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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jabber - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
You'd think someone was paying the OEMs to hamstring these machines...Some odd facepalm design decisions there.
CajunArson - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
Somebody *IS* paying OEMs to hamstring the machines: Customers. Customers who want cheap products that is.AMD makes its reputation as: "Intel is too expensive! We're cheap!" Don't act all shocked and surprised when the rest of the components in the system end up being the cheap components too.
As Anand just pointed out with that price comparison, even with all the cheaping out you can still see a whopping $8 price advantage for AMD on comparably configured notebooks.
tipoo - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
Seriously, some weird stuff. No dual graphics when the chips are almost the same performance? Single channel RAM? What the hell.Midwayman - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
I feel like AMD needs to pull a MS surface or Nexus and put out a reference model to show OEMs how it is supposed to be done. If all OEMs will do is put out a half assed effort, at least then they can just copy the reference design and it will work well.bojblaz - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
+1... You're right, OEMs have pissed off MS and Google enough for them to go solo. AMD could totally follow suitInquisitorDavid - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
Sure, if they had the money to. As it stands, the company is now banking on Zen to rescue them. I don't think they can afford to invest in going solo with device designs, at least not right now.TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, February 11, 2016 - link
They could team up with the likes of MSI or Clevo. Both have done good AMD laptops in the past.A 14 inch msi laptop with a 100wh battery, a 8800p, and 8gb dual channel ram would fetch a good price from those who want AMD laptops.
0razor1 - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
Attn Ed: The HP Elitebook 745 G2GCN 1.0 in the text and then 1.1 in the grid.
Nice read BTW.
Ian Cutress - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
Fixed! Thanks :)RationalHaterade - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
Great write-up, Ian. This is enlightening, and the buoyant attitude at AMD might be saying a lot about what we can expect to see from the 2016/17 product releases.Speaking to Carrizo, I'm not sure they realized how badly they were hurting themselves when they elected to keep Kabini/Temash as single-channel designs and then provide OEMs a cheap out by making it pin-compatible with the big architecture. GCN has always been very bandwidth-dependent in every APU they've released. These single-channel setups have got to be really starving the SoC.
Either way, the performance picture points out what everyone already knows. Zen can't get to mobile quickly enough.