Who Controls the User Experience? AMD’s Carrizo Thoroughly Tested
by Ian Cutress on February 4, 2016 8:00 AM ESTBenchmark Results: Professional and OpenCL
Here are our results from our Professional and OpenCL tests. A reminder of our systems, including their graphics:
System Overview | ||||
µArch | APU + GPU | Memory | Channel | |
HP Elitebook 745 G2 | Kaveri | A10 PRO-7350B (19W) R6, 384 SPs, 533 MHz |
8 GB | Dual |
HP Elitebook 745 G3 | Carrizo | PRO A12-8800B (15W) R7, 512 SPs, 800 MHz |
4 GB | Single |
Toshiba Satellite E45DW-C4210 |
Carrizo | FX-8800P (15W) R7, 512 SPs, 800 MHz |
8 GB | Single |
HP Pavilion 17z-g100 |
Carrizo | A10-8700P (15W) R6, 384 SPs, 800 MHz |
8 GB | Single |
Lenovo Y700 | Carrizo | FX-8800P (15W) R7, 512 SPs, 800 MHz R9 385MX, 512 SPs, 900-100 MHz |
16 GB | Single |
PCMark 08
PCMark08, developed by Futuremark, is a simple press play and run benchmarking tool designed to probe how well systems cope with a variety of standard tasks that a professional user might encounter. This includes video conferencing with multiple streams, image/file manipulation, video processing, 3D modelling and other tools. In this case we take the three main benchmark sets, Creative, Home and Work, and run them in OpenCL mode which aims to take advantage of OpenCL accelerated hardware. For fun we also put in the PCMark08 Storage workset.
Both of the Home and Work tests show something starteling in the Kaveri system beating all the 15W Carrizo parts. This comes back to what we saw on WebXPRT on the last page – these workloads are very bursty in nature, requiring the system to wake up, run a small amount of work, and go back to sleep. It would seem that this requires a lot more effort from the Carrizo platforms than the Kaveri ones (perhaps by nature of the lower idle power draw starting point on Carrizo) which impacts time critical performance metrics.
If we take the CPU frequencies of the two Elitebook systems, starting with the 745 G2 (Kaveri)
Here the standard frequency tends to be in the 3300 MHz region, moving down to lower frequencies when more threads are needed. But for the 745 G3 (Carrizo):
Here the CPU frequency is obviously mostly at the 2500 MHz mark, sometimes bursting up to 3400 MHz (It’s actually more of a 2:1 split in favor of 2500 MHz).
You might argue that the temperature of the design might be to blame. Both Elitebooks are in the same chassis, so let us see:
(take note of the scales)
Here it shows the G2 wanting to stay below 60C, whereas the G3 is happy to go almost to 80C, albeit with an average temperature which is nearer 50C. This means that the G2 can arguably keep the higher frequencies for longer.
Just to weigh in on the other 15W Carrizo designs in the Toshiba Satellite and HP Pavilion:
In both cases, similar to the G3, the main frequency for the test is actually the lower 2500/2300 frequency, with the system moving up to the higher frequency state around a third of the time, rather than staying at the higher state and moving back down. This is what is causing the Kaveri system to win out in these sorts of workloads (though likely at a power penalty).
On the storage front, having a mechanical drive is a killer here.
Agisoft Photoscan
Photoscan is professional software that takes a series of 2D images (as little as 50, usually 250+) and 'performs calculations' to determine where the pictures were taken and if it can create a 3D model and textures of what the images are of. This model can then be exported to other software for touch-ups or implementation in physics engines/games or, as the reader that directed me to it, national archiving. The tool has four phases, one of which can be OpenCL accelerated, while the other three are a mix of single thread and variable thread workloads. We ran the tool in CPU only and OpenCL modes.
When pure CPU performance matters, having the higher thermal headroom matters most. But moving it to the OpenCL mode shows that those extra TDP points can matter a lot on load balancing:
There are two things to note here. One, something seems to have gone very wrong with the G3, and I’m sure those numbers are erroneous and need to be re-run or the 4GB of memory is actually a hindrance here. The second is that the combination R7/R9 graphics in the Lenovo, despite not being in Crossfire, can both be used in OpenCL mode. This pushes a speed up of almost 30%.
