Memory Scaling On The AMD Kaveri A10-7850K APU
Test Systems and Procedures
Test Systems
To tackle this memory analysis we are using one main test system. We are using AMD’s FM2+ socket and A88X chipset with Gigabyte’s fantastic G1 Sniper A88X motherboard which we reviewed here. The results of this test can also be found in our Ultimate AMD Kaveri Review where you will find lots of more benchmarks and testing about Kaveri.
AMD FM2(+) Test System
- Motherboard – Gigabyte G1 Sniper A88X FM2+
- Processor – A10-7850K with Turbo Enabled
- RAM – AMD Performance Series Radeon Memory 2 x 4GB DDR3 @ 1866 (CL9) by default and 2133 (CL11) and 2400MHz (CL12) where clearly specified.
- Graphics Card – Integrated graphics except in Hybrid CrossFire/Dual Graphics mode where a Sapphire R7 250 2GB DDR3 GPU is used (stock core clock but the memory has been raised to 1000MHz [2000MHz effective)
- 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 memory scaling analysis we have an array of mainly GPU-centric tests to show you. 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.
- AIDA 64 Engineer – CPU and FPU tests: Queen, Zlib, AES, Hash, VP8, Julia, Mandel and SinJulia.
OpenCL Benchmarks
- PCMark 8 – the Home preset with OpenCL acceleration enabled.
- Basemark OpenCL – Basic hardware optimisation running the full suite of tests on the GPU parts only.
- Luxmark – OpenCL computation running on the CPU, GPU and GPU/CPU combined hardware.
Memory Benchmarks
- AIDA64 – Memory read, write, copy and latency tests.
Productivity
- Handbrake – conversion of a short 90 second 1080p video file from MP4 to MKV format.
- 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 consumption
- 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.
great work there fella, a good in depth look at kaveri, and good luck with the overclocking, I found it hard, but that was on an FM1 chipset, with a 1600mhz kit, looking at this report, seems I should have went for a 1866 or 2133 kit, then tried to overclock, thanks for the info, and the time and effort put into these kaveri reports, Cheers !
Great article. I wasn’t sure how much memory was too much or too little with the new chips. Also thanks for including a page looking at the Dual Graphics impact.
Would have been a much better article if you would have also included overclocking… of both CPU, iGPU and RAM… While for gaming, something like 4-4,4GHz would have been enough, reaching 900+ MHz on the iGPU and going above 2400MHz on the RAM would have been amazing. 2400 and above might not matter at stock, but when you manage to go to the 1020MHz preset or above on the iGPU… then I’m pretty sure the memory limitations would start to matter a lot more again.
A bit late…but we did test with 2400MHz and an overclocked iGPU here:
http://www.eteknix.com/amd-kaveri-a10-7850k-overclocking-unleashing-gcns-potential/all/1/
We didn;’t overclock the CPU at the same time because doing so will cause the iGPU to thermal/power throttle even when turning APM off.
Kingston 8gb Hyperx Fury 1866mhz , A10-7850K, Asus GT610 2gb ddR3 Graphics card,
asus A88X-Gamer FM2+ Intex 450 wat Smps
can i do below activity in this configuration
AMD Kaveri A10 7850K APU Overclocked… To 4.7 GHz
please guide me
thanks a lot. really helpful.