Test Systems and Procedures
Test Systems
To tackle this mammoth swath of testing we are using two main test systems, one for all the AMD APUs, thanks to the backwards compatibility, and one for the two Intel Haswell parts. We are using AMD’s FM2+ socket and A88X chipset with Gigabyte’s fantastic G1 Sniper A88X motherboard which we reviewed here. For the Haswell parts on Intel’s LGA 1150 socket we are using the Z87 chipset with MSI’s Z87I-Gaming motherboard, which we reviewed here.
AMD FM2(+) Test System
- Motherboard – Gigabyte G1 Sniper A88X FM2+
- Processor – A10-7850K, A10-7700K, A8-7600, A10-6800K, A10-6790K and A8-6500T all with Turbo Enabled
- RAM – AMD Performance Series Radeon Memory, 2 x 4GB DDR3-1866 with 9-10-9-27 (CL9) timings
- Graphics Card – None, integrated graphics only.
- CPU Cooler – Corsair H100i with Quiet Fan Profile and Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Paste
- Power Supply – Corsair HX1050W
- Main Storage Drive – Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD over SATA III interface
- Chassis – Lian Li T60 Test Bench
- Displays – Dell U2711 Ultra Sharp
- Operating System – Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit
Intel LGA 1150 Test System
- Motherboard – MSI Z87I-Gaming
- Processor – Intel Core i5 4440 (Turbo Enabled) and Core i3 4330 (Turbo not supported).
- RAM – AMD Performance Series Radeon Memory, 2 x 4GB DDR3-1866 with 9-10-9-27 (CL9) timings
- Graphics Card – None, integrated graphics only.
- CPU Cooler – Corsair H100i with Quiet Fan Profile and Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Paste
- Power Supply – Corsair HX1050W
- Main Storage Drive – Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD over SATA III interface
- Chassis – Lian Li T60 Test Bench
- Displays – Dell U2711 Ultra Sharp
- Operating System – Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit
We would like to thank Gigabyte, MSI, Intel, AMD, Corsair, Kingston, Lian Li, Noctua and all our other partners who supplied us with test system equipment and hardware. Their generosity makes our testing possible and without them we wouldn’t be able to produce the reviews we do, so thank you!
Test Procedures
To conduct this review we have a huge battery of tests, benchmarks and games to battle through. Below we have listed each benchmark and any associated details about how we run the test, how long for (if applicable) and any settings that may be helpful to know.
CPU Tests
- Cinebench R11.5 – multi threaded, single threaded and Open GL tests.
- Cinebench R15 – multi threaded, single threaded and Open GL tests.
- WPrime – a 32 million Pi calculation.
- SuperPi 1.9 WP – a 4 million Pi calculation.
- AIDA 64 Engineer – CPU and FPU tests: Queen, Zlib, AES, Hash, VP8, Julia, Mandel and SinJulia.
System Benchmarks
- PCMark 7 – the PCMark Suite preset of tests.
- PCMark 8 – the Home preset with Open CL acceleration enabled.
GPU and CPU Open CL Benchmarks
- Basemark Open CL – Basic hardware optimisation running the full suite of tests on the GPU parts only.
- Compubench CL 1.1.3 – running only the Physics: SPH Fluid Simulation, Graphics: Raytrace and Vision: Optical Flow tests on both the CPU and GPU.
- Luxmark – Open CL computation running on the CPU, GPU and GPU/CPU combined hardware.
Memory Benchmarks
- AIDA64 – Memory read, write, copy and latency tests.
Productivity
- x264 HD Benchmark 5.0 – one run and two passes using the default settings.
- Handbrake – conversion of a short 90 second 1080p video file from MP4 to MKV format.
- WinRAR – using the built in benchmark.
- JPEG Decoder – AMD’s provided JPEG decoder benchmark that is run using the standard Windows JPEG decoder and AMD’s new HSA decoder.
- Photoshop CC – Smart Sharpen test of a sample image to test Open CL acceleration and image processing speed. Timed using digital stopwatch (old school!).
- Libre Office – spreadsheet computation and calculation performance.
- MuseMage – built in performance benchmark.
Gaming
- 3DMark11: Performance and Extreme presets.
- 3DMark (2013): Firestrike and Firestrike Extreme presets.
- Battlefield 4 – low preset at 720p (1280 x 720) and 1080p (1920 x 1080). Measured using fraps and a 2 minute sequence of the game in the middle of the first campaign mission. Replayed with as much duplication as possible to ensure accurate results.
- Tomb Raider – normal preset at 720p and 1080p, v-sync off, motion blur and screen effects on using the built in benchmark.
- Sleeping Dogs – normal preset at 720p and 1080p using built in benchmark.
- Bioshock Infinite – medium preset at 720p and 1080p using the built in benchmark.
- Batman Arkham Origins – normal geometry, everything else off. 720p and 1080p using the built in benchmark.
- Metro Last Light – Medium preset, AF4X and low motion blur at 720p and 1080p using the built in benchmark.
Power and Thermals
- Power consumption – total system power draw measured with the system in an idle desktop state, with a CPU load state, GPU load state and CPU+GPU combined load state. Load states were all provided by the AIDA 64 Engineer system stability test.
- Thermals – temperatures as recorded by CPUID-HW Monitor (for Richland and Haswell) and AMD OverDrive/AIDA64 (Kaveri). Note that the Kaveri temperature sensors functioned differently so results are not strictly comparable. The load and idle temperatures are for the CPU parts ONLY since the GPU parts did not have accurate temperature sensors on either the AMD or Intel parts. The temperatures were measured after a 5 minute CPU AIDA 64 system stability load test.
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.