The AMD A8-7650K APU Review, Also New Testing Methodology
by Ian Cutress on May 12, 2015 10:00 AM ESTProfessional Performance: Linux
Built around several freely available benchmarks for Linux, Linux-Bench is a project spearheaded by Patrick at ServeTheHome to streamline about a dozen of these tests in a single neat package run via a set of three commands using an Ubuntu 11.04 LiveCD. These tests include fluid dynamics used by NASA, ray-tracing, OpenSSL, molecular modeling, and a scalable data structure server for web deployments. We run Linux-Bench and have chosen to report a select few of the tests that rely on CPU and DRAM speed.
C-Ray: link
C-Ray is a simple ray-tracing program that focuses almost exclusively on processor performance rather than DRAM access. The test in Linux-Bench renders a heavy complex scene offering a large scalable scenario.
Being a scaling benchmark, C-Ray prefers threads and seems more designed for Intel.
NAMD, Scalable Molecular Dynamics: link
Developed by the Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, NAMD is a set of parallel molecular dynamics codes for extreme parallelization up to and beyond 200,000 cores. The reference paper detailing NAMD has over 4000 citations, and our testing runs a small simulation where the calculation steps per unit time is the output vector.
NAMD is similar to our office benchmarks, puttin the bulk of the APUs between the i3-4130T and the i3-4330.
NPB, Fluid Dynamics: link
Aside from LINPACK, there are many other ways to benchmark supercomputers in terms of how effective they are for various types of mathematical processes. The NAS Parallel Benchmarks (NPB) are a set of small programs originally designed for NASA to test their supercomputers in terms of fluid dynamics simulations, useful for airflow reactions and design.
Despite the rated memory on the APUs being faster, NPB seems to require more IPC than DRAM speed.
Redis: link
Many of the online applications rely on key-value caches and data structure servers to operate. Redis is an open-source, scalable web technology with a b developer base, but also relies heavily on memory bandwidth as well as CPU performance.
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nikaldro - Wednesday, May 13, 2015 - link
And you still haven't got what he meantyannigr2 - Wednesday, May 13, 2015 - link
Tell me about it.nikaldro - Thursday, May 14, 2015 - link
Not sure if trolling,but anyway.They said "no comments" to express great disppointment.
As in " nothing to say about the poor performance. the numbers speak for themselves".
nikaldro - Thursday, May 14, 2015 - link
They said "no comments" as in "I have nothing to say about the poor performance of this APU. The number's speak for themselves."It had nothing to do with the actual number of comments.
nikaldro - Thursday, May 14, 2015 - link
*numbers, not number's. Damn autocorrectkrabboss - Saturday, May 23, 2015 - link
No, not really. They would have said "no comment" if that was the case, instead of "no comments."They're saying that AMD is in a sorry state these days because nobody is bothering to comment on a review of their new APU. They probably didn't realise the article had just been published, though.
redraider89 - Tuesday, May 19, 2015 - link
Stupid comments. That states Sejong's comments.YuLeven - Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - link
Only outplays Intel's offerings when it comes to the somewhat irrelevant onboard gaming market. Usually barely matches the Core i3 performance sucking thrice the power. Not really impressed by this piece of silicon.nightbringer57 - Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - link
May be irrelevant to you.May not be as irrelevant to many.
Where the performances of the core i3 may shine much brighter on paper, this may not be the case of the typical daily use of the typical daily computer for facebook, youtube, netflix, and some gaming on a tight budget.
takeship - Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - link
Could we get a benchmark or two from the broadwell nuc line included? Comparing a released today Amd against Intel's year+ old igp's is a little disappointing.