Linux Bench
Linux Bench is a collection of Linux based benchmarks compiled together by ServeTheHome. The idea for this is to have some non-windows based tools that are easy enough to run with a USB key, an internet connection and three lines of code in a terminal. The tests in Linux Bench include standard synthetic compute, compression, matrix manipulation, database tools and key-value storage.
Unfortunately Linux Bench refused to run on any of the HP systems for relatively unknown reasons – the fact that it was all the HP models perhaps means that there is something firmware related which is causing the LiveCD to not boot properly. Nonetheless, the results are here for completeness.
Linux Bench | ||
Toshiba Satellite E45DW-C4210 (15W) |
Lenovo Y700 (35W) |
|
C-Ray Hard Test / seconds | 365 | 267 |
7-Zip Compression MIPS | 5718 | 6110 |
7-Zip Decompression MIPS | 7320 | 9733 |
NAMD (steps per time) | 1.72 | 2.46 |
NPB MOPS (per sec per thread) | 365 | 321 |
OpenSSL Sign | 220 | 296 |
OpenSSL Verify | 13518 | 19465 |
Redis 1 | 13210 | 12034 |
Redis 10 | 41494 | 38760 |
Redis 100 | 33445 | 31949 |
175 Comments
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Kylinblue - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
When I saw the sub-page title "AMD's Industry Problem" I though it is the conclusion, after reading that page I found out I am just at half of the whole article. Well done Ian, well done...ImSpartacus - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
I know, right? I'm one of those weirdos that reads the pages backwards (mostly), so I was immediately surprised at the list of pages before the conclusion. I honestly haven't finished even half of the article, but it's already evident that some tlc went into it.just4U - Saturday, February 6, 2016 - link
A excellent article Ian.. and actually a surprise I wasn't expecting anything in the pipe like this right now.SviatAI - Friday, February 19, 2016 - link
Unfortunately, this often happens when you work for some ecommerce shop selling various goods, the boss of the shop may not want such kind of articles about the products he or she sells. They want it now and fast, just to fill the site with irrelevant content. The problem is that you want to make something better than a stupid re-write. But who cares? So, I am happy for those guys who write for AnandTech and other similar websites. They can learn something new while doing their job.CajunArson - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
This article certainly proves one thing: When it comes to price lists on Intel Mobile parts, the numbers you see on ARK have absolutely nothing to do with the actual price that OEMs pay in real life.Observe the supposedly major $200 price premium for Intel chips when you read a price list in a vacuum, but then see that the real-life Intel system [with an honest-to-God *quad core* chip!] is basically selling for the exact same price as a much less capable Chorrizo part.
I personally got a Costco-Special notebook for the wife last year at $500.. it has an I5-5200U, and I assure you that the OEM most certainly didn't sell that notebook at that price after spending $300 on the CPU.
extide - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
BTW, that's not a quad core. It's dual, with hyperthreading :)CajunArson - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
When I said quad core I was referring to the Core i5-6300HQ (45W) in the price comparison that Anand posted. It is a 4 physical core part in a notebook that only costs $8 more than a "4 core" Carrizo using AMD's "cores".I am aware that the 5200U is a dual-core hyperthreaded part too. Like I said, the entire price of the notebook including the 5200U was only $500 (it has 8 GB of RAM too).
extide - Tuesday, March 22, 2016 - link
Ah, yes, Intel is FINALLY shipping quad core mobile i5's. Good call :)vladx - Saturday, February 6, 2016 - link
Except you didn't put in consideration that what you bought was called "Special" for a reason and it wasn't the release price of the product that was most likely $200+ more.Braincruser - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
AMD still has a long way to go before its considered a valid choice. The 4.5W intel beats it in the tasks its gonna be used in. Even in graphics, the supposed strong side of amd's APU.