The AMD A8-7670K APU Review: Aiming for Rocket League
by Ian Cutress on November 18, 2015 8:00 AM ESTOffice Performance
The dynamics of CPU Turbo modes, both Intel and AMD, can cause concern in environments with variably-threaded workloads. 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 ray traces 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.
All AMD CPUs performed similarly here.
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 2,867 files across 320 folders totaling 1.52GB – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30-second 720p videos.
WinRAR is all about threads and DRAM speed, so the CPUs that can support higher DRAM frequencies get a boost.
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 win in the single-thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads, and loves more cores.
Again, all AMD CPUs seem to perform similarly in 3DPM for single-thread mode, indicating that something more fundamental about the design is a bottleneck.
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.
Single-thread frequency and IPC win here.
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.
Mozilla Kraken 1.1
WebXPRT
Google Octane v2
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tipoo - Wednesday, November 18, 2015 - link
The FPS by percentile graph is nice, is that new to AT?Ian Cutress - Wednesday, November 18, 2015 - link
Ryan does some percentile data in GPU reviews, and we did some stuff around the CFX/SLI sync issues. But we did the FPS by percentile graphs a bit in the Fable Legends testing. Some benchmarks provide the per-frame data by default, others do not (depends on how you're polling), and then there's some post-processing which takes longer than you think. It's a sort of graph that only 3/4 lines can be on it without going overboard.tipoo - Wednesday, November 18, 2015 - link
Cool. I like it.tipoo - Wednesday, November 18, 2015 - link
For GTA V, it looks like dual graphics on the same settings gives lower framerates than the 240 alone? Is that right? Other than that you see a pretty nice boost with it.jaydee - Wednesday, November 18, 2015 - link
I noticed that too and was wonderingyannigr2 - Wednesday, November 18, 2015 - link
APUs are excellent solutions for systems without graphics. If you are going to add a graphics card, then excluding dual graphics, APUs seem much less attractive. A8 7600 is in my opinion the best cheap APU you can get for a system without a discrete graphics card, 78X0K are an option ONLY when you are definitely never going to add a graphics card and you want the best possible integrated GPU, without having to rob a bank for an Iris GPU.But even when AMD's APUs are the best option, people will still rush to make people avoid them. That's AMD's doing and we can only blame them. Recently someone asked for a cheap system to play an old FPS game. Videos on youtube where showing that an A8 7600 could play the game. That didn't stopped people rushing in the thread to insist that, that game wasn't going to be fun with under 140 fps. Yes, 140 fps. They didn't considered gaming peripherals, or a gaming monitor important, only 140 fps. Anything to "save" someone from an AMD APU and send him to Intel. Even if this means convincing someone paying at least $80-$100 that he may not have. At the same time the same persons blame ONLY AMD for the lack of competition.
Dribble - Wednesday, November 18, 2015 - link
AMD's solutions appeal to pretty well no one. If you don't have an add in gpu chances are you don't want to game in which case Intel wins hands down. If you want to game you'll buy a cheap graphics card in which case Intel wins hands down.The mythical buying market that want to game on a desktop but can't even afford a basic add on card just doesn't exist. We know this because AMD have been trying to sell apu's like this one for years now and no one is buying.
Yorgos - Wednesday, November 18, 2015 - link
That's false,I am gaming in 1080p and I play many games above 25fps with almost high settings.
A good example is skyrim with the high definition mod that you can get from steam and I am constantly at 25 fps.
All this was tested on my 8750k and 2400 MHz ram. What's your point of reference?
OTOH, there is a shitload of ppl that play only MOBA games or FPS like cs where you don't need to spend 300 or more in a system. A 150$ system can get you constant 30 fps w/o a sweat.Plus you get a discrete grade GPU embedded with your cpu and you get all the goodies and the high quality drivers/support the discrete gpus get. Intel has none of the previous.
Dribble - Wednesday, November 18, 2015 - link
I would point you to AMDs CPU sales. No one is buying, AMD have been trying to sell cpu's like this one for years and failing - the market isn't there.medi03 - Thursday, November 19, 2015 - link
I would point you to the fact that Netburst outsold superior Athlon 64s 4 to 1.