AMD Kaveri Review: A8-7600 and A10-7850K Tested
by Ian Cutress & Rahul Garg on January 14, 2014 8:00 AM ESTFinal Words
As with all previous AMD APU launches, we're going to have to break this one down into three parts: CPU, the promise of HSA and GPU.
In a vacuum where all that's available are other AMD parts, Kaveri and its Steamroller cores actually look pretty good. At identical frequencies there's a healthy increase in IPC, and AMD has worked very hard to move its Bulldozer family down to a substantially lower TDP. While Trinity/Richland were happy shipping at 100W, Kaveri is clearly optimized for a much more modern TDP. Performance gains at lower TDPs (45/65W) are significant. In nearly all of our GPU tests, a 45W Kaveri ends up delivering very similar gaming performance to a 100W Richland. The mainstream desktop market has clearly moved to smaller form factors and it's very important that AMD move there as well. Kaveri does just that.
In the broader sense however, Kaveri doesn't really change the CPU story for AMD. Steamroller comes with a good increase in IPC, but without a corresponding increase in frequency AMD fails to move the single threaded CPU performance needle. To make matters worse, Intel's dual-core Haswell parts are priced very aggressively and actually match Kaveri's CPU clocks. With a substantial advantage in IPC and shipping at similar frequencies, a dual-core Core i3 Haswell will deliver much better CPU performance than even the fastest Kaveri at a lower price.
The reality is quite clear by now: AMD isn't going to solve its CPU performance issues with anything from the Bulldozer family. What we need is a replacement architecture, one that I suspect we'll get after Excavator concludes the line in 2015.
In the past AMD has argued that for the majority of users, the CPU performance it delivers today is good enough. While true, it's a dangerous argument to make (one that eventually ends up with you recommending an iPad or Nexus 7). I have to applaud AMD's PR this time around as no one tried to make the argument that CPU performance was somehow irrelevant. Although we tend to keep PR critique off of AnandTech, the fact of the matter is that for every previous APU launch AMD tried its best to convince the press that the problem wasn't with its CPU performance but rather with how we benchmark. With Kaveri, the arguments more or less stopped. AMD has accepted its CPU performance is what it is and seems content to ride this one out. It's a tough position to be in, but it's really the only course of action until Bulldozer goes away.
It's a shame that the CPU story is what it is, because Kaveri finally delivers on the promise of the ATI acquisition from 2006. AMD has finally put forth a truly integrated APU/SoC, treating both CPU and GPU as first class citizens and allowing developers to harness both processors, cooperatively, to work on solving difficult problems and enabling new experiences. In tests where both the CPU and GPU are used, Kaveri looks great as this is exactly the promise of HSA. The clock starts now. It'll still be a matter of years before we see widespread adoption of heterogeneous programming and software, but we finally have the necessary hardware and priced at below $200.
Until then, outside of specific applications and GPU compute workloads, the killer app for Kaveri remains gaming. Here the story really isn't very different than it was with Trinity and Richland. With Haswell Intel went soft on (socketed) desktop graphics, and Kaveri continues to prey on that weakness. If you are building an entry level desktop PC where gaming is a focus, there really isn't a better option. I do wonder how AMD will address memory bandwidth requirements going forward. A dual-channel DDR3 memory interface works surprisingly well for Kaveri. We still see 10 - 30% GPU performance increases over Richland despite not having any increase in memory bandwidth. It's clear that AMD will have to look at something more exotic going forward though.
For casual gaming, AMD is hitting the nail square on the head in its quest for 1080p gaming at 30 frames per second, albeit generally at lower quality settings. There are still a few titles that are starting to stretch the legs of a decent APU (Company of Heroes is practically brutal), but it all comes down to perspective. Let me introduce you to my Granddad. He’s an ex-aerospace engineer, and likes fiddling with stuff. He got onboard the ‘build-your-own’ PC train in about 2002 and stopped there – show him a processor more than a Pentium 4 and he’ll shrug it off as something new-fangled. My grandfather has one amazing geeky quality that shines through though – he has played and completed every Tomb Raider game on the PC he can get his hands on.
It all came to a head this holiday season when he was playing the latest Tomb Raider game. He was running the game on a Pentium D with an NVIDIA 7200GT graphics card. His reactions are not the sharpest, and he did not seem to mind running at sub-5 FPS at a 640x480 resolution. I can imagine many of our readers recoiling at the thought of playing a modern game at 480p with 5 FPS. In the true spirit of the season, I sent him a HD 6750, an identical model to the one in the review today. Despite some issues he had finding drivers (his Google-fu needs a refresher), he loves his new card and can now play reasonably well at 1280x1024 on his old monitor.
