The AMD A8-7670K APU Review: Aiming for Rocket League
by Ian Cutress on November 18, 2015 8:00 AM ESTThe Testing
A number of factors about the A8-7670K processor suggest that this is "another release of the same sort of stuff," albeit with increased frequencies. Nevertheless, we put the processor through our regular tests, to see what would happen. Our bench suite this time had one omission and one addition. For whatever reason, Linux Bench refused to run, with Ubuntu 14.04 throwing a hissy fit and not willing to start. I’m not sure if this was a BIOS issue or something more fundamental with the software stack, but it was odd. The addition, as the title of the review alluded to, is a Rocket League benchmark. At this time, we haven’t run it on many systems, but the A8-7670K is the sort of APU that enables games like Rocket League. Rocket League is a good contender for our 2016 CPU/APU benchmark suite on the integrated graphics side of things, and this serves as a good tester in the wild.
All of our regular benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench. Rocket League will be added in the future with the 2016 updates.
Test Setup
| Test Setup | |
| Processor | AMD A8-7670K 2 Modules, 4 Threads 3.6 GHz (3.9 GHz Turbo) R7 Integrated Graphics 384 SPs at 756 MHz |
| Motherboards | MSI A88X-G45 Gaming |
| Cooling | Cooler Master Nepton 140XL |
| Power Supply | OCZ 1250W Gold ZX Series Corsair AX1200i Platinum PSU |
| Memory | G.Skill 2x8 GB DDR3-2133 1.5V |
| Memory Settings | JEDEC |
| Video Cards | ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB (1150/1202 Boost) ASUS R7 240 2GB |
| Hard Drive | Crucial MX200 1TB |
| Optical Drive | LG GH22NS50 |
| Case | Open Test Bed |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit SP1 |
Many thanks to...
We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our test bed:
Thank you to AMD for providing us with the R9 290X 4GB GPUs.
Thank you to ASUS for providing us with GTX 980 Strix GPUs and the R7 240 DDR3 GPU.
Thank you to ASRock and ASUS for providing us with some IO testing kit.
Thank you to Cooler Master for providing us with Nepton 140XL CLCs.
Thank you to Corsair for providing us with an AX1200i PSU.
Thank you to Crucial for providing us with MX200 SSDs.
Thank you to G.Skill and Corsair for providing us with memory.
Thank you to MSI for providing us with the GTX 770 Lightning GPUs.
Thank you to OCZ for providing us with PSUs.
Thank you to Rosewill for providing us with PSUs and RK-9100 keyboards.
Load Delta Power Consumption
Power consumption was tested on the system while in a single GTX 770 configuration with a wall meter connected to the OCZ 1250W power supply. This power supply is Gold rated, and as I am in the U.K. on a 230-240 V supply, that leads to ~75% efficiency at greater than 50W, and 90%+ efficiency at 250W, suitable for both idle and multi-GPU loading. This method of power reading allows us to compare the power management of the UEFI and the board to supply components with power under load, and includes typical PSU losses due to efficiency.
The TDP for the A8-7670K is up at 95W, similar to many other AMD processors. However, at load, ours drew only an additional 83W, giving some headroom.
AMD A8-7670K Overclocking
For this review, we even tried our hand at overclocking on the MSI A88X-G45 Gaming motherboard and managed to get 4.6 GHz stable.
Methodology
Our standard overclocking methodology is as follows. We select the automatic overclock options and test for stability with POV-Ray and OCCT to simulate high-end workloads. These stability tests aim to catch any immediate causes for memory or CPU errors.
For manual overclocks, based on the information gathered from previous testing, we start off at a nominal voltage and CPU multiplier, and the multiplier is increased until the stability tests are failed. The CPU voltage is increased gradually until the stability tests are passed, and the process is repeated until the motherboard reduces the multiplier automatically (due to safety protocol) or the CPU temperature reaches a stupidly high level (100º C+, or 212º F). Our test bed is not in a case, which should push overclocks higher with fresher (cooler) air.
