The AMD A8-7650K APU Review, Also New Testing Methodology
by Ian Cutress on May 12, 2015 10:00 AM ESTAMD A8-7650K Conclusion
I've mentioned the story before, but last summer I built a system for my cousin-in-law out of spare parts. His old system, ancient and slow even by the standards when they were made, was still used for basic online browsing and school work. He had no budget, and I cobbled together an MSI motherboard, some DDR3, a mid-range Trinity APU (A8-5500), an AMD GPU and an SSD for him. Understandably he can now play CS:Go, DOTA2, Watch_Dogs and the like at semi reasonable settings in dual graphics mode, as well as watch videos without the processor grinding to a halt. He even plays GTA V at normal settings at his native resolution of 1440x900. The total system budget, if purchased new, would have been around the $300 mark, or console territory. We reused the case and power supply, and he bought a new storage drive, but for his use case it was a night and day change. Building the equivalent system on an Intel backbone would have been a stretch or it would have ended up substituting gaming performance (my cousin-in-law's priority) for other features he didn't care for.
AMD will advertise that they don't just cater to this line of updates, and that the APU line offers more than just an upgrade for entry level gamers. In the majority of our discrete gaming scenarios, this is also true. While the APUs aren't necessarily ahead in terms of absolute performance, and in some situations they are behind, but with the right combination of hardware the APU route can offer equivalent performance at a cheaper rate. This is ultimately why APUs were recommended in our two last big gaming CPU overviews for single GPU gaming, and for integrated gaming. In our new test, it was really interesting to see where the lines are drawn with different CPU and GPU combinations, both integrated and discrete from $70 to $560. One take home test result is our Grand Theft Auto benchmark nearing 60 FPS at 720p Low settings.
![Grand Theft Auto V on Integrated Graphics [Under 60 FPS]](https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph9217/74212.png)
I confess that I do not game as much as I used to. Before AnandTech I played a couple of games in clan tournaments, and through thick and thin I did well enough on public servers for Battlefield 2142 and BC2, but clan matches were almost always duds. However, with the right hardware or the right software, I get one AAA title a year and usually do the full single player with a bit of multiplayer. That game for 2015 is Grand Theft Auto V, which I was able to benchmark for this review. On its own, an APU can handle 720p at low settings with a reasonable frame rate, meaning that when the drivers are in place, An APU in dual graphics mode running at 60 FPS with decent quality shouldn't be too hard to achieve. For 2015 and 2016, that percentage of frames over 60 FPS metric for GTA should be a holy grail for integrated graphics.
We've actually got a couple more APUs in to test in the form of the A10-7700K and the A6-7400K, which are slightly older APUs but fill in the Kaveri data points we are missing. Stay tuned for that capsule review. Rumor also has it that there will be updates to the Kaveri line soon, although we haven’t had any official details as of yet.
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r3loaded - Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - link
Now, more than ever, AMD needs Zen. They still have nothing out on the market that can conclusively beat my four year old 2500K.close - Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - link
Even Intel barely has something that can conclusively beat your four year old 2500K :). Progress isn't what it used to be.Frenetic Pony - Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - link
That's because Intel's efforts are solely focused on laptops/mobile. They dominate the high end, and would only compete with themselves. This at least leaves AMD an opening next year though, as cramming battery life into the Core series has stalled Intel's development of performance per mm^2 other than process shrink.mapesdhs - Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - link
Especially once oc'd of course. What clock are you using?I'm building a 2500K system for a friend atm, easily the best value on a very limited budget.
r3loaded - Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - link
4.5Ghz for full time use on air in my own system. But yeah, even at stock speeds it's still not a contest for the Intel chip.der - Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - link
Awesome testing Methology guys, and definitely a great review.azazel1024 - Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - link
Ian, I'll grant you it isn't abysmal performance and I doubt most casual users would notice a difference. It doesn't seem honest to say that, "While the APUs aren't necessarily ahead in terms of absolute performance, and in some situations they are behind, but with the right combination of hardware the APU route can offer equivalent performance at a cheaper rate"Uhhhh, unless I misread the benchmarks, the AMD processors are at least a little behind to a lot behind vaguely similarly priced Intel processors in the vast majority of CPU benchmarks. That doesn't say "in some" to me, that to me says in most are almost all.
The only place I see them is either extreme budget or your size constrictions prevent you from getting even a cheap discrete graphics card. Cost and performance wise, you'd probably be better off with something like a GTX750 or 750ti combined with an Intel Celeron or Pentium Haswell processor.
I really want Zen to be a turn around.
A quick Amazon check shows that an Intel Haswell Pentium, plus H97 board, plus 2x2GB of DDR3-1600 and a GTX750 would run you in the region of $250. Granted that doesn't include case ($30 for low end), PSU ($40 for a good low power one) or storage ($90 for a 120GB SSD or $50-60 for a 2TB HDD), but it sounds like it was well within that $300 budget considering the bits that could have/were reused...
Deffinitely to each his own, I just think especially once you start getting in to "dual graphics" (even low end), you are almost certainly better if you are talking two discrete cards, or just getting a slightly faster discrete card than relying on the iGPU+dGPU to drive things as well as a somewhat better processor, that might not be any more expensive (or cheaper, Haswell Pentium/Celeron).
galta - Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - link
No matter what people say, AMD is driving itself into an ever tighter corner, be it on the CPU or GPU realms.One really has a hard time trying to justify choosing them over Intel/nVidia, but for some very specific – and sometimes bizarre - circumstances (eg.: because the only thing I do is compact files on WinRar, I end up finding AMD FX and its 8 cores the best cost/benefit ratio!)
A8-7650K is no different.
It is said that things are like that. As a consumer with no intrinsic brand preferences, I would like to see real competition.
anubis44 - Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - link
Try compressing those files using 7Zip, and you'll see a dramatic improvement on the FX-8350. 7Zip is highly optimized for multi-threading, whereas WinRAR is single-threaded.galta - Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - link
No, it's not: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=22533...Even if it were, that's not the point.
How many of us, inclunding the bizarre ones, do only compacting on their PCs?