Final Thoughts
Pricing
We’ve already covered the suggested MSRP pricing of all the tested parts on the first page. However, when things make it to retail the price often changes and so we’ve done a little comparison below of MSRP pricing versus actual pricing found at reputable retailers like Newegg and Provantage. Below you can see that the actual pricing of Kaveri is higher on the A10-7850K and A10-7700K. However the same is true of both Intel’s Haswell parts too, particularly the Core i5 4440 which is dramatically higher. The A8-7600 currently wasn’t available to buy anywhere so it is difficult to make a judgement on that. The Richland parts are still available to buy and at relatively competitive price points, particularly the A10-6790K. Overall I think it’s fair to say if the A10-7600 comes to market at close to its MSRP it will be a fantastic buy. The A10-7850K on the other hand is a bit pricey for my liking, though on Newegg you can get it with a free copy of Battlefield 4 which sweetens the deal a little.
- A10-7850K at Amazon | Newegg | Amazon UK
- A10-7700K at Amazon | Newegg | Amazon UK
- A8-7600 at Amazon | Newegg | Amazon UK
Overview
AMD’s Kaveri APU represents a solid improvement over Richland. On the CPU side we see a nice IPC improvement and significant power savings while on the GPU side we see decent performance boosts as well as mammoth gains in GPU compute performance. In terms of HSA, TrueAudio and Mantle I will reiterate things said earlier on in the review – while the technologies are impressive in and of themselves, they are yet to really shine because the ecosystem isn’t really in place. There is a distinct lack of software that can currently take advantage of these new AMD technologies though that said the software support is growing every day. In terms of what AMD have done with Kaveri it is hard to look at it and point out anything specifically bad. Kaveri is clearly a great product that will offer the vast majority of desktop PC users enough performance for gaming, video editing, photo editing, general usage, productivity work and GPU compute applications. Compared to Intel’s Haswell parts AMD’s Kaveri is a more rounded package that offers a more balanced distribution of performance between the CPU and GPU as well as a more rich array of features such as Mantle, HSA, advanced RAID support, overclocking, configurable TDPs and so on.
However, let’s not shy away from the elephant in the room. AMD’s Kaveri is clearly lacking a little something in the CPU department. In comparison to equivalently priced Haswell units Kaveri is not able to match CPU performance in terms of performance or power efficiency, even though Kaveri did bring significant gains in both those areas. If you’re a user who desires and needs strong CPU performance then you’re more likely to want a Core i5 4440 over a A10-7850K or a Core i3 4330 over an A8-7600. However, as we’ve shown what Kaveri APUs lack in the CPU department they make up for in the GPU department and in price. It really is a case of “swings and roundabouts” with Kaveri. There is no cold hard underlying reason why should buy Haswell over Kaveri or Kaveri over Haswell. Kaveri clearly has significant advantages for anyone looking to play games, run GPU accelerated applications or is into anything that involves compute. Haswell on the other hand is for anyone who needs strong x86 CPU performance and power efficiency. That said Kaveri isn’t power inefficient. Kaveri’s most promising part in my opinion is the A8-7600. This is a stupidly versatile APU that has bags of performance. We’re talking anywhere from 50 to 100% more performance than its Richland predecessor the A8-6500T in the 45W envelope despite only having about 16% more total power consumption. What’s more, the versatility provided by the configurable TDP means that by setting it to 65W mode you’ve essentially got a “locked” A10-7700K. I think anyone looking to build a well-rounded low power PC will find it hard to not consider the A8-7600.
The A10-7850K and A10-7700K parts are a similar story. Compared to their predecessors they offer a lot more overall performance with a lot less power consumption. The gains on the GPU are the most impressive and as gaming parts the A10-7850K and A10-7700K excel versus Richland and Haswell. However, if you’re using a high-end Richland part I think you’ll find that Kaveri is just too expensive to make an attractive upgrade proposition – at least right now they are. If you’re coming from CPUs/APUs on older platforms, like AM2(+), FM1, LGA 1156 and so on then you’ll find Kaveri to be a blisteringly fast upgrade. What system you’re coming from, and what you want to do with your system are key determinants of whether you think Kaveri is right for you or not.
