are also included.
Agisoft Photoscan v1.0 - link
Our new main benchmark to AnandTech is provided by Agisoft. Their Photoscan software creates 3D models from 2D images, a process which is very computationally expensive. The algorithm is split into four distinct phases, and different phases of the model reconstruction require either fast memory, fast IPC, more cores, or even OpenCL compute devices to hand. Agisoft supplied us with a special version of the software to script the process, where we take 50 images of a stately home and convert it into a medium quality model. This benchmark typically takes around 15-20 minutes on a high end PC on the CPU alone, with GPUs reducing the time.
AMD suffers in overall time due to the lack of full-blooded cores and the reliance on single threaded performance in certain parts of the algorithm.
The second stage of the benchmark can be accelerated by the IGP of an APU, and as a result we can see the power of the high end APUs for this work can outshine any CPU we tested today. This is really the promise of HSA, it's just going to take a while to get there for most apps.
3D Particle Movement - link
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz and IPC wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores.
AMD is still suffering a lack of FP performance in our 3DPM benchmark.
WinRAR 5.01 - link
Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2014. We compress a set of 2867 files across 320 folders totaling 1.52 GB in size – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30 second 720p videos.
WinRAR loves IPC from the high end Intel chips, but even against the older i5-2500K there is still a deficit. The 45W Kaveri APU however is within fighting distance of its main rival.
FastStone Image Viewer 4.9 - link
Similarly to WinRAR, the FastStone test us updated for 2014 to the latest version. FastStone is the program I use to perform quick or bulk actions on images, such as resizing, adjusting for color and cropping. In our test we take a series of 170 images in various sizes and formats and convert them all into 640x480 .gif files, maintaining the aspect ratio. FastStone does not use multithreading for this test, and thus single threaded performance is often the winner.
FastStone wants single threaded performance, so Intel wins here again.
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HanzNFranzen - Saturday, January 18, 2014 - link
Yea, 90% of people use Battlefield 4 90% of their time on the PC... You missed the question.keveazy - Saturday, January 18, 2014 - link
Doesn't matter.If you buy a PC, it's better to make sure it's solid and ready to handle applications that require strong physical cpu performance unless your still living the 90s dude.
My point is, AMD's highest end kaveri 7850k chip today is priced at the same range as Intel's low end i5 cpus. From here, you take your pic. If you wanna have a system that has worse graphics than ps4, go AMD.
kmi187 - Sunday, January 19, 2014 - link
If you've actually lived in the 90's you would know that cpu power was a lot more important back then than it is now. You didn't have hardware (gpu) acceleration for video and all that jazz to put less stress on the cpu.Also you do realize the PS4 runs on AMD hardware right?
medi02 - Tuesday, January 28, 2014 - link
What on earth are you talking about? What is a "solid PC"? One that fails at games?cryptik - Monday, March 30, 2015 - link
Today (30 Mar 2015) the AMD A8-7600 is the same price ($99) as the Intel Pentium G3460. The "lowest end" i5 CPU is $189. You're simply a liar who has no idea what he's talking about.vAngz - Sunday, January 26, 2014 - link
I believe you and others are missing the point. Can you play Battlefield 4 on medium settings @ 1080p using only the i5 4430, without using a discrete graphics card, and it still be playable above 30fps?Even though the chips are the same price (at most places), you can actually play BF4 using only the A10 7850K, which is not possible with the i5 4430. I bring this up mainly because you brought up BF4. When, rather if, Mantle is ever activated on BF4, things will change and we will see even better performance on the A10-7850K and later gen AMD APUs.
So, yes, you can get better performance out of the i5 4430, but you will need to spend more money on a discrete graphics card to use it for gaming, such as for BF4. I believe this what sets the AMD APUs apart from Intel offerings at the moment. We need to compare apples to apples.
I could be wrong, but I haven't seen anywhere in my research where anyone is getting that kind of performance out of i5 4430 without a discrete graphics card added into the mix. If you have a link on such info please share it with us. Thanks.
keveazy - Friday, February 7, 2014 - link
Your not getting it either. My mistake in my previous post is I didn't mention Battlefield 4 Multiplayer.That's where the APU will fail. It will fail in both the Cpu performance and Gpu performance. The APU is still the better choice at light gaming.
theduckofdeath - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
I think he's referencing that processor simply because it's a pretty powerful, fairly low-priced processor for all of those who can live without all of those over-clocker tweaks...just4U - Tuesday, January 14, 2014 - link
You talk about 2500K performance and yet the majority of people I come across are not even working with that. The vast majority are still in the C2D/8800 like performance arena. What would be nice to see from some of these review sites in their performance analysis is if stuff like this makes sense to finally bite the bullet and get rid of the old dog..just4U - Tuesday, January 14, 2014 - link
Ian .. that's something I think you should look at btw.. we do get a fair number of lurkers /w some posting up questions like that about how it compares to the old warhorses their on. Hell even for those of us with old parts kicking around it's something to consider. Do we scrounge up some cheap ddr2 psu.. hand me down hard drives and pair it up for that box in front of the television or do we say no.. this makes far more sense and it's new.