AMD Kaveri A10 7850K At 4.7Ghz

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HardCoreWare overclocked an AMD Kaveri A10 7850K to 4.7GHz and ran it through a series of benchmarks to see how it performed.

In our Kaveri review, we looked at the top-model A10 7850K, which comes clocked stock at 3.7 GHz base and 4.0 GHz turbo and is fully unlocked. This is actually lower than the prier generation Richland APU which runs at 4.0/4.3 GHz. This might lead you to believe Kaveri to be a weak overclocker, but that wasn’t really the case for us. Using a Noctua NH-U14S and a voltage of around 1.45-1.50v, we were able to get our sample to run at 4.7 GHz. This isn’t just a case of “boot up and take a screenshot of Prime95″ either. This is pretty much rock solid
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What was the point of that? Just to see how the CPU responds to the overclock?

Why would you run a gaming test with a 7850K and a dedicated 280x? I don't understand some of these sites... If you're buying an APU, use the GPU portion of it in your tests. That's what people are buying these for. Come on.
 
InternationalHat said:
What was the point of that? Just to see how the CPU responds to the overclock?

Why would you run a gaming test with a 7850K and a dedicated 280x? I don't understand some of these sites... If you're buying an APU, use the GPU portion of it in your tests. That's what people are buying these for. Come on.
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I was looking for the IGP test because they actually overclocked it to 1020MHz on the first page.

But, they did not test that in the games they used. The common customers of this APU will be those getting it mainly for a low-cost combination CPU and GPU without the need of shelling more for a dedicated card. Intel's IGP cannot match this graphics performance at this price, and the higher performing Iris Pro 5200 is only found on higher end mobile Intel Haswell CPUs.

If you're looking for a dedicated card, you should always consider a better mid-range or higher processor.
 
InternationalHat said:
What was the point of that? Just to see how the CPU responds to the overclock?

Why would you run a gaming test with a 7850K and a dedicated 280x? I don't understand some of these sites... If you're buying an APU, use the GPU portion of it in your tests. That's what people are buying these for. Come on.
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They ran Photoshop and disabled OpenCL... On the AMD video card and the APU! That's some real world testing there! That's like disabling the water pump on a firetruck to see how effective it is at putting out a burning building.
 
WOW...thought we were going to get actual IGP over clocked numbers....they OC'd the igp but didn't test it...LOL...wtf? What was the point of that article?
 
InternationalHat said:
Why would you run a gaming test with a 7850K and a dedicated 280x? I don't understand some of these sites... If you're buying an APU, use the GPU portion of it in your tests. That's what people are buying these for. Come on.
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Some users will be pairing Kaveri chips and dedicated AMD cards for use in mixed-mode Mantle applications. And those who just like AMD in general, I guess.
 
Wasted opportunity, why they didn't include FPS numbers with the overclocked CPU + GPU is beyond me.

Retarded.

Who runs a 280X with an APU anyway?
 
InternationalHat said:
What was the point of that? Just to see how the CPU responds to the overclock?

Why would you run a gaming test with a 7850K and a dedicated 280x? I don't understand some of these sites... If you're buying an APU, use the GPU portion of it in your tests. That's what people are buying these for. Come on.
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They want to see if the CPU portion actually is catching up to intel. These are NOT low cost cpus for budget minded folks. $179 would easily buy you a better cpu / gpu config (excluding what mantle may or may not do)

For $179 i would buy a richland 760k (disabled gpu) for $80 and a $90 GPU like a 7770-7790-7850. (even with mining craze ive recently seen 7850s for $119)

A dedicated 7770 will give 1ghz gpu clock speeds, 640 shaders, plus DDR5 memory, i would easily expect that to out perform an a10-7850k. for the same money. The only draw I see to the A10-7850 is the form factor and its something new to play with.
 
FordFanboy said:
Wasted opportunity, why they didn't include FPS numbers with the overclocked CPU + GPU is beyond me.

Retarded.

Who runs a 280X with an APU anyway?
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I would. my a10-5800k rig has two r9 290s and my next a10-5800k will have 3 270x's.
 
I lightly game. I am bored of world of warcraft, starcraft 2, diablo 3, counterstrike source. I like mechwarrior online, but apu cant handle that for crap.

