AMD Kaveri Review: A8-7600 and A10-7850K Tested
by Ian Cutress & Rahul Garg on January 14, 2014 8:00 AM ESTCPU Performance: Continued
Xilisoft Video Converter 7 - link
The XVC test I normally do is updated to the full version of the software, and this time a different test as well. Here we take two different videos: a double UHD (3840x4320) clip of 10 minutes and a 640x266 DVD rip of a 2h20 film and convert both to iPod suitable formats. The reasoning here is simple – when frames are small enough to fit into memory, the algorithm has more chance to apply work between threads and process the video quicker. Results shown are in seconds and time taken to encode. XVC also offers acceleration via CUDA and AMD APP, so if these are available on the CPU we offer results with and without.
With large frame data, the IGP on Kaveri does not particularly help much.
For smaller frames however, there is an advantage to enabling the AMD APP function.
HandBrake v0.9.9 - link
For HandBrake we do the same files as XVC but convert them into the default format Handbrake offers upon loading the software. Results shown are in Frames Per Second.
Handbrake loves cores, threads and MHz
Adobe After Effects 6
Published by Adobe, After Effects is a digital motion graphics, visual effects and compositing software package used in the post-production process of filmmaking and television production. For our benchmark we downloaded a common scene in use on the AE forums for benchmarks and placed it under our own circumstances for a repeatable benchmark. We generate 152 frames of the scene and present the time to do so based purely on CPU calculations.
7-Zip 9.2 - link
As an open source compression tool, 7-Zip is a popular tool for making sets of files easier to handle and transfer. The software offers up its own benchmark, to which we report the result.
PovRay 3.7 - link
PovRay historically loves threads, MHz and IPC. The standard benchmark from PovRay is what we use to test here.
TrueCrypt 7.1a - link
TrueCrypt is an off the shelf open source encoding tool for files and folders. For our test we run the benchmark mode using a 1GB buffer and take the mean result from AES encryption.
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Nagorak - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
The fact is these "APUs" are really pretty worthless. If you're going to be seriously gaming then you want to get a discrete graphics card, even a low end one. The problem with AMD's strategy here is that the integrated GPU performance is still so anemic that it's only useful for people who want a budget PC and who don't actually play games. Therefore the "benefits" of having both CPU and GPU on one core are highly questionable.ImSpartacus - Thursday, January 16, 2014 - link
That could be solved if we had a much larger GPU on the APU, right?I want to see at least 12 CUs on the top-end APU, preferably more like 16-20 CUs.
lmcd - Monday, January 20, 2014 - link
Did you miss the whole conversation about memory bandwidth?nader_21007 - Saturday, January 18, 2014 - link
below the charts showing the games performanc, there are two tabs, one for showing avarage frame rate and the other, if you just click on it will show you the suddeframe rates for the apus compared. Minimum frame rate of the iris pro is the lowest and worst among all Apu's compared. It means sudden hangings all over the game. Kaveri and other amd apu's have no such weaknesses because of high performing IGP.Now tell me which is Outperformed?themeinme75 - Saturday, January 18, 2014 - link
the good news is APU-7850/SOC-5200pro just caught up to 4850..cryptik - Monday, March 30, 2015 - link
The R7 consistently beats the Iris Pro. You must have read a different article than everyone else.frozentundra123456 - Tuesday, January 14, 2014 - link
Good review, except he doesn't really address the elephant in the room that even for gaming, a low end cpu like the athlon X4 with a HD7750 will be considerably faster than any APU. So in this regard, I disagree with the conclusions that for low end gaming kaveri is the best solution. It is disappointing actually, that he did not use a HD7750 GDDR5 as the discrete gpu comparison, because that would have given a more direct comparison of how the bandwidth restrictions are affecting Kaveri.I will say though that the low TDP parts seem to get a nice improvement in performance. They actually seem more attractive that the high end, since there is little gaming improvement in the top end vs Richland.
thevoiceofreason - Tuesday, January 14, 2014 - link
Or something like Pentium G2120 (90$ newegg) and HD7770 (90$ ASUS or MSI on newegg after rebate). The difference between such a setup and a top of the line kaveri chip is not even funny. Kind of tragic, really.andrewaggb - Tuesday, January 14, 2014 - link
I agree. I am extremely dissappointed. Cpu performance and GPU performance barely changed from last year's model. HSA is definitely the future, and Mantle may deliver a healthy fps improvement, but I feel like this product has almost no value at launch. It's all depending on future software.I was actually considering a kaveri for a kids pc... but I'm definitely way better off getting an intel cpu and amd gpu.
andrewaggb - Tuesday, January 14, 2014 - link
I guess they did make big gains on TDP. So it's sorta their version of a haswell refresh. But haswell had a larger improvement in both cpu and gpu performance relative to their previous chip.