The Kaveri Refresh 'Godavari' Review: Testing AMD's A10-7870K
by Ian Cutress on June 1, 2015 11:59 AM ESTOffice Performance
The dynamics of CPU Turbo modes, both Intel and AMD, can cause concern during environments with a variable threaded workload. There is also an added issue of the motherboard remaining consistent, depending on how the motherboard manufacturer wants to add in their own boosting technologies over the ones that Intel would prefer they used. In order to remain consistent, we implement an OS-level unique high performance mode on all the CPUs we test which should override any motherboard manufacturer performance mode.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Dolphin Benchmark: link
Many emulators are often bound by single thread CPU performance, and general reports tended to suggest that Haswell provided a significant boost to emulator performance. This benchmark runs a Wii program that raytraces a complex 3D scene inside the Dolphin Wii emulator. Performance on this benchmark is a good proxy of the speed of Dolphin CPU emulation, which is an intensive single core task using most aspects of a CPU. Results are given in minutes, where the Wii itself scores 17.53 minutes.
WinRAR 5.0.1: link
Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2014. We compress a set of 2867 files across 320 folders totaling 1.52 GB in size – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30 second 720p videos.
3D Particle Movement
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz and IPC wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores.
FastStone Image Viewer 4.9
FastStone is the program I use to perform quick or bulk actions on images, such as resizing, adjusting for color and cropping. In our test we take a series of 170 images in various sizes and formats and convert them all into 640x480 .gif files, maintaining the aspect ratio. FastStone does not use multithreading for this test, and results are given in seconds.
Web Benchmarks
On the lower end processors, general usability is a big factor of experience, especially as we move into the HTML5 era of web browsing. For our web benchmarks, we take four well known tests with Chrome 35 as a consistent browser.
Sunspider 1.0.2
Mozilla Kraken 1.1
WebXPRT
Google Octane v2
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nathanddrews - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
I'm not sure it's a good idea for anyone to buy a dual-core CPU nowadays. You're better off spending the extra $20-40 on an i3. The boost to minimum frame rates and basically everything else you do outside of gaming seems well worth it IMO. Generally speaking, that is. Without knowing everything his brother needs/wants to do, it's hard to say.nikaldro - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
20-40$An i3 costs TWICE as much as a pentium.
i3s offer horrible value, considering that i5s go for as low as 160$.
nathanddrews - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Twice the cost depends on the pricing on the given day/week. As of TODAY, Microcenter charges $50 ($70 Amazon/Newegg) for the G3258 - arguably the only Pentium worth buying. However, you'd have to buy a more expensive motherboard to get the OC option you need. They charge $100 for the i3-4370, $160 i5-4590, and $200 for the i5-4690K. So as of TODAY, it's twice the price for the CPU alone, but $50 is a small price to pay for the added power. The second you start doing anything multithreaded, the Pentium falls short. Likewise, the minimum framerates on that G3258 are up to 50% lower than an i3. A cheaper Pentium would be even worse. The only way it makes sense is if you only work/play in a single-threaded world.nikaldro - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
You don't need an expensive mobo at all.You can easily take the G3258 to 4.2Ghz on an H81M-P33 with the stock cooler.
If you even only consider buying the pentium, that means you are on a tight budget. 50$ on a tight budget can be as much as 15% of the whole budget.
Of course, if you even have "just" a 600$ budget, then you can very well fit an i5 and a good GPU in there, but it seems to me that this is not the case.
artk2219 - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
If you really wanted to bring Microcenter into this they have 100 dollar FX 6300 bundles that come with a cheap board, or for 10 bucks more you can move up to a 970 chipset based board. For 120 you can get an FX 8320E with a 970 chipset based board or pay 170 to move up to a 990FX based Gigabyte board. For 110 you can get an a10 7850K with a cheap board or pay 135 to move up to an A88 based board. Basically all around the I3, intro I5, and even pentium dual core price range there are great AMD bundles that you can get from Microcenter. The only problem is they aren't everywhere so it can be difficult to get those deals. They also do have intel bundles like you said, but frankly they kind of suck in comparison.http://www.microcenter.com/site/products/amd_bundl...
http://www.microcenter.com/site/brands/intel-proce...
tabascosauz - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Horrible value? Son, you might want to check your facts.The 4M L3 i3s offer little value because one can buy an i5. It's the 3M i3s that make the G3258 look like, well, not a very appealing option.
Overclocking? Sure, it's locked, but tell me, exactly how many more frames is that 4.5GHz Pentium going to net you compared to an i3-4130? About 5 fps? I thought so. On the other hand, what is going to happen to the G3258 in the games are completely unoptimized for it? While the i3-4130 is merrily playing whatever game is at hand, the G3258 is struggling with stuttering, lag, and other issues, if it even successfully runs at all.
nikaldro - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Son?? Who the hell are you?!?For the same price, an fx6300 STOMPS an i3 in most cases.
The i3 is a bit better than the pentium of course, but the doubled price makes it a bad choice for budget builds, and if budget isn't a major concern, just 60$ more grant you an i5, wich totally CRUSHES an i3.
Lolimaster - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
The cheapo gaming way with a dedicated gpu is the Athlon 870K (quad core).AS118 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
I've got to agree with that. The 860K's not bad either.Lolimaster - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Steamroller offers better performance than piledriver on modern games. It also destroys piledriver in emulation (dolphin for example).