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Hardware Intel Haswell vs AMD Richland - the GPU test

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Meanmotion, 2 Jul 2013.

  1. Meanmotion

    Meanmotion bleh Moderator

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  2. GuilleAcoustic

    GuilleAcoustic Ook ? Ook !

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    Nice comparison. I'd be interested to see the same test with faster memory (2400MHz for example). The 1600MHz RAM quite limits the AMD APU IGP.
     
  3. maverik-sg1

    maverik-sg1 Minimodder

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    GuilleAcoustic makes a good point in the sense that having the knowledge to choosing and setting up the correct RAM for AMD's apu will have a positive net effect on the performance of their package (maybe same for Intel?.

    However, having to purchase more expensive RAM is something that might effect the decision making process.....that is to say, a more cost effective solution might be buying i3 and a £60 gpu off of ebay(GTX560?).

    It's worth investigating
     
  4. rollo

    rollo Modder

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    With ram prices on the rise again is 2400mhz ram really that readily available and cheap enough to really recommend on a budget system we are talking about here. £20 premium for 2133 stuff. ( £68 for 2133 £48 for 1600mhz 8gb) £77 for the 2400 stuff on scan. Thats nearly double the cost of the 1600stuff.

    £300-£400 budget does not allow you to double the memory cost for the same amount which is the budget range for an AMD 6800 system. ( that assumes you have monitor mouse keyboard OS as its basically difficult to even build that on that budget if you need those items as well)

    If you aproach £500 a cheap I3 with a 7850 gpu is going to blow away any onboard option either way.
     
  5. Stanley Tweedle

    Stanley Tweedle NO VR NO PLAY

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    Giant LOL at the 17 fps max FPS on Heaven. At this rate we'll be looking at 5 years before cGPU reach playable frame rate in HD.
     
  6. jrs77

    jrs77 Modder

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    The IGP still isn't powerful enough, if you want to play games in 1080p. And I'm not talking about browsergames or very old titles.
    For office and work, the IGP isn't that interesting either, as most stuff is still processed by the CPU.

    So in the end the best option is still to go with an intel-CPU and pair it with a dedicated GPU, if you want to play some games from time to time.
     
  7. Funky

    Funky What's a Dremel?

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    Me to. I think 1866 memory would have been the sweet spot for price/performance though.
     
  8. SchizoFrog

    SchizoFrog What's a Dremel?

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    I am still not convinced that building a 'gaming machine' of any description is worth while with onboard graphics. I would much rather have an Intel CPU and a separate GPU, even if it is a little more expensive. The long term benefits make it worth while to me.
     
  9. teppic

    teppic What's a Dremel?

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    1866MHz RAM is doable in a budget machine. Amazon has 2x2GB 1866MHz at £23.

    These APUs do perfectly fine at medium settings on most games, and at high settings on many older ones. There's certainly a market for that.

    The FX-6300 is a better option if a midrange graphics card is wanted.
     
  10. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag What's a Dremel?

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    Though I don't know the amount of transistors in the GPUs, it is nice to see that AMD uses a higher fab size and lower frequency while still outperforming Intel.
     
  11. AlienwareAndy

    AlienwareAndy What's a Dremel?

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    Why is it that reviewers and magazines insist on doing things with Crossfire knowing that it is broken?

    Seriously, it's starting to piss me the chuff off now. How can you review something that simply doesn't work properly without doing a FCAT analysis and showing what's really happening?

    A couple of months ago I bought a magazine from WHsmith (was at the hospital). Any way, in this magazine there was a huge write up about multiple GPU set ups and it was pretty much SLI vs CFX for three screens. Now this is an area that every one knows (or should if they have an hour spare to read Pcper's FCAT articles) that AMD is truly, utterly borked in.

    Not only does CFX suck on one screen but the problem becomes even worse on three. Yet this article totally trashed SLI and bot-licked CFX suggesting that every one use a pair of 7970s.

    Why? FFS, don't they realise it just doesn't work properly?

    Bit-tech. You have been around for years now. Maybe it's time to invest in a capture card and RAID array of SSDs so that you can actually keep up with the times and use FCAT to tell your loyal readers the real deal? If not? tben it'll be just another article where my palm meets my face.

    Get with the times FFS.
     
  12. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag What's a Dremel?