So i started playing a facebook game called avengers alliance -- then just two days ago got back into ultima online (abcuo) which plays great on just the APU.

The truth is i cant stand the idea of stopping my video cards from mining to play a game. even when i had a geforce 580 GTX id rather get 264kh then good framerates. i know it sounds retarded --- on majority of the games ive played though the APU handles them completely fine for me on medium settings 1680x1050. TigerDirect has a bundle (a10-7850k, bf4, 4gb of ram, motherboard for $239 after two rebates) i almost ordered it, but the motherboard only has one pci-e slot and i cant handle that. I just think $179 is way to much for this CPU for anyone except the folks that want to use mini itx.
 
Kaveri is still not shown in its best light with HSA and Mantle.


If rumors are true about the Kaveri IGPU being able to crossfire with another GCN graphics card via crossfire, then games supporting Mantle should see a very sizable increase compared to the Intel counter parts.

I've yet to see a Kaveri review where they spent some time with it and included overclocked benchmarks of both the IGPU and CPU. We know its not going to beat a i5 in terms of cpu performance. Its somewhere between the I3 and the I5 (closer to the i3).

Also seems the single threaded score in Cinebench should be better. I score 1.33 on my 8320@ 5ghz. The Kaveri@ 4.7ghz scores 1.11? I know the L3 and bit of clock speed help my score, but dang its a 20% difference.
 
It is not so much crossfire it is a second available gpu for Mantle to do post processing on or some other jobs. They touched briefly upon this in the BSN video of APU13 developers Q&A.
 
It's also an indicator of what the 8-module Steamroller FX will perform like.
 
bwang said:
It's also an indicator of what the 8-module Steamroller FX will perform like.
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There is no 8 module Steamroller. And to make a safe bet there won't be a consumer version either , might be a server version in 2015 ? AMD does not release any relevant information regarding AM3+ and Steamroller.
I'm guessing you meant 4 module :) 8c/8t .
 
bwang said:
It's also an indicator of what the 8-module Steamroller FX will perform like.
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Pretty sure AMD canceled the FX steamroller. If they didn't Kaveri performance is different than that of the FX, due to L3 Cache. Ie even my FX Piledriver, out performs Kaveri in single thread because of this. With a 300mhz clock speed increase and 16mb of L3 my FX Piledriver is 20% faster in single thread than the Kaveri@ 4.7ghz in this review in Cinebench.

I think a lot of FX users would love to drop in a Steamroller Core 4 module/8 Thread part. Well I would upgrade anyways. Sadly the chances of this happening anytime soon are pretty non-existent.
 
Luckily since Intel forgot how to make new processors and AMD is making APU's, my FX-9370 may last for a decade before something better comes along.
 
Strange reactions here to this article... this is a look at performance when you increase the CPU to 4.7 GHz. The IGP is separate, and should be looked at separately. You can say that "nobody would ever get one of these and just use it as a CPU"... instead of assuming that, tests like these tell us exactly what is going on, and why that may or may not be a good idea. Or why AMD abandoned the idea of non-IGP Steamroller chips. More info = better

And of COURSE you have to disable OpenCL in a Photoshop CPU benchmark. Since you're benchmarking the CPU and not the GPU that is installed (in this case a 280X) or the IGP which would skew results.

What would be the point of letting the 280X (or whatever) do the work in a Photoshop test, when you're benchmarking the CPU? If you want more detailed results, such as OpenCL in Photoshop, you should look at a full APU review, not a CPU overclocking performance test.
 
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this just shows how insanely weak AMD CPU cores are

sticking with Intel for my gaming system...
 
lowlight said:
Strange reactions here to this article... this is a look at performance when you increase the CPU to 4.7 GHz. The IGP is separate, and should be looked at separately. You can say that "nobody would ever get one of these and just use it as a CPU"... instead of assuming that, tests like these tell us exactly what is going on, and why that may or may not be a good idea. Or why AMD abandoned the idea of non-IGP Steamroller chips. More info = better

And of COURSE you have to disable OpenCL in a Photoshop CPU benchmark. Since you're benchmarking the CPU and not the GPU that is installed (in this case a 280X) or the IGP which would skew results.