The point I am making with this heart-warming/wrenching family story is that the Kaveri APU is probably the ideal fit for what he needs. Strap him up with an A8-7600 and away he goes. It will be faster than anything he has used before, it will play his games as well as that new HD 6750, and when my grandmother wants to surf the web or edit some older images, she will not have to wait around for them to happen. It should all come in with a budget they would like as well.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
380 Comments
View All Comments
eanazag - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
In reference to the no FX versions, I don't think that will change. I think we are stuck with it indefinitely. From the AMD server roadmap and info in this article related to process, I believe that the Warsaw procs will be a die shrink to 12/16 because the GF 28nm process doesn't help clocks. The current clocks on the 12/16 procs already suck so they might stay the same or better because of the TDP reduction at that core count, but it doesn't benefit in the 8 core or less pile driver series. Since AMD has needed to drive CPU clock way higher to compensate for a lack of IPC and the 28 nm process hurts clocks, I am expecting to not see anything for FX at all. Only thing that could change that is if a process at other than GF would make a good fit for a die shrink. I still doubt they will be doing any more changes to the FX series at the high end.So to me, this might force me to consider only Intel for my next build because I am still running discrete GPUs in desktop and I want at least 8 core (AMD equivalent in Intel) performance CPUs in my main system. I will likely go with a #2 Haswell chip. I am not crazy about paying $300 for a CPU, but $200-300 is okay.
I would not be surprised to see an FX system with 2P like the original FX. The server roadmap is showing that. This would essentially be two Kaveri's and maybe crossfire between the two procs. That sounds slightly interesting if I could ratchet up the TDP for the CPU. It does sound like a Bitcoin beast.
britjh22 - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
I think there are some interesting points to be made about Kaveri, but I think the benchmarks really fall short of pointing to some possibly interesting data. Some of the things I got from this:1. The 7850k is too expensive for the performance it currently offers (no proliferation of HSA), and the people comparing it to cheaper CPU/dGPU are correct. However to say Kaveri fails based on that particular price comparison is a failure to see what else is here, and the article does point that out somewhat.
2. The 45W part does seem to be the best spot at the moment for price to performance, possibly indicating that more iGPU resources don't give up much benefit without onboard cache like crystalwell/Iris Pro. However, putting the 4770R in amongst the benches is no super useful due to the price and lack of availability, not to mention it not being socketed.
3. The gaming benchmarks may be the standard for AT, but they really don't do an effective job to either prove or disprove AMD's claims for gaming performance. Plenty of people will (and have looking at the comments) say they have failed at 1080p gaming scores based on 1080p extreme settings. Even some casual experimentation to see what is actually achievable at 1080p would be helpful and informative.
4. I think the main target for these systems isn't really being addressed by the review, which may be difficult to do in a score/objective way, but I think it would be useful. I think of systems like this, and more based off the 65W/45W parts as great mainstream parts. For that price ($100-130ish) you would be looking at an i3 with iGP, or a lower feature pentium part with a low end dGPU. I think at this level you get a lot more from your money with AMD. You have a system which one aspect will not become inadequate before the other (CPU vs GPU), how many relatives do we know where they have an older computer with enough CPU grunt, but not enough GPU grunt. I've seen quite a few where the Intel integrated was just good enough at the time of launch, but a few years down the road would need a dGPU or more major system upgrade. A system with the A8-7600 would be well rounded for a long time, and down the road could add a mid grade dGPU for good gaming performance. I believe it was an article on here that recently showed even just an A8 was quite sufficient for high detail 1080p when paired with a mid to high range card.
5. As was referenced another review and in the comments, a large chunk of steam users are currently being served by iGPU's which are worse then this. These are the people who play MMO's, free to play games, source games, gMod games, DOTA2/LoL, indie games, and things like Hearthstone. For them, and most users that these should be aimed at, the A10-7850K (at current pricing) is not a winner, and they would probably be better (value) or equally (performance) served by the A8-7600. This is a problem with review sites, including AT, which tend to really look at the high end of the market. This is because the readership (myself included) is interested for personal decision making, and the manufacturer's provide these products as, performance wise, they are the most flattering. However, I think some of the most interesting and prolific advances are happening in the middle market. The review does a good job of pointing that out with the performance charts at 45W, however I think some exploration into what was mentioned in point #3 would really help to flesh this out. Anand's evaluation for CPU advances slowing down in his Mac Pro is a great example of this, and really points out how HSA could be a major advancement. I upgraded from a Q6600 to a 3570K, and don't see any reasons coming up to make a change any time soon, CPU's have really become somewhat stagnant at the high end of performance. Hopefully AMD's gains at the 45W level can pan out into some great APU's in laptops for AMD, for all the users for games like the above mentioned.
