AMD Launches The A10-7800, The 65 Watt Kaveri

[Bucic]

web browsers aren't really that performance sensitive (nor should they be)

Yeah, the about:new isn't. Heavy web pages make them squeal. Not to mention Flash.

Also the idea that games make poor use of additional cores is a myth that's only really true of bad console ports.. There is a reason that FRAPS likes more cores

Most games are 'dual core at best'. Paying extra for quad core for gaming is silly.


I still like AMD's APUs. Just pointing out the possible reasons behind people paying more attention to single/dual core performance.

[Zan Lynx]

Most games are 'dual core at best'. Paying extra for quad core for gaming is silly.

That used to be true. More and more game developers are using things like Intel's Cilk or TBB which will smoothly spread work to any number of cores.

AMD's Mantle, DX 11 and new versions of OpenGL all provide efficient ways to use multiple threads for graphics. As soon as game developers can drop support for DX 9 and 10 you'll start to really see something.

Look at upcoming game engines like EQ Landmark. It is using a voxel engine and it will use all the CPU cores you can give it. The more cores, the better. And it's 64-bit only. They're leaving old technology behind.

[Kivada]

If you're into gaming you will put the most money into a discrete gpu, like my son who uses an i3 with a R9 290 = maximum gaming performance per dollar. Kaveri wouldn't do him any good.

For myself, as a Linux/Android hacker, I recently upgraded my home server/Linux workstation with a i5 4570S which also has 65W TDP. But is very very much faster than Kaveri, and actually not much more expensive. And it was easily obtainable. I use a discrete Nvidia card, meaning gaming performance is much better than Kaveri too. Kaveri wouldn't do me any good.

For htpc I always used outdated PC stuff I don't use anymore, those various components inside a box has at all times played back 1080P movies flawlessly, I wouldn't put any money into another box.

I'm sure there is someone out there who finds Kaveri intriguing, like for the so-not-here-yet heterogenous computing, but I see it mostly as a laptop cpu and maybe somewhat interesting for lower TDP:s than 45/65W. Talking about laptops I recently bought a laptop for my daughter, it uses a Haswell i7 ULV which performs quite well with Windows 8.1, but it is only 15W TDP. Hard to beat for Kaveri, and it uses a Nvidia gpu so gaming is better too.

AMD really needs to have higher single threaded performance cores to be an alternative that doesn't compromise real world performance, otherwise most people will do like me and end up buying Intel. Total platform cost doesn't differ much even if the cpu is a few dollars cheaper. And in the ultra portable world like phones and tablets ARM already rules, being a headache even for Intel, AMD isn't even near a tablet design win afaik .... so, very cheap laptops could be the thing for Kaveri, possibly ...

No they don't, they need exactly what they're building, APUs for HSA, take note of the list of companies collaborating with them, most of them are ARM SoC builders for a reason, HSA is going to help a ton on consumer grade systems, especially since it looks like the libraries they are building will get you GPGPU capability for your existing software without having to write specifically for OpenCL.

[Kivada]

CPU pricing at a computer store seems to be set by what they are worth to gamers, but what if gaming isn't what you are buying the chip for? I know bulldozer is reported to suck for gaming and single-threaded, but for video editing it is nearly 50% faster than my older Phenom II x4 chips were. Published benchmarks have shown AMD performance in libx264 (my main load) to be comparable to Intel chips of same year of release selling for about $100 more. Due to the fact that this CPU is not so hot for anything else (except possibly server use), if I kill mine I can get another 8-core for as little as $140-until the lack of demand shuts down the FX line. Wonder what they will then trade for on E-bay? Keep talking trash, you will save me money if electromigration kills my main chip...

Actually you'd be surprised.

And the followup with an upgrade to the FX-9590 https://teksyndicate.com/videos/pist...gaming-editing

[Kivada]

I can count on two fingers the number of Intel chips that are in the thousand-dollar category.

And even fewer Intel chips that are only 1% more powerful than what AMD offers.


So I think it's much more likely that once again you were talking out of your ass.

It's okay to be loyal to AMD for some emotional reason or whatever, but let's not mince facts here. Intel has far better offerings up and down the product line.

If we're talking performance per dollar, the AMD APUs beat anything Intel has at the same price point. Doesn't matter what task the common customer is doing, the single threaded performance has been good enough for years now, what matters these days is responsiveness and AMD's multicore designs are better at it then Intel's multicore designs, just look at any comparison, the Intel parts seem work work in in spikes and fits, while the AMD parts just hold a constant.

Source: I work in a comp repair and custom build shop and review sites that are honest like Tek Syndacate that show no gain in the the most GPU intensive areas of the games and even shows the AMD parts performing better in Metro:LL then the equivalent Intel parts as well as AMD's parts handling streaming and screen capture better then Intel parts.

[Luke_Wolf]

Yeah, the about:new isn't. Heavy web pages make them squeal. Not to mention Flash.

It's called install an ad blocker like ghostery, also ever since they released a 64-bit version of flash for linux I haven't had a problem with it running things up and any non-netbook modern x86 processor is more than capable of dealing with flash regardless.

Most games are 'dual core at best'. Paying extra for quad core for gaming is silly.

Zan answered this well, and I don't have anything to add here

I still like AMD's APUs. Just pointing out the possible reasons behind people paying more attention to single/dual core performance.

the real reason is three words: Intel Viral Marketing. They basically pay off Anandtech, Tom's hardware and a few other key sites to manipulate the enthusiast market which then trickles down into the more general public as the unwashed masses go ask their resident enthusiast what computer they should buy.

The simple fact is outside of a few poorly designed games, games have stopped being CPU bound (in terms of single thread performance) since the core 2 era, Crysis 3 minimum requirements just specify a dual core CPU and specifically point out the Core 2 duo, Witcher 2 is the same, and for both their high end requirements just specify a modern quad core.

If you look at this benchmarks this is basically born out. For a game run under real world settings you gain at most a few frames per second, and they're primarily GPU bound. Sure if you turn the settings all the way down to get absurd FPS there might be a much bigger gap but pray tell who does that in practice? The only real exceptions are poorly written games like Skyrim, and things like RTSes, but in the later case there's a lot more to be gained by going parallel as opposed to throwing more power at any particular thread.

[Kivada]

Why does the picture graph say the 7850 can use DDR3-2400, but the wikipedia page says only DDR3-2133? Which one is correct?..

Here is the wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...14.2C_28_nm.29

The stock speed is DDR3 2133, thats what the Kaveri chips are designed for. