AMD A10-7800 Review: Testing the A10 65W Kaveri
by Ian Cutress on July 31, 2014 8:00 AM ESTConclusions
When AMD launched their 95W Kaveri APUs and we had the opportunity to test the top A10 model, it offered some of the best integrated graphics performance for a desktop we had seen. The fact that the die is partitioned such that more than 50% of it is for the graphics, along with expanding HSA and OpenCL support, means that for applications that can be computationally enhanced by integrated graphics, AMD has the edge for the single chip solution.
In our testing, because the A10-7800 shares the same processor graphics configuration and speed as the A10-7850K, results were fairly similar despite a +100 MHz advantage to the A10-7850K. This means that, at stock, AMD is offering a similar CPU for $18 less.
If we remove the price from the equation, the biggest contender for the title of ‘best processor graphics’ is Intel’s Iris Pro. The upside of AMD’s Kaveri at the minute is not only the price, but also the form factor – Iris Pro is only available as a soldered on (BGA) CPU at this point in time whereas Kaveri is in both soldered and socketed form. Also, Iris Pro relies on an extra L4 cache, which adds size to the CPU package as well as cost and power consumption. News from Intel might change that with Broadwell, as back in May an announcement regarding a socketed, overclockable Iris Pro CPU would be coming to market. We have not the slightest clue when AMD will have this competition, but it looks good for AMD given that recent reports suggest that Broadwell for the desktop may be delayed beyond the expected launch of 14nm Core-M in Q1 2015.
In that respect, it may give AMD some time to prepare for their new 64-bit x86 architecture, or give AMD another chance to leap forward in with their Carrizo APUs (still based on modules and GCN) if they are launched in 2015.
Back to the A10-7800 reviewed today, and as it stands it is the most cost effective processor graphics solution available. Here is all the speed of the A10-7850K for $18 cheaper, and more performance than the A8-7600. The 45W configurable TDP makes it even more enticing as a lower power consumption part.
The only issue users might come across is the speed and feel when running single threaded tasks that do not utilise OpenCL or HSA – our web benchmarks put the AMD APUs behind many of our 55W Intel samples for the last couple of generations. But for anything that uses OpenCL as an accelerant, such as the software on which PCMark8 is based or anything compute, AMD comes out on top.
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jaydee - Thursday, July 31, 2014 - link
I guess I wouldn't call something "mainstream" just because some vendors have leftover stock at non-competitive prices, but I see we have differing definitions of the word. I also wouldn't consider SCSI HDs to be "mainstream" but Newegg does a considerable stock of those as well.Don't confuse number of choices with actual popularity.
Iketh - Thursday, July 31, 2014 - link
LOL SCSI LOLOLOLOLODribble - Thursday, July 31, 2014 - link
Not a budget desktop - you'd be much better of with a cheap intel cpu and a discrete gpu. Then you got a great upgrade path to an i5, and better gpu in the future. As for extra cost of gpu, well you can get a second hand one off ebay cheap, or probably scrounge your game loving friends old one and that would still be faster then the A10.Only place these really make sense is a budget laptop, where you can't upgrade anything so need the best balanced solution upfront, but these aren't laptop chips.
Gadgety - Thursday, July 31, 2014 - link
I find that in the games benchmarked the A8-7600 isn't far behind (-2.3%; -5.8%, -8.8% and at most 11%), and sometimes even ahead (+3%) of the A10-7800, at only 2/3 of the cost. Seems to be more of a budget gaming winner, at least in terms of the price/performance ratio.joe0185 - Thursday, July 31, 2014 - link
Ian great review. One thing Id like to see on CPU reviews the inclusion of a single highend CPU and a minimum baseline CPU. In this review all the hardware was more or less in the same range so it is hard to get perspective relative to the ultra high end and the very low end. Keep it up man!Anonymous Blowhard - Thursday, July 31, 2014 - link
So can we ACTUALLY buy these low-power APUs now, or is this another paper-launch/vapor-launch?morganf - Thursday, July 31, 2014 - link
Apparently not. At least, I do not see them on newegg at the moment.Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, July 31, 2014 - link
Is there seriously no power consumption tests? wow. And there's no tests to compare kaveri vs a G3258 + a modest discrete card such as a HD7750. wow why even bother with this review, it tells us nothing. Luckily another side was a bit more competent and their data shows a 34 watt increase at the wall vs an 54W TDP i3. Shocking. All that extra power for less performance. I really want to see the data showing a G3258 + discrete outperforming kaveri in Perf/watt. Imagine the horror of spending billions of dollars to purchase a GPU company and spending and years to integrate its IP only to still be worse than your own discrete gpu combined with your competitor's CPU!takeship - Thursday, July 31, 2014 - link
From other reviews on the web, it looks like the 7800 is good for ~85w under load. Oops. No wonder performance is so close to the 7850k. Of course, maybe we'll get some anandtech numbers using a 1200w "noisy" psu eventually.silverblue - Saturday, August 2, 2014 - link
It looks as if there needs to be a simple investigation into the clock speed "sweet spot" for Kaveri. There's been the odd article on SA that shows that the top mobile APU usually performs at 2/3 the speed of the top desktop part albeit for about a third of the TDP, so it's worth proving.I did see an article earlier that hinted that the 7800 used a little less power under load at its 65W setting than the earlier 7600... http://hothardware.com/Reviews/AMD-Kaveri-Update-A...
...however, it disagrees with this article... http://www.techspot.com/review/856-amd-a10-7800-ka...
It's almost the same here (7600 wins), but look at the improvement over the previous generations... http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/amd-a10-7800-...