Hardware AMD A10-7850K and A10-7700K (Kaveri) Reviews

We get our hands on the highest spec APUs from AMD's new Kaveri range. But are they any good?
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2014/01/30/amd-a10-7850k-and-a10-7700k-kaveri-review/1

 

With rumors saying Dice is rolling out their long awaited BF4 Mantle patch in the next few hours/days and with AMD supposedly releasing 14.1 Beta drivers supporting Mantel, would there be a chance of revisiting the BF4 benchmarks ?

 

It'll be fascinating to see if Mantle can do anything for AMD, my feeling is it can't but I'm willing to be surprised.

 

BF4 mantle patch is live

http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf4/news/view/bf4-mantle-live/

 

YYEEEESSS! Perfect, can't wait to try this out when I get home and slot in my new hyperx beast 2400mhz in the kaveri rig!

 

oh and yes kevari shows scaling beyond 2133 ram - 2400 is faster as well

 

looks like they tested for you.

14% faster on a 7850k with mantle.

the headline 58% is in single player with multiple gpus. ( anyone actually play bf4 single player )

Would like to see the multiplayer tested again on a none AMD cpu as its been held back by that CPU acording to Dice.

Will run some testing of my own later on, Enough it seems the 7000 series is unsupported on launch so I guess my 7970 will not work for testing purposes hmm.

 

AMD needs to pull its finger out and publish the 14.1 Beta drivers to go with it, until then we still only have AMD's figures to go on, and the numbers they have published look a bit odd.
Yes we see a claimed %58 in a crossfire rig, but as another site claims it seems Mantel "shows itself most dramatically when you are in a heavily CPU limited environment."

 

Me, first game I completed this year

Only problem I found with the APU is that you have to do FSB overclocking for higher memory speeds, will be less of a problem with Kaveri as it has a 2133 but on my old A10 it was tricky to do more than 2100 as FSB went too high, have they put more multis than 2133 support in Kaveri or does it still need FSB overclock.

 

ocuk have some 2400 kits for £60 (8gb)

 

A crossfire setup will likely be CPU limited.

 

Almost definitely. The thing that struck me as odd was that i got the impression Mantel was intended to improve the GPU side of things, but as it turns out it seems to be a greater benefit in CPU bound situations.

Cant wait to see how much benefit this brings to Kaveri, as unless I'm having a senior moment from what i can tell the CPU part of Kaveri is what is letting it down in terms of FPS.

 

Well you actually say it yourself. It improves on the GPU part of things, to such an extent that the cpu becomes less of a factor and/or bottleneck.

 

Still is the bottleneck acording to dice though.

 

And I think that is part of the problem. The price isn't THAT much more to go from DDR3-1600 2x4GB to DDR3-2400 2x4GB, but it is another $15+. Considering the much lower price of an Intel core i3 Haswell processor, combine that with using less expensive memory, and you are a good part of the way to a low end discrete GPU...which will provide better performance in most CPU AND GPU tasks then, at barely more money.

I see the appeal to Kaveri and it is a good step forward on the GPU front, but on the CPU front it doesn't do much. It seems to maybe hold the line, but AMD was already so far behind the line that doesn't mean much. If you want CPU performance, Intel, if you want an inexpensive machine and don't really care about GPU performance, pretty much Intel again. If you really care about gaming, probably Intel again for the CPU and discrete GPU(s). If you need a real budget gaming rig, or an HTPC that can also double as a gaming rig and are very size limited, THEN Kaveri/AMD makes sense.

Thats a relative edge case. Even basic office tasks, the performance difference (especially because a lot of the stuff is single threaded/light multithreaded) between a low end Intel Pentium Haswell processor even and AMD means you'll have a better entry level computer experience with the Intel Pentium, with a fine GPU that'll handle your Youtubes and Facebooks and flash games and browser GPU acceleration, but generally have better single thread performance and light multithreading and probably also cost around $50-60, cheaper than a bottom of the barrel Kaveri.

 

its a lot closer than you want to think

the top of the line 7850k is $184 on newegg

the i3 4330 is $135

so the $50 difference gets you a WORSE gfx card - to get one comparable its $75 (R7 240)

and I would suggest you check ram price - teamgroup CL10 2400 is $2 more than 1600 CL11

 

overclockers has 8Gb 2400 ram for 56quid

In office scenarios I am hard pressed to tell the difference between my 4.9Ghz 3770 and my daughters underclocked a10.

She can game nicely on her a10 chip, I was impressed anyway, it isn't even as good as Kaveri being one of the old 5700s.