So far I know a lot of people will have been thinking – I’d be better off buying a cheap CPU and a cheap discrete graphics cards? To an extent you’re both right and wrong, and this is arguably the second elephant in the room. For $172, the A10-7850K’s MSRP, you can buy an Intel Haswell Pentium dual core for around $70, or an AMD Athlon quad core for a around $75, and pair it with a $100-or-less graphics card like an AMD R7 250X ($100), R7 250 ($80), Nvidia GT 640 ($80) or Nvidia GTX 650 ($100). If we also consider the A10-7850K is currently retailing at about $13 more than the MSRP of $172 that leaves scope for an R7 260 which can be had for $110 if you find a good deal. It’s difficult for me to compare the A10-7850K to the Nvidia cards in terms of performance because the GPU architecture is non-equatable but if we compare to the AMD graphics card options then you’ll get a good idea of what else you can buy. The R7 250, R7 250X and R7 260 have 384, 612 and 768 GCN shaders respectively. The A10-7850K has 512. In terms of clock speeds the R7 250, R7 250X and R7 260 all start at 1GHz compared to the 720MHz on the A10-7850K. Clearly both the R7 250X and R7 260 will offer better GPU performance for the same price but you will end up with more power consumption, and if you choose a Intel Haswell Pentium or AMD Athlon Quad Core (which are Piledriver based) you will get slightly less CPU performance as well. Not to mention that the Intel Haswell Pentiums are locked so you’re quite CPU limited whereas the A10-7850K CPU can be overclocked. Of course you also lose the benefits of having an efficient all in one solution and we haven’t even considered Kaveri’s massive overclocking headroom yet either. So with the A10-7850K the DIY option is a convincing one but if you can snatch it at the MSRP I think the A10-7850K is still a solid buy.
If we move down to the A10-7700K price point the situation is a little different. For $152 you have to use an R7 250 or lower with a cheap Intel Pentium or AMD Athlon quad core to keep the same budget. What you’ll find with the A10-7700K is you can’t actually buy a better GPU for the same price, whereas with the A10-7850K you can. Both the A10-7700K and the R7 250 have 384 shaders and while the R7 250 will have a faster clock speed and more memory throughput (if you buy the GDDR5 version), you can overclock the A10-7700K GPU part to similar levels and use fast system memory (DDR3-1866/2133) to reach a similar level of GPU performance. Of course the A10-7700K also has the CPU advantage in terms of being better than an Intel Haswell Pentium dual core and the Piledriver based Athlon quad cores. The A10-7700K also benefits from being an all in one solution that is more power efficient and has abundant GPU overclocking headroom as well as CPU overclocking headroom that locked Intel Pentium dual cores do not have.
Finally if we consider then A8-7600 the situation is different again. As mentioned the flexible TDP means you essentially get a locked A10-7700K when running the A8-7600 at 65W mode. For $119 you’ll be hard pushed to find a CPU and GPU combo that even comes close to a 65W A8-7600. In fact if you got the cheapest Intel Pentium dual core on offer, which is $70, or the cheapest AMD Quad Core Athlon on offer, which is $75, then you’re left with just $45-50 to spend. In GPU terms you’ll be able to get nothing for that price, a HD 6570 at best which the A8-7600 is significantly better than. Of course you could get an AMD Athlon Dual Core for $45 leaving a GPU budget of $75 and then you’d be able to get an R7 250 but you’d lose out by having dramatically less CPU performance which would probably cancel out the modest GPU gains. This is one of the reasons why the A8-7600 is so attractive – you can’t buy a better CPU and GPU combo for the same price! Then if we talk about the 45W mode, where power consumption clearly matters to the buyer, there’s no way on earth you’ll be able to get this much performance from any GPU or CPU combination at the same price with the same power consumption. In summary; it isn’t a “no-brainer” that buying a discrete GPU with a cheap CPU is better than buying a Kaveri APU – there are lots of other parameters to consider like which APU price point you’re looking to buy at, power consumption, cooling, overclocking, the system form factor and what type of applications you use your PC for. Kaveri has its design wins and nothing can take that away.
Pros
- Massive GPU compute performance improvements
- Good power reductions across the entire range
- Improved power efficiency and IPC of the CPU architecture
- Convenient all in one package
- Rich array of features like HSA, Mantle, TrueAudio, etc
- Overclockable
- Improved gaming performance
- Memory scaling
Cons
- CPU performance is still mediocre
- Temperature readouts are borked
- Retail pricing is a fair bit higher than suggested MSRPs
- Ecosystems for new features are still relatively immature (HSA, Open CL, Mantle, TrueAudio, Open GL, etc) and so most software cannot take advantage of Kaveri’s unique hardware
“AMD’s new Kaveri APU continues to push the boundaries of what a single processing unit can do. Kaveri has a wealth of features and performance at its disposal that its rivals cannot match at the same price. All three Kaveri APUs offer compelling performance at their price points if you can make use of what Kaveri offers above and beyond that of a normal x86 CPU. Kaveri APUs will undoubtedly prove popular in pre-built, general desktop, small form factor, budget gaming and home theatre PCs.”
