A10 7850k New Build Impressions + Dual Graphics

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rennyf77

2[H]4U
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Feb 12, 2007
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Oh boy! The gear has arrived for my 7850k apu build. A run down of the parts in the pic:

A10 7850k
Msi A88X-M E35
Gskill Ares 2400 2x4GB
Powercolor R7 250
Coolermaster Seidon 120 Water Cooler
Xigmatek 120mm Coper Blade White LED
Bitfenix Blue/Black Single Sleeve 24 Pin Psu+ EPS 8 Pin
Cougar Archon

Gotta run some errands, but i'm itching to get this build started.
 
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Why water cooled? How hot do these usually run? Interesting :), I haven't seen much with their APUs so wondering what kind of perf you'll get from it :)
 
DracoNB said:
Why water cooled? How hot do these usually run? Interesting :), I haven't seen much with their APUs so wondering what kind of perf you'll get from it :)
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AIOs aren't any better than regular air and not that much more expensive either.
 
Guess I'm missing the dual graphics. But clean wiring and a nice setup!
 
nice little build there.

I dunno about dual graphics, though, its hit or miss.
 
Guy had a budget and a good idea what he wanted his machine to do. I say props. It's a good clean build.
 
ToddW2 said:
What do you mean "hit or miss" ?
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Game wise, will dual graphics work for each game or have driver issues. Some games run better with just the video card vs. dual graphics enabled. Whole lot of info out there....just google it.\

PS: nice rig but needs SSD. :)
 
nice setup i am looking to do the same system as you . what did the final cost run you ?
 
lots of interest. maybe I should post up my build.
EDIT: Lets see some benchmarks?
 
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I've completed the overclocking of the 7850k and while it arrives at a state 200mhz shy of my 6800k, the ipc improvements over the richland chip makes up for the difference and then some. First lets address the overclock. I was able to achieve a stress stable clock of 4.3ghz at 1.48v. The msi board I chose for my build unfortunately did not allow me to adjust voltages except for dram. With every multiplier increase, the board bios would increase vcore on its own. At an os bootable clock of 4.6ghz, cpuz reported vcore as high as 1.56v under stress. With this much voltage delivered to the cpu one might think that excessive temperature maybe the limiting factor. Unfortunately, it is no the case. The piriform.com utility speecy measured sub 70'c temperatures during 4.4ghz stress testing before system failure, suggesting the chip was experiencing temperature well within its operational tolerances. The overclocking limiting factor in this instance turns out to be the chip itself.

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As with the 6800k build, I chose a Handbrake conversion and a WinRAR compression to examine the productive capabilities of the overclocked 7850k. An Anydvd Hd rip of Thor The Dark World was copied over to the system Western Digital Caviar Green 1tb storage drive. Using Handbrake a 720p mkv file was created onto the desktop of the Western Digital Velociraptor 600gb os drive. This task took the cpu 44:43 minutes to complete, a little less than 3 minutes faster than the overclocked 6800k.
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The next test is to compress the 720p file using WinRAR. This task required 7:26 minutes to complete. Marginally faster than the 4.5ghz 6800k.
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The next set of tests will focus on pairing the embedded 7850k gpu with a Powercolor r7 250 and Powercolcor HD 7750 in dual graphics, with 3dmark 11 scores and Battlefield 4, Metro Last Light, and Crysis 3 gameplay analysis. On to overclocking the embedded r7. Stay tuned community.
 
I think this is an excellent system. :) I am tempted to build one myself but, I do not need it. I like the steamroller cores though which are in the 7700K I have put into a new mITX build for my dad. The IPC is definitely being improved.
 
Can't wait to see the gaming performance.

Yeah, the IPC improvements of the SR cores are pretty nice. The process node is responsible for the overclocking walls. It's optimized more for a balance of CPU+GPU rather than CPU only like 32nm SOI was.
 
Yeah, I just built the A10-7700K mITX system. Unfortunately, the GPU portion of the APU is bad according to AMD when I called them for help. It is being shipped back to newegg today for replacement and they covered the return shipment. (Just in case, I took a bunch of pictures of the APU and the boxing back up of it. I don't want to even give them a chance to screw me, just in case.)
 
I just put together an A10-7850K mITX setup for my wife and so far I love it. No dual graphics yet but it is a zippy little thing. Anxious to try some games. What kind of temps are you seeing on the chip? I am running a Corsair H100i and seeing about 40* idle... is that normal?

