AMD Carrizo Part 2: A Generational Deep Dive into the Athlon X4 845 at $70
by Ian Cutress on July 14, 2016 9:00 AM ESTGRID: Autosport
No graphics tests are complete without some input from Codemasters and the EGO engine, which means for this round of testing we point towards GRID: Autosport, the next iteration in the GRID and racing genre. As with our previous racing testing, each update to the engine aims to add in effects, reflections, detail and realism, with Codemasters making ‘authenticity’ a main focal point for this version.
GRID’s benchmark mode is very flexible, and as a result we created a test race using a shortened version of the Red Bull Ring with twelve cars doing two laps. The car is focus starts last and is quite fast, but usually finishes second or third. Both the average and minimum frame rates are recorded.
For this test we used the following settings with our graphics cards:
| GRID: Autosport Settings | |||
| Resolution | Quality | ||
| Low GPU | Integrated Graphics | 1920x1080 | Medium |
| ASUS R7 240 1GB DDR3 | |||
| Medium GPU | MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB | 1920x1080 | Maximum |
| MSI R9 285 Gaming 2G | |||
| High GPU | ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB | 1920x1080 | Maximum |
| MSI R9 290X Gaming 4G | |||
It would seem that GRID is a repeat of Grand Theft Auto: for AMD cards that are mid-to-high end, the Athlon X4 845 performs at the top of the class, whereas for the NVIDIA cards, performance would suggest to chose the Pentium CPU.
![GRID: Autosport on ASUS R7 240 DDR3 2GB ($70) [Minimum FPS]](https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph10436/82715.png)
![GRID: Autosport on MSI R9 285 Gaming 2GB ($240) [Minimum FPS]](https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph10436/82723.png)
![GRID: Autosport on MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB ($245) [Minimum FPS]](https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph10436/82733.png)
![GRID: Autosport on MSI R9 290X Gaming LE 4GB ($380) [Minimum FPS]](https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph10436/82743.png)
![GRID: Autosport on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB ($560) [Minimum FPS]](https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph10436/82753.png)
The minimum frame rate results also get the same result: AMD + AMD or Intel + NVIDIA.
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TheinsanegamerN - Monday, July 18, 2016 - link
carrizo is gimped because it's a bulldozer product. AMD should have stuck with k10 cores on their APUs.Lolimaster - Saturday, July 16, 2016 - link
Unless they axed BR in favor of non-APU Zen and bring Raven Ridge early 2017.Lolimaster - Saturday, July 16, 2016 - link
They were nice in 2014.We should have a nice 20nm 768SP APU in 2015 with a full L2 cache Excavator and fully mature 896SP 20nm early this year.
Remember the A8 3870K? That APU was a damn monster only hold back from being godly cause of their sub 3Ghz cpu speed, what we had after?
400SP VLIW5 2011 --> 384 VLIW4 2012 --> 384VLIW4 2013 --> 512SP GCN 2015 --> 512SP GCN 2016
Intel improved way faster (non "e" + edram igp's are near A8 level from being utter trash when the A8 3850 was release).
serendip - Saturday, July 16, 2016 - link
Still not attractive when a cheap Pentium kills it on single-threaded performance, which is what matters in real-world usage. AMD needs to make tablet chips to take the place of Intel Atoms. I'd love to have a 2W TDP APU with double the performance of Atom GMA graphics and similar single-threaded performance.One can dream...
TheinsanegamerN - Monday, July 18, 2016 - link
AMD powered surface 4 (non pro model) with LTE would be perfect.Too bad AMD abandoned that market. They had a good thing going with their cat cores, but they let that line wither on the vine.
leopard_jumps - Saturday, July 16, 2016 - link
Thanks for the review ! You should include Intel i7 for comparison . Here :http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_athlon_x4...
Meteor2 - Saturday, July 16, 2016 - link
The latest microarchitecture from AMD based on the x86 instruction set was given the codename Excavator, using the fourth generation of AMD's Bulldozer cores, called Carrizo cores.' - Can someone explain that to me? Or are we saying these are Excavator Bulldozer Carizos??Calculatron - Saturday, July 16, 2016 - link
Fourth generation Bulldozer-style cores, named Carrizo.The architecture type/family is Bulldozer, this version/generation is called Excavator, and this specific kind of core is called Carrizo. The mobile version is called Carrizo-L, I think?
If you, or anyone you know, bought an FX-8350, they bought a second-generation Bulldozer product, and it was called Piledriver. Anyone who bought the A10-5800K also bought a second generation Bulldozer product, but it was called Trinity. Both of these were Vishera, since they were second-generation.
Lolimaster - Saturday, July 16, 2016 - link
No.The 1st APU platform featuring piledriver cores was called Trinity,
The 1st and only desktop FX platform featuring piledriver cores was called Vishera.
Calculatron - Saturday, July 16, 2016 - link
This is correct: I confused, and swapped, Piledriver and Vishera.Both the A10-5800K and FX-8350 were Piledriver, but they were Trinity and Vishera, respectively.