Thank you to AMD for providing Kaveri and Richland review samples that made this article possible.
may as well brand the A10 as the 720p chip, if your happy to game at that rez, still waiting for a capable APU that can play games at 1080p, the 512 cores just isn’t enough on its own, the chip needs around 650-1,000 cores, also, ram speed is critical for future apu performance, the quicker amd move to a ddr4 chipset, the better
Yes RAM is critical! We will be adding more about RAM with our RAM scaling featured coming up. Watch this space 🙂
excellent, also, love the way which the article summed up the cost of cpu+gpu V apu, it hits the nail on the head why you should buy an apu, however, I feel that AMD are missing trick here, a 1000 core apu with ddr4 support would allow many to build a slim steam machine that could compete with the consoles, as it is, you still need a gpu to provide an apu system with playable frame rates at 1080p, and overclocking an apu with a discrete gpu is no easy task, hybrid crossfire gives an apu system a much needed boost, as does ram speed, but it still leaves a lot to be desired, and the cost of a crossfired apu system v performance from an i5+discrete gpu puts many off, AMD need to make a huge leap in performance for the apu’s, I know why these chips are aimed at the budget segment, its to stop Intel grabbing market share, plus, a more powerful apu would probably eat into AMD’s own gpu business, I wish they showed more courage, and give us the one chip solution that the APU’s originally promised…
Could you maybe look at crossfire performance for the A10 ?…..can you get smooth 1080p gameplay ?, and is the cost V performance worth it ?
I am currently doing hybrid crossfire testing right now. Will also be doing overclocking and the RAM scaling I mentioned. We just wanted to get the base review out first. We will be adding the other bits over the coming week or so.
more tech goodness, thats great Ryan, cheers
1600x900p is the sweet spot for APUs right now.
DONT THINK ITS MADE FOR GAMERS… but for people who game on facebook pogo nad things like that will be fine
Did you even read the review? Kaveri is quite capable of playing games. Most people don’t have lots of $ to chuck at graphics cards and expensive processors, in those instances an AMD APU offers a great alternative, especially the A8-7600.
you can do a bit more than just FB bud, 720p performance is fine, as long as you keep to medium or low settings
Exactly, I’ve got a A8 APU in my girlfriends rig, play Resident Evil 5 at high-ultra graphics, 1080p and 30fps, not bad for an £80 chip IMO.
Completely agree, price for performance as absolutely outstanding
guess my insights were wrong game on
i seen a demo of the kaveri APu playing Battlefeild 4 on 720p with medium details it hand handle some games pretty well
I hate to say this, but even though I am a part of the kaveri’s intended market (which is *poor* entry level gamers and HTPC users), I don’t see why you would buy one. The Richland 6800k does comparably well to the 7700K but costs $30 less. I’m a poor gamer so that $30 does mean something to me. With the Kaveri’s dual graphics not coming anywhere close to the performance of the $120 260x, The new APUs don’t even make sense in the long run because you might as well pay for a 260x instead of spending that money on the 250 or 240. Power consumption vs. performance only improved significantly on the 7600, but that hasn’t released yet so the kaveri doesn’t really win in any case.
Well, I stand corrected on 3 issues so I guess I’m not really an expert like I thought I was. At first I didn’t see the power consumption chart on page 12, where both of the Kaveris in dual graphics mode beat the 6800k in power efficiency. I simply went by the TDP of the APUs (which dropped by 5W between generations). Then, I saw Newegg has $150 7700ks, so the margin between it and the Richland is now $20. Lastly, I learned that the Richland APU is really just an overclocked Trinity ($120), so the margin is still $30. Oh well, i guess I’m saving $10 because the power consumption doesn’t matter to me whatsoever.