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    I don't think Crossfire, or SLi for that matter, are anywhere near as bad as you think. If you want to bring up things "FFS", I'm using Crossfire in Linux, and you don't hear me complaining! While there's no way to force-enable it for all games, the only issue I encounter is I can't enable IOMMU and use CF at the same time. In Windows, I don't get many issues either, unless I force-enable it for games that don't need it. Nvidia has supposedly fixed their microstutter problem recently, and AMD is about to as well. Microstutter is, from what I heard, the main usage problem with multi-GPU systems.
     
  13. AlienwareAndy

    AlienwareAndy What's a Dremel?

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    I run SLI.

    Crossfire, however, is completely borked and will be until AMD get a driver out that can fix the runt and dropped frames - note - none of which were mentioned during testing.

    So that means that at a FRAPs level CFX displays some impressive frame counts. However, what you see isn't what you get.

    That's the point I'm making and until it's confirmed that AMD have sorted it out once and for all I think that showing any kind of Crossfire set up in a positive light is just plain wrong.

    Mostly because it encourages people to spend money on something that doesn't work which is awfully annoying. I know this only too well because I bought a pair of 5770s at launch (for £260) and they were absolutely bloody awful, yet, shown by reviewers to beat a 5870 'easily'.

    So my point remains. As of right now showing Crossfire X in any positive light whatsoever is wrong.
     
  14. DbD

    DbD Minimodder

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    In reality there is basically 0 market for ultra budget igp gaming desktops. Either you don't really care and any integrated is fine, or you care and you buy a cheap discrete card. Even poor gamers would be best off stumping up the cash for an i3 and cheap discrete gpu (even if they have to buy it off ebay).. The upgrade path is so much better as if in the future you have a few £££ you can easily then plug in a much faster i5 or higher end gpu.

    Most of the market wouldn't even consider that - they'd just buy a console. Why fight with the settings when you can buy something that will play games perfectly every time.

    The only gaming market for onboard gpu's is budget laptops - that's about the only place these make sense. Even then the market is pretty limited.
     
  15. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    I beg to differ. You've missed off a small market segment there - and I know you have, because I'm in that very segment: people who want a low-power system capable of playing a few games.

    My desktop is an AMD A10-5800K, because I wanted something that drew less power than my old Intel and GeForce combo yet would still allow me to play games from the Humble Bundle and similar - even if I have to turn the settings down a bit, or run at a non-native resolution. In that, I excelled: for £500, I got a system with specifications that matched my requirements (A10-5800K, motherboard with at least one PCI slot for a legacy card I use, 16GB of reasonable-speed RAM, SSD, SATA optical drive to replace my old IDE one, nice quiet case and a few extra cooling fans) and performs brilliantly. More importantly, it draws significantly less power than my old system, both at idle and under load.

    Job done, happy customer. If it starts to struggle with the type of game I play, I may stick a cheap graphics card in there - a passively cooled one, for preference, as my rig is near-silent at the moment and I wouldn't want that to change - but for now I'm gold.
     
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  16. Shirty

    Shirty W*nker! Super Moderator

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    I read a statistic somewhere that 86% of personal computers in the world are not used for gaming in any meaningful capacity. Of the 14% that are, only 21% have a dedicated GPU.

    DISCLAIMER: I may not have read this anywhere, but it's probably true.
     
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  17. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag What's a Dremel?

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    I completely agree with you. Even Intel IGPs are ok for casual games and indie games. As the benchmarks in this article have shown, the A10 was still very capable of playing L4D2, which is graphically modest. Besides, not everyone cares about having max details or playing a game at >60FPS. If AMD can improve their CPU power efficiency, APUs will make excellent mid-range gaming laptops, and with a discrete GPU in CFX, APUs make great mid-range desktops.
     
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  18. teppic

    teppic What's a Dremel?

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    I agree too. The performance of the APU means access to most games at playable rates, ones which aren't an option with the i3 IGP. If you're thinking about buying a £150+ graphics card, this obviously isn't the target market.

    Also, with a mild overclock and faster RAM, the scores would have been boosted quite noticeably.
     
  19. PCBuilderSven

    PCBuilderSven Minimodder

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    That's just wrong, I've got a laptop with an A8-3520M and a Radeon 7450M in Crossfire with which I have no problems. So either dual graphics on APUs is different (I don't believe that it is), has better drivers, or the problems have been fixed.
     
  20. Meanmotion

    Meanmotion bleh Moderator

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    As schmidtbag said, you're blowing it completely out of proportion. I've run Crossfire systems for ages without any issues. Sure there may have been the odd stutter but not detrimentally so. Much more of a problem still is whether games/apps support dual-GPU at all. But moreover, given the context of this feature, talking about FCAT in Crossfire is totally overblown.
     
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