fteoath64 - Sunday, January 19, 2014 - link
As consumers, our problem with the prices inching upwards in the mid-range is that Intel is not supplying enough models of the i3 range within the price point of AMD APU (mid to highest models). This means the prices are well segmented in the market such that they will not change giving excuse for slight increases as we have seen with Richland parts. It seems like lack of competition in the segment ranges indicate a cartel like behaviour in the x86 market.AMD is providing the best deal in a per transistor basis while consumers expects their cpu performance to ran on par with Intel. That is not going to happen as Intel's gpu inprovement inches closer to AMD. With HSA, the tables have turned for AMD and Intel with Nvidia certain will have to respond some time in the future. This is come when the software changes for HSA makes a significant improvement in overall performance for AMD APUs. We shall see but I am hopeful.
woogitboogity - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
Ah AMD... to think that in the day of thunderbird they were once the under-appreciated underdog where the performance was. The rebel against the P4 and it's unbelievably impractical pipeline architecture.Bottom line is Intel still needs them as anti-trust suit insurance... with this SoC finally getting off the ground is anyone else wondering whether Intel was less aggressive with their own SoC stuff as a "AMD doggy/gimp treat"? Still nice to able to recommend a processor without worrying about the onboard graphics when they are on chip.
Hrel - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
"do any AnandTech readers have an interest in an even higher end APU with substantially more graphics horsepower? Memory bandwidth obviously becomes an issue, but the real question is how valuable an Xbox One/PS4-like APU would be to the community."I think as a low end Steam Box that'd be GREAT! I'm not sure the approach Valve is looking to take with steam boxes, but if there's no "build your own" option then it doesn't make sense to sell it to us. Makes a lot more sense for them to do that and just sell the entire "console" directly to consumers. Or, through a reseller, but then I become concerned with additional markup from middlemen.
tanishalfelven - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
You can install steamos on whatever computer you want... even one you built your self or one you already own. I'd personally think a pc based on something like this processor would be significantly less expensive (i can imagine 300 bucks) and maybe even faster. And more importantly with things like humble bundle it'd be much much cheaper in the games department...tanishalfelven - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
i am wrong on faster than ps4 however, point standsJBVertexx - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
As always, very good writeup, although I must confess that it took me a few attempts to get thru the HSA feel dive! Still, it was a much needed education, so I appreciate that.I have had to digest this, as I was initially really dissappointed at the lack of progress on the CPU front, but after reading through all the writeups I could find, I thinks the real story here is about the A8-7600 and opening up new markets for advanced PC based gaming.
If you think about it, that is where the incentive is for game developers to develop for Mantle. Providing the capability for someone who already has or would purchase an advanced discrete GPU to play with equal performance on an APU provides zero economic incentive for game developers.
However, if AMD can successfully open up as advanced gaming to the mass, low cost PC market, even if that performance is substandard by "enthudiast" standards, then that does provide huge economic incentive for developers, because the cost of entry to play your game has just gone down significantly, potentially opening up a vast new customer base.
With Steam really picking up "steam", with the consoles on PC tech, and with the innovative thinking going on at AMD, I have come around to thinking this is all really good stuff for PC gaming. And it's really the only path to adoption that AMD can take. I for one am hoping they're successful.
captianpicard - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
I doubt Kaveri was ever intended for us, the enthusiast community. The people whom Kaveri was intended for are not the type that would read a dozen CPU/GPU reviews and then log on to newegg to price out an optimal FPS/$ rig. Instead, they would be more inclined to buy reasonably priced prebuilt PCs with the hope that they'd be able to do some light gaming in addition to the primary tasks of web browsing, checking email, watching videos on youtube/netflix, running office, etc.Nothing really up till now has actually fulfilled that niche, and done it well, IMO. Lots of machines from dell, HP, etc. have vast CPU power but horrendous GPU performance. Kaveri offers a balanced solution at an affordable price, in a small footprint. So you could put it into a laptop or a smart tv or all in one pc and be able to get decent gaming performance. Relatively speaking, of course.
izmanq - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
why put i7 4770 with discrete HD 6750 in the integrated GPU performance charts ? :|