Kaveri Hybrid CrossFire: A10-7850K/7700K With R7 240 & 250

Final Thoughts

Pricing

AMD’s Dual Graphics solution is going to vary in price depending on what graphics card you pick. However, we can put prices on the combinations we used. The R7 250 costs $89.99 and the R7 240 costs $69.99. The A10-7850K costs $172 and the A10-7700K costs $152. Therefore the two configurations cost $262 and $222 respectively.

Overview

I think the first thing to point out right away is what I believe the use-case scenario for Dual Graphics, or Hybrid Crossfire, is. In my mind this isn’t a sensible option for anyone building a system from the ground up. If we take the A10-7850K with the R7 250 as the main example, that bundle costs $262 MSRP. For $262 you could buy an AMD Athlon X4 760K quad core processor ($90) with $170 left over. $170 buys an R9 270, R7 265 or R7 260X. In our case we tested an R7 260X and it was dramatically faster than the A10-7850K Dual Graphics solution, yet in theory it would cost only $210 – think how much faster an R9 270 system would be! Of course we tested with the A10-7850K CPU (the iGPU was disabled) but the A10-7850K CPU part is roughly identical to the X4 760K hence how we can comfortably draw that comparison, in fact the X4 760K CPU is probably slightly faster. The same idea prevails with the A10-7700K – you could also buy that same 760K and 260X combination for less. There are also other issues associated with the CrossFire implementation that mean it makes more sense to go for a single discrete graphics card. For example scaling varies by games but the discrete GPU performed consistently well with no scaling variations as there’s only 1 GPU and nothing to scale. There are also more issues and bugs in general associated with CrossFire than a single GPU.

So after reading that you might think – AMD Dual Graphics on Kaveri APUs is pointless. I don’t think that is totally true. Firstly, it has its uses within the right context. If a year down the line you decide that you want better graphics performance on your AMD Kaveri APU then Dual Graphics offers a way to get more for your money. You can spend on an affordable graphics card like an R7 240 ($70) or R7 250 ($90) and get a nice bump on top of that courtesy of the integrated R7 graphics on the APU which will bring you up to the next graphics card in the series, this is effectively a free speed boost. That’s instead of you having to buy a more expensive GPU like the R7 260 ($110) or R7 260X ($120). Secondly, it’s very power efficient. We barely saw an increase in total system power consumption from adding these cards yet we’ve seen a boost in performance ranging from 20-80%. However, I think the tendency for most people would still be to buy a standalone discrete solution despite the fact Dual Graphics can save you a bit of money. Even if you have to pay $20-30 more to get a better performing discrete solution – it’s probably worth it because you avert any driver issues associated with CrossFire like frame pacing or CrossFire bugs & glitches.

Pros

• Good overall scaling
• Amazing power consumption
• Simple to set up
• Makes the A10-7700K and A10-7850K capable 1080p gaming set-ups

Cons

• Not cost-effective versus discrete CPU + GPU combinations of the same price
• Scaling still varies a lot between games
• Memory limited due to DDR3

“AMD’s Dual Graphics technology has improved a lot since it’s first implementation. It offers the potential to scale the performance of your APU for a relatively small cost and without adding much power consumption to your system. Yet at the core of AMD Dual Graphics is a fundamental flaw – it isn’t an economically sensible decision unless you already own an APU. For the vast majority of consumers you would benefit more from pairing an unlocked AMD Athlon CPU with a powerful R7 series graphics card within the same budget – this option offers much more performance for the same, or a lower, cost. The technology is novel but until it is optimised better and until entry level AMD cards become significantly cheaper than the mid-range ones, it probably won’t appeal to many people.”

Thank you to AMD for providing the review samples that made this article possible.