Overclock Results
MSI’s motherboard doesn’t allow fixed voltages to be set but prefers to rely on an offset system only. There is a problem here that we are also fighting a DVFS implementation, which will automatically raise the voltage when an overclock is applied, with an end result of stacking the overclock voltage offset on top of the DVFS voltage boost. On our cooling system, the processor passed quite easily up to 4.6 GHz without much issue, but 4.7 GHz produced an instant blue screen when a rendering workload was applied. Hitting 4.6 GHz on a midrange AMD processor is quite good, indicating our sample is some nice silicon, but your mileage might vary.
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BurntMyBacon - Thursday, November 19, 2015 - link
@medi03: "I would point you to the fact that Netburst outsold superior Athlon 64s 4 to 1."True, a superior architecture doesn't guarantee better sales, even at better prices. However, Dribble didn't accuse this solution of being inferior for the market it is targeting. He stated:
@Dribble: "No one is buying, ..." and "... the market isn't there."
I don't entirely agree, though (by CPU sales) the market doesn't seem to be very large and is clearly low margin. These are not the processors that will save AMD's business. Zen will likely be the most important CPU architecture in the company's history (whether the design is good/bad/novel/obvious).
medi03 - Thursday, November 19, 2015 - link
I would point you to the fact that Netburst outsold superior Athlon 64s 4 to 1.JoeMonco - Thursday, November 19, 2015 - link
But your silly *facts* don't matter. [Year+1] with the release AMD [Microarchitecture+1] is gonna finally beat Intel! And I know this because my irrational brand loyalty says so!!barleyguy - Thursday, November 19, 2015 - link
You mocking irrational brand loyalty is irony at its finest. ;-)JoeMonco - Thursday, November 19, 2015 - link
I don't see what the irony is supposed. Criticizing AMD doesn't mean I like Intel. ARM is the only real competition that Intel faces.hojnikb - Thursday, November 19, 2015 - link
How much did you spend on that ram ?I bet you could get pentium+4g of ram and a nice 250X (or even 260x on sale) for around the same money.
Thats the problem with apus. They need fast ram in dual channel to be taken advantage of.
yannigr2 - Thursday, November 19, 2015 - link
An A8 7600 costs only $20-$30 more than a Pentium? 8GBs of 1866-2000MHz costs only $10-$20 more than 8GB 1333Mhz? And the card you get in the APU is a little faster than an R7 240 as the review shows.So, in the end you save $30-$40 for the same if not a tiny better gaming experience. This is HUGE if you don't have the money, or if you are a retail shop that tries to create an ultra cheap system that you can market it as gaming and also have one less part in there that makes the assembly easier and also lowers the possibility of an RMA because of the extra part(the discrete card).
AMD can't sell much, because Intel controls the market, people who don't know about hardware buy the Intel brand and individuals who are asked to help others to build such low cost machines, usually exclude AMD from the beginning without even considering it as an option, or even try as hard as they can to make other avoid AMD's solutions. That's even when AMD's solutions are the perfect solutions for specific cases, and those are the same people who constantly cry about competition. My example in my previous post proves that and it was an example based on a last week's case.
silverblue - Thursday, November 19, 2015 - link
Fast RAM which isn't exactly at a premium anymore... at least, right now. I just took a quick glance at HyperX Savage prices on Amazon and a 16GB (2x8) kit was £64 to £65 for 1600 and 1866MHz, and £68 for 2400MHz, with 2133MHz being a little more still. I know, it's a small sample for a single product range, and a lot of these look to have had massive reductions recently, but right now it's not really an expense going with faster RAM.If you play games that benefit from Hybrid Crossfire, it's an option, certainly more than it used to be, however it's still not at the level that I would consider to be worthwhile outside of that particular scenario, and scaling is still minimal even when it does work (in general).
I would like to know what AMD's current CPU market share is. People are forever saying that nobody is buying AMD, however based on popularity on www.dabs.com it appears that the 860K is the top CPU, with the 8320E in second place. The i3-6100 is in third place.
JoeMonco - Thursday, November 19, 2015 - link
25fps? Is that supposed to be impressive?yannigr2 - Thursday, November 19, 2015 - link
You are wrong. I guess two years ago you would have been absolutely sure that this generation consoles wouldn't sell because the hardware wasn't strong enough to run latest AAA titles at the highest possible settings.