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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austinsguitar - Thursday, July 31, 2014 - link
just for shiz and giggles.... how about qualcomm start making desktop grade equipment. they need to! intel now has a total monopoly right now. cmon qualcomm come at me!jamescox - Thursday, July 31, 2014 - link
Enthusiast make cpu performance to be much more important than it actually is. For most everyday use (web surfing, web video, etc) there isn't going to be too much subjective difference between any modern cpus. For gaming, the cpu is also becoming mostly irrelevant. If you play at 1080p or greater with a dedicated gpu, you have to go down to a very low-end cpu before it will make much of any difference. This may change when DX12 comes out, since they are supposed to be making it more multi-threaded. This may favor cpus with 4 or more threads eventually, but one should not buy computer hardware based on "eventually". I wouldn't even bother overclocking a cpu for gaming these days. I would consider water cooled gpus and such for a high-end gaming machine though.AMD is presumable working on stacking memory chips in with their gpus and apus, but this will be a ways off and may be limited to mid-range or higher. Any added step in processing adds the possibility of failure of the final package, which increases cost. It seems like they could achieve near dedicated gpu performance with an integrated memory chip similar to iris pro, but perhaps this is too expensive. It also may cannibalize dedicated gpu market. Intel doesn't have that concern since they have no dedicated gpu market.
I have also wondered why they don't put a gpu-like memory interface on these apus and just solder everything onto the board. This would deliver dGPU like performance and would be great for mobile and SFF; it would be very similar to what is in the PS4. It would have low cpu performance due to power limitations, but not that many applications actually require more cpu performance these days.
AMD has more gpu power available on-die, so they need to add something like Intel's quick sync or other software/hardware features. The APUs should not lose in video encoding and such when they have more processing resources available. Is the OpenCL accelerated version of handbrake available yet? Several of the applications under cpu benchmarks can be gpu accelerated, and several of them that cannot be gpu accelerated are probably not really relevant. Any of these chips are fast enough for web browsing. I am still using an old core2duo laptop for web browsing, and it mostly works fine. The memory size (<4 GB) seems to be more of a limitation than the cpu speed.
MrVeedo - Thursday, July 31, 2014 - link
these chips serve their purpose in my opinion. amd does seem to get a lot of bashing, some deserved I will admit, but again it all depends on what you will be doing with your pc. if you shop around, you can pick up a nice board and cpu for relatively cheap. my most recent build is focused around the asrock fm2+ itx motherboard and a 7850k. using a fractal node 304 case, I have 6 hard drives and a 250gb msata ssd, along with a xonar stx sound card. my killawatt meter is in front of me and its reading a 44 watt draw while typing this. obviously the drives are asleep at the moment. the cpu is clocked at 4.1, gpu 960, mem speed at 2133. just to give an idea on power consumption.Cerb - Sunday, August 3, 2014 - link
With HP and Lenovo both using AMD APUs in mainstream notebooks, including HP in their business lines, clearly they are doing something right with the latest APUs, even outside of our bubble (like having good enough real-world performance per dollar and Watt).Cerb - Sunday, August 3, 2014 - link
I get CPU-limited in games a few years old, don't even have a >=1080p monitor, and AMD doesn't even produce a CPU as fast as mine. "Gaming," is quite varied in terms of performance. AAA shooters, and most games also on consoles, will not need much CPU, because even the latest consoles are running Atom-class CPUs (the prior gen would get laughed at by current Atoms). Games tuned for each platform, or just on PCs, tend to be much more CPU heavy, or at least capable of being so (usually resulting in what amounts to a different game).Cerb - Sunday, August 3, 2014 - link
Re more processing: they don't have more CPU processing resources than Intel's CPUs. If Handbrake intends to maintain quality over speed, FI, don't expect much gain from any GPU acceleration. GPU accel works well for some video processing, and depending on program used, can make a big difference in speed of editing videos, but not so much encoding. The image viewer is all I saw that definitely should be able to be accelerated by the GPU, though the 3D particle bench might be able to be. The rest are very much cases for CPUs, not at all GPUs. Not that there isn't a lot that can be accelerated, but of the chosen things to test, there's not much there that would be a good case for it.nofumble62 - Thursday, July 31, 2014 - link
AMD finally could produce a credible alternative for Intel Celeron.Cerb - Sunday, August 3, 2014 - link
That's a bit low. I'd take a Vishera or Kaveri over a Celeron any day, as a current daily user of a Haswell Celeron. If you were used to a 4MB/die or 6MB/die Core 2, or a Phenom II w/ L3, or better, a new brand Celeron would be a palpable step backwards, while most of AMD's APUs are quite capable, and only feel slow when faced with long-running CPU-limited tasks.wintermute000 - Friday, August 1, 2014 - link
a.) Lack of power test results is worrying.b.) Why are the gaming benchmarks done @ 1280x1024? Why not do 1368x768 and 1680x1050 and 1920x1080? i.e. the resolutions of most monitors
Aside from that, looks grim for AMD, absolutely no point to these APUs - even if the power usage is indeed efficient, we're looking @ desktop not laptop chips. The only scenario I can see them being useful is in tiny HTPC/mITX builds where you're not using a dGPU. Otherwise as many have commented, a pentium + dGPU will smoke kaveri at not much extra cost. AMD better pray that OpenCL takes off in a big big way.
Personally, I would love a ~50-80 dollar version with just a minimal IGP and ECC support for low power file server / virt platform.... intel cores are expensive :)
Anonymous Blowhard - Friday, August 1, 2014 - link
Um, you do know that the G3220 supports ECC RAM, right?