The Kaveri Refresh 'Godavari' Review: Testing AMD's A10-7870K
by Ian Cutress on June 1, 2015 11:59 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.
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.
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.
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 strong developer base, but also relies heavily on memory bandwidth as well as CPU performance.
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nikaldro - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Both the 860k and the 870k are steamroller CPUs.They're pretty much the same.
Cryio - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Yep.Either 750 Ti and a 860K OR
260X and an i3.
Same performance, same cost.
nikaldro - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
The 260X (and radeon GPUs in general) don't do well with dual cores, as proven by digital foundry. It looks like their DX11 drivers are having problems.You could go i5 + 260X for just a bit more than i3 + 750ti, and have way better performance.
msroadkill612 - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
Would such cpu only processors be any faster than the equivalent APU?ie. - are there any performance or other downsides to having the integrated gpu?
as in, if you had an apu anyway, are there advantages for a dgpu rig to swap processors?
rtho782 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
But this is a dual core. A dual core with CMT, which even AMD admits has failed and is dumping for Zen.It can only run two floating point threads.
MrMilli - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
There are no separate integer and floating point threads. AMD's 870K can run four threads, end of story. It has four 128-bit FMAC's, so I don't see your point.nikaldro - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
The point is, the 860k has 4 ALUs but only 2 FPUs.Jimster480 - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
It has 4 128-bit FMAC's (FPU's) which can combine to make 2 256b FPU's.It can process 4 normal floating point threads or 2 AVX threads.
Lolimaster - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Try playing crysis 3 or any game with actually suffer with a 2 core cpu (worse without ht). Crysis 3 on pentium are a nice stop motion experience, 4 secs of game then half a second of stutter.nikaldro - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
Games like that are a lag fest on an 860k too, wich is pretty much the same as this APU's CPU.If you wanna play that kind of games, you don't even think about a 400$ budget build.