What would be the point of letting the 280X (or whatever) do the work in a Photoshop test, when you're benchmarking the CPU? If you want more detailed results, such as OpenCL in Photoshop, you should look at a full APU review, not a CPU overclocking performance test.
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Only a complete idiot would buy an AMD APU to use the CPU section only. The article chose the wrong benchmarks, and using an external card told real users absolutely nothing about the performance of the APU package as a whole. I think everyone that was interested in Kaveri knew that AMD stuffed it with a larger GPU section than the competition to set it apart from the competition.

The tests told us absolutely nothing about what an overclocked Kaveri APU being used as an APU is capable of. One of the worst articles I've ever read and I'll stick by that. Before you think I'm some champion of AMD I think the whole concept of APU's is retarded from Intel and AMD. Intel hasn't released a new chip since 2500K's came out and to be honest my old FX-8120 ran everything perfectly fine. This whole let's shrink die sizes to save electricity without raising the bar on performance is a travesty for the enthusiast crowd. I wish Intel wasn't so large that a 3rd party could feel as if they can compete and show us something new and exciting.

It's like both of these monoliths think we want a tablet to check our email and if we want to game then buy a XBOX One or PS4. That's what the real problem is. They've lost their way. My FX-9370 should last me until 2020 at least. I haven't seen an announcement that says performance from either camp. Tired of these mosquito performance releases. I want a 12 cylinder engine darn it!
 
ShadowVlican said:
this just shows how insanely weak AMD CPU cores are

sticking with Intel for my gaming system...
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It shows what performance you would get if you ignored 1/2 the APU and used another video card. So yes, it's not that great of a chip unless you turn on the full power of the APU as seen in other website's tests like Anandtech. As an APU it's miles ahead of Intel. As a pure CPU Intel beats it. In the end it all depends on your intended use as to which product is better.

Personally if I were to build my 5 year old niece a PC, I'd use it as an APU because it excels at Photoshop, video editing, gaming, and office apps that utilize HSA and OpenCL. LibreOffice showed a test where it was really good. It would be the perfect PC for someone that's not a hardcore gamer. But if I intended to pair it with an external video card, then I would buy the Intel solution as it is faster than the AMD solution. Even if it's an AMD video card, the Intel solution is faster so far from the few legitimate tests on the web. Of course AMD is banking on Mantle to change that perception, but I don't care about that until it is launched.

Make sense?
 
ShadowVlican said:
this just shows how insanely weak AMD CPU cores are

sticking with Intel for my gaming system...
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I own both an FX8320 and an i7 4930k. I don't see much real-world difference between the two in games and the 8320 was far cheaper.
 
maverick786us said:
Will this APU bring AMD back into track to provide stiff competition with Intel?
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http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1803275

Find some Intel CPU which can do the same as Kaveri for the same price i would say.
Then again if you are looking for single thread performance I would say no. And don't worry about that in the next 10 years it is not going to happen either for single thread.
 
It still amazes me that AMD is still sooo far behind even the low end Intel offerings. How could they possibly still be so far behind? It it a talent issue? It is a financial resources issue? Manufacturing issue? Why cant they just break of a group of their best people, or hire a few geniuses, and get their asses back in the game? I really want to support AMD, and I want to see competition in the market, but I just cant bring myself to buy another AMD CPU given their current offerings.
 
AMD went down the wrong architecture road and are stuck with it for a while.

In addition to Intel's advantage in process tech (largely only benefiting low power and mobile chips), it leaves AMD "in the dust".

HSA is kind of their last ditch effort to compete against all of that.
 
ZenDragon said:
It still amazes me that AMD is still sooo far behind even the low end Intel offerings. How could they possibly still be so far behind? It it a talent issue? It is a financial resources issue? Manufacturing issue? Why cant they just break of a group of their best people, or hire a few geniuses, and get their asses back in the game? I really want to support AMD, and I want to see competition in the market, but I just cant bring myself to buy another AMD CPU given their current offerings.
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When you consider that your competition reported a revenue of $52 billion compared to your $1.53 billion in revenue, then there is a huge difference in what your company is capable of doing. In this case, you have to pick and choose the battles you want to wage to keep you in business.

You are also limited in resources available to you and what you can spend on.

Should I as a company invest in purely improving desktop processor performance and survive?

