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 ESTGrand Theft Auto V
The highly anticipated iteration of the Grand Theft Auto franchise finally hit the shelves on April 14th 2015, with both AMD and NVIDIA in tow to help optimize the title. GTA doesn’t provide graphical presets, but opens up the options to users and extends the boundaries by pushing even the hardest systems to the limit using Rockstar’s Advanced Game Engine. Whether the user is flying high in the mountains with long draw distances or dealing with assorted trash in the city, when cranked up to maximum it creates stunning visuals but hard work for both the CPU and the GPU.
For our test we have scripted a version of the in-game benchmark, relying only on the final part which combines a flight scene along with an in-city drive-by followed by a tanker explosion. We record both the average frame rate and the percentage of frames under 60 FPS (16.6ms).
For this test we used the following settings with our graphics cards:
| Grand Theft Auto Settings | |||
| Resolution | Quality | ||
| Low GPU | Integrated Graphics | 1280x720 | Lowest |
| ASUS R7 240 1GB DDR3 | |||
| Medium GPU | MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB | 1920x1080 | Very High |
| MSI R9 285 Gaming 2G | |||
| High GPU | ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB | 1920x1080 | Very High |
| MSI R9 290X Gaming 4G | |||
We get a slightly different turn around with Grand Theft Auto: the game can use multiple cores in the Athlon X4 845 to get a better frame rate with the R9 285 and R9 290X. However with NVIDIA cards it seems that the cores matter less to the performance, and with these cards the Pentium gets the better frame rates.
![Grand Theft Auto V on ASUS R7 240 DDR3 2GB ($70) [Under 60 FPS]](https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph10436/82713.png)
![Grand Theft Auto V on MSI R9 285 Gaming 2GB ($240) [Under 60 FPS]](https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph10436/82721.png)
![Grand Theft Auto V on MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB ($245) [Under 60 FPS]](https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph10436/82731.png)
![Grand Theft Auto V on MSI R9 290X Gaming LE 4GB ($380) [Under 60 FPS]](https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph10436/82741.png)
![Grand Theft Auto V on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB ($560) [Under 60 FPS]](https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph10436/82751.png)
When we look at the % of frames under 60 FPS, we see a similar story with the results that actually make a difference (R7 240, GTX 980).
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Chaser - Friday, July 15, 2016 - link
Yeah lets celebrate another year of 10 or so of AMD's paper launches of incredible CPUs. Bulldozer was awesome dude!Dr. Swag - Thursday, July 14, 2016 - link
Yes, the review is finally here! Yes!nandnandnand - Thursday, July 14, 2016 - link
A review for a chip nobody should buy, because it's much worse than Zen will be.Laxaa - Thursday, July 14, 2016 - link
I wish there was a AM3+ version of Zen for us stuck on that platform. I'm not that interessted in getting a new motherboard(perhaps I should have stuck with Intel instead)Peichen - Thursday, July 14, 2016 - link
You should have stuck with Intel. I buy into AMD's upgrade CPU, motherboard at different time scheme and is now stuck with a hot old CPU and a quite new motherboard with unreliable RAID controller. Junk the whole system means I toss out a 1.5 years old motherboard. Upgrade the CPU means not much performance increase and when the board's RAID fail I will have to buy AMD again so I won't throw out a new CPU.I wish I pay slightly more for an i3 or i5 and have a reliable media/light-gaming system for 6 years without all the hassle.
just4U - Thursday, July 14, 2016 - link
well.. then you'd have been stuck with a socket 1156 cpu and no board to go with it.. Intel's gone thru what.. 5 socket changes during the last 6-7 years.. There's something to be said for throwing a 2009 cpu into a 2016 board, and it's easy enough to (at some point..) change over to one of their newer processors in that lineup.It's also a hit/miss on any hardware. While some go the distance lasting a long time .. other's fail and it's not exclusive to either platform. I use processors from both camps. +/- for both. Just depends what your using your system for and what your expecting to get out of it.
pats1111 - Thursday, July 14, 2016 - link
I don't know why you're whining about a 1.5 year old mainboard. Typically, your NORMAL computer enthusiast is upgrading everything every 2 to 3 years. You have the same issues with Intel, platform changes occur every 1.5 years, and you're stuck with your "old, hot" processor. Wake up and embrace the technological advancement in front of you...Nagorak - Monday, July 18, 2016 - link
What advancement?artk2219 - Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - link
Ding ding ding, we have the real question. Sure skylake is faster than sandy bridge, but compared to the advancement that 4 years used to make in chip tech, its nothing. An average of 25% IPC increase, most of which you can get back by bumping the clocks 30%, which most sandy bridge chips would do easily. Granted with skylake chip is more efficient, with more features, and better a igp, and blah blah blah. But honestly, for most things you would never notice, and dont even get me started on how pointless DDR4 is currently. But even that atleast will mature with time, unfortunately I'm sure you'll need another new socket to really realize its benefits.http://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-r...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-r...
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