AMD Kaveri Review: A10-7850K, A10-7700K and A8-7600

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.