Or, should I work on longer term solutions that will give me a return on investment in the future?

With Intel, they can afford to work on multiple projects on multiple fronts because of the resources available to them. They're focusing on mobile processors (Atom), laptop and desktop processors (Core i-series), server processors (Xeon), and still have money leftover for research and development of newer technologies and future processors.

For AMD, that's not the case and isn't so simple. If they focus on only one product such as desktop processors because it's possibly all they could afford to invest in, they would be out of business very soon. For example, mom and pop shops around my city that focus solely on one product such as selling furniture or bicycles especially products that people don't purchase regularly like clothing, have gone out of business. It's like going down one street and see a new business open up only to close up a few years later.

AMD has to pick their battles carefully and have chosen to focus primarily on integration between CPU and GPU, and investment into newer technologies that will help push that integration forward-- HSA, Mantle, hUMA, etc. And, as is said before, they are stuck on this architecture. They cannot afford to switch at this point with so much invested in it already thanks to past leadership at AMD. We can only hope for a significant improvement when Excavator comes around and a new architecture after that.
 
omega-x said:
AMD went down the wrong architecture road and are stuck with it for a while.

In addition to Intel's advantage in process tech (largely only benefiting low power and mobile chips), it leaves AMD "in the dust".

HSA is kind of their last ditch effort to compete against all of that.
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Its not really the wrong architecture. Its just not openly supported by everyone and their brother. Ie if a program cannot make use of all available threads then it strongly favors Intel with their better IPC and fewer cores. When things are on fair footing and both cpus are being used to there fullest, the high end AMD parts beat the Intel offerings in the same price range. Granted they use more power.

Intel has a advantage in process as well, like you said, and that really benefits them in power consumption and die size. Forces Amd to sell a bigger die for less money, hurting their profit margins.

HSA is not a last ditch effort, it has been in development for a long time. Its a effort to maximize efficiency, or performance per watt, to use other types of processors to perform tasks. Ie the x86 core is not the best way to process all tasks. Think of it as a evolution, rather than last effort. If your computer has a GPU and a CPU why wouldn't you want to use the processing power of both to complete tasks?

You can keep the brute force method and get small gains though improvements or you can solve the problem using a better method. You can pick up a rock with your hands, or you can use a pulley to lift the rock. The person using the pulley completes the job faster and uses less energy to do so. This is more efficient than building more muscle to lift the rock easier. :cool:
 
I think AMD is doing a decent job in trying to find new ways to save their target market money. For their APUs they are obviously targeting the users that want a lower end system (due to budget constraints) since they could still play games without buying a dedicated gpu on low-mid settings and the gfx from the apu isn't that much slower than the gpu in the new(er) consoles made by sony and microsoft. It'll also be interesting to see going forward what happens with mantle and how well crossfire will work with a dedicated gpu if/when they can optimize it.

For someone wanting to buy a new pc, is on a tight budget, and is only interested at gaming at 1080p or below I think this apu is a great starting ground.
 
ssnyder28 said:
For someone wanting to buy a new pc, is on a tight budget, and is only interested at gaming at 1080p or below I think this apu is a great starting ground.
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Exactly. If you are considering an APU to game on from Intel or AMD you would choose AMD 100% of the time because it cremates Intel at gaming as a pure APU. You can run BF4 and anything else at respectable frame rates. Intel has no answer to AMD APUs if using it as a standalone product. If you're going to toss a video card with it then Intel takes the crown. Need to see what Mantle brings to the table before commenting on it as it could change this last scenario.
 
ZenDragon said:
It still amazes me that AMD is still sooo far behind even the low end Intel offerings. How could they possibly still be so far behind? It it a talent issue? It is a financial resources issue? Manufacturing issue? Why cant they just break of a group of their best people, or hire a few geniuses, and get their asses back in the game? I really want to support AMD, and I want to see competition in the market, but I just cant bring myself to buy another AMD CPU given their current offerings.
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APU is something different maybe you can point out which powerful Intel cpu with integrated graphics can outperform Kaveri at the same cost?
 
So there are almost no reviews out for the 7850K at least not my usual go to sites. The few that I've found say basically that Kaveri is a flop. Barely faster than Richland and still no match for Intel in all but a few applications.
 
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