As a reference, to convert a thermal margin to a processor temperature, you take the processor’s rated TDP and substract the thermal margin. So for a processor with a 95C TDP, the margins you posted are roughly equivalent to the temperatures measured. 95 – 57.9 = 37.1C for an A10-7800K at load. I think the reason they cannot specify the temperatures is because the TDP is configurable on those chips. Also keep in mind the temperature will likely rise dramatically with the GPU also on full load, because they both use the same cooling device. The stock fan will probably not handle the CPU and GPU at full load in turbo mode for too long, so I wouldnt cheap out on the cooler on these things.
Well this would have to be one (& only) of the most honest reviews about AMD ‘s Kaveri.
And with all the bias against AMD, its about time someone did a solid review about it’s latest APU.
Showing it to be a performer that exceeds all expectations with built in technology that’s starting to show even greater promise.
You forgot about ram speeds with a Pentium+250X you only need 1333mhz ram vs the high speed ram for the APU’s plus you forgot about the differences in performance from DDR3 to GDDR5 on the 250X
Trust me, there are a lot of things I could have included, I didn’t want to write 100,000 words. But yes you’re right.
just add 4 more cores then it beat haswell 4 cores but amd is doing the mainstream architure tweak first then release to FX version last if proves it can hurt haswell 8 cores monster..and steamroller is not it but its huge improvenment than piledriver in 4 cores alone….the last generation excavator is the fix and improve version of bulldozer..and 8 cores can mess intel haswell-e very well at the end even it took them awhile to come around from the back of intel …since carrizo apu has 4 way l1 data and 3 way l1 inst. code its only 3 modules with 6 cores total and 20nm is very small and less power than haswell-e………combined with a dual carrizo with 8-way l1 data, 6-way l1 inst. code total in last FX version with it can fit up 3-6 modules in that processor with 6 and 12 cores from 95 watts to 125 watts and 220 watts for 4.0ghz to 5ghz…
“In terms of temperatures with Kaveri it isn’t possible to judge. The temperature readouts on the Kaveri APUs are totally “borked” and the motherboard sensor readouts give ridiculously low temperatures which cannot be accurate – 37 degrees at full load for the A10-7850K? I think not.”
But you think that Haswell processors need more than 10W less at idle because of “the incredibly power frugal nature of the Haswell design and the advanced idle sleep states.”? Really funny. Dear author, please always try to use your brain. The difference between AMD and Intel at idle is hardly measurable because both need only a few watts then (normally less than 5W). It should be clear that a difference of 10W or more is only possible if the motherboards draw different amounts of power. Or do you think every motherboard draws the exact same amount of power, regardless of the processor?
Pure idle comparisons mostly don’t make much sense nowadays due to very advanced power saving mechanisms. We don’t have P4s anymore which really could draw a lot of power at idle. At least as long as you can’t guarantee the same power draw of the motherboards you won’t get meaningful values to compare.
Nice review!.
the concept of APU for gaming maybe didn’t look that interesting for western buyers where you could get better price/performance with separate CPU+GPU combo, but please don’t forget us that live at third world country where the price of an i5 is more than minimum wages in many parts of our country. With that in context, the A8-7600 combined with “Steam Sales” surely the best option for people who want enter the The Glorious PC Gaming Master Race at budget. and don’t forget the low power consumption too.
yeah, i know i’m late into this.
It is quite interesting when you consider it is a CPU with a GPU integrated onto the Processor Die. I am currently Running an AMD FX-8300 @4.1GHZ. My Daughter is running on an AMD A6-6400 at 3.8GHZ dual core with 8GB 2133MHZ RAM. Performance wise, SHe can run World of Warcraft on Medium settings at 40FPS easy and watch youtube videos in the background. With her only being young I am not going to spend a fortune on her first PC. These AMD APU’s are perfect and hit the right spot in bang for buck. people always tell me “for £100 more you could have had an Intel I7 4790k instead of the FX-8350” but in doing some research the AMD FX-8350 gave me the best bang for buck coupled with the R9 270X 2GB card
i was looking at my country’s local pc stores for the 480 amd vc which is supposedly 225 USD for the 8gb version but i was shocked to find it sellin 50% higher than the recommended price. then i compared prices of low to midend video cards to their US counterparts and i was saddened to see the same 50% markup from the recommended prices in the USA.
No wonder a lot of people here are just depending on IGP and APUS to play their games.
I settled for the AMD 7890k and got my self 16gb of memory since i cant get a price performance ratio for an intel cpu plus graphics card (overpriced in my country) that is equal to what other countries get.
The 7890k turned out to be the best option for me.