A10-7850K
ASRock FM2A88X-ITX+
Kingston HyperX 2400mhz 8GB
Rosewill 550W PSU
Crucial C300 64GB
Corsair H100i
Corsair 250D
 
when the temperature in my computer room is ~65'f the cpu idles at 32-34'c. if i turn up the heat to 70-75'f it may get to 38'c but it'll only idle at 40'c or more after heavy use. if my 7850k cold boots at 40'c i would be worried.
 
That's a nice little rig you have there. Plenty of GPU power @ 1080P. I'm one of the few that prefers 1080P panels as I'm getting old & these eyes need help! Can I ask what your set-up cost? I have a Microcenter about 40 miles away & can score a decent Asus FM2A88M-HD MB & 7850K for $189.98
 
rennyf77 said:
when the temperature in my computer room is ~65'f the cpu idles at 32-34'c. if i turn up the heat to 70-75'f it may get to 38'c but it'll only idle at 40'c or more after heavy use. if my 7850k cold boots at 40'c i would be worried.
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Yea I am not sure if the BIOS for my motherboard was showing the correct temperature. I downloaded the ASRock A-Tuning software and it showed the CPU temp at 38*. I am OK with that when the H100i is in quiet mode.
 
UMASS said:
That's a nice little rig you have there. Plenty of GPU power @ 1080P. I'm one of the few that prefers 1080P panels as I'm getting old & these eyes need help! Can I ask what your set-up cost? I have a Microcenter about 40 miles away & can score a decent Asus FM2A88M-HD MB & 7850K for $189.98
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For my build I think I paid about $650 for all brand new parts and I supplied my own storage... But I did choose some pricey components when I could have gone cheaper, I just wanted to ensure I bought items I knew I could work with well - Corsair case, modular PSU, faster RAM. Those parts right there increased cost about $100-150 over cheap items.
 
tweake628 said:
nice setup i am looking to do the same system as you . what did the final cost run you ?
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UMASS said:
That's a nice little rig you have there. Plenty of GPU power @ 1080P. I'm one of the few that prefers 1080P panels as I'm getting old & these eyes need help! Can I ask what your set-up cost? I have a Microcenter about 40 miles away & can score a decent Asus FM2A88M-HD MB & 7850K for $189.98
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the prices on a few items have increased since i placed the order. cost came to just under $547 usd minus the sleeved cables. the ocz 550w full modular psu i bought a while back for my llano build but the price is much higher now. hard drives are recycled, too. repriced everything on the egg with the same major components as in the pic (minus cables) and it comes out $621 usd to the dollar. yipes.

Comixbooks said:
What case is that ?
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its the cougar archon. cheapest case i could find with a side window.

I'm almost ready to post the gaming test numbers. the longest part of this process has been finding the overclock for the powercolor r7 250. the damn thing just kept clocking higher and higher.
 
The gaming specific tests of my a10 7800k build are complete. there is good news and bad news. First lets examine overclocking the embedded r7 gpu of the kaveri chip. The msi board allowed no voltage manipulation outside of dram. So unlike previous llano, trinity, and richland builds i've done, one couldn't increase northbridge voltage to extract more performance out of the gpu. I don't know if this is a symptom of the kaveri platform, or a quirk specific to this mobo. Another quirk is with gpu frequency manipulation. Again, unlike the previous apu platforms, with kaveri i was only allowed to select an operating speed from a list of available frequencies. I couldn't just type in what clock i wanted the gpu to run. That being said, the highest overclock i was able to achieve ended up at 900mhz.

To overclock the Powercolor r7 250 i once again used Sapphire's Trixx utility. I was able to achieve an overclock of 1250 core/1200 memory. The card allowed me to increase the power limit by 20%, but would not allow me to increase gpu voltage beyond its max of 1.2v.

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3dmark 11 apparently does not officially support the kaveri platform. After running the benchmark, the results page listed the cpu as an amd k15 part and detects the discrete card as a 8760 rather than an r7 250. It also detected the vendor as Visiontek rather than Powercolor. The only thing 3dmark seemed to get right was the gpu clock. The 7850k and r7 250 scored 4532 points. This is 262 points fewer than the combination of 6800k plus hd 7750. I wouldn't take this score too seriously, as the actual gameplay tests tell a different story.

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The three titles used in the gameplay tests are Metro Last Light, Battlefield 4(campaign), and Crysis 3. In Metro Last light i recorded frames from the D6 stage, beginning at Miller's speech and ending at the fadeout after the armored train arrives. I was able to use the very high quality preset, while disabling physx, ssa, and tessellation. The average frame rate in this run was 35. This is the same average frame rate of the 6800k + hd 7750, but that system could only muster the high quality preset.

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For the Battlefield 4 playtest i chose the Tashgar stage. Recording began once the team departs from the marines burning evidence and ends at the bridge before they arrive at Greenland's compound. I was able to use the high preset with 2x msaa and averaged 27 frames. The performance here is similar to the 6800k + hd 7750 results, but that system had to make due without msaa.

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For Crysis 3 i used the Root of All Evil stage, recording frames from the moment Prophet emerges from the cave, eliminates all enemies in the area, and finally to engaging the elevator at the left side of the dam. I was able to use the high quality preset with high quality texture resolution and achieve an average frame rate of 32. The 6800k + hd 7750 system made due with medium settings across the board with a similar average frame rate.

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Remember that bad news i mentioned earlier? The bad news is that when i installed the Powercolor hd 7750, catalyst had no available option to enable dual graphics. Both the embedded gpu in the 7850k and hd 7750 are 28nm parts and both feature 512 stream processors. Considering the performance of the 7850k + r7 250, the combination of the 7850k + hd 7750 would have been the quintessential apu build. Especially since the hd 7750 and r7 250 each cost me 89.99. Hopefully once amd re-brands the hd 7750 under their r7 umbrella we will be able to crossfire these two parts.

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Very nice review there renny. Is it possible that there will be no support for dual graphics with the 7750?
 
TraptPatriot said:
Very nice review there renny. Is it possible that there will be no support for dual graphics with the 7750?
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thanks patriot. it would really be a shame if that were the case. its possible that we'll never see a discrete r7 variant of the hd 7750; that perhaps amd is producing those chips to exclusively embed with steamroller cores for kaveri. just speculation on my part. when amd rebranded the hd 7970 to the r9 280x, they allowed those two parts to crossfire, so i'm going to hold out a little hope that we'll see 7850k and hd 7750 dual graphics.
 
Yea it would be nice if they did. I don't think my wife would play much of games so I doubt I would go dual graphics anyway. But maybe I will just because I can haha.
 
DracoNB said:
Why water cooled? How hot do these usually run? Interesting :), I haven't seen much with their APUs so wondering what kind of perf you'll get from it :)
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They are quieter and do cool better. If you don't overclock muck they are really quieter. They look better imo.
 
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nice build- very clean with wiring! I never saw that archon case before-pretty sweet if you like the color scheme
 
1/2 bent said:
They are quieter and do cool better. If you don't overclock muck they are really quieter. They look better imo.
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Very true. The H100i I have starts off pretty loud but then the fan speed goes down and it is pretty decent. And the processor stays nice and cool.
 
Nice build! And thanks for taking the time to perform all the testing and post the results.
 
HI

I have A10 7850K CF with R7 240 DDR3

The added GPU makes a big inprovement. I have underclocked my CPU to 2.7 and FSB is at 90. undervolted everthing I can. I can play Crysis 3 everything on High @ 1600 X 900 around 33 FPS. I cant remember what Level AA I have but I think is 16. around 130watts including my monitor.

The R7 240 only works in a PCIE x4 slot so i cant run my IGPU higher than 745mhz. while i have the R7 240 overclocked to 1025mhz.

If I Overclock any more my PC restarted everytime I finish a benchmark.

Would the PCIE speed really make that big of differance or is it the DDR5.

Could you please run Far cry 2 benchmark at 1080P all MAX?

MY Ram is runing at 1919mhz 8-9-8-8-1 28-4-4-4-6-6-6-90. 1.57V I couldnt get it stable at 2133 or 2400. whats your timing?
 
I know this is an old thread but well out on a run, it got me thinking when I remembered it. OP, you still around and if so, how is the machine doing for you?
 
i parted it out. i built it to test the kaveri platform to see if it was a viable low cost, general usage, and budget gaming platform i could recommend to clients.

i built a budget intel 3.2ghz i5 system that ended costing about 30 bucks more than the 7850k build including the cost of the hd 7750 i mentioned briefly in this thread. gaming with the intel system was easily as fast if not occasionally faster than the 7850k+r7 250 in dual graphics. the gaming deficiency is further exacerbated by games that don't support multi gpu like wolfenstein. the intel build was also faster at encoding and file compression.

its even more difficult for me to recommend a desktop apu today because the cost of the best apus remain high (imo) while excellent chips like the fx 8320 are now costing ~$145. the amd 8 cores are better gaming and multi tasking chips than the apus while only needing regular 1600mhz memory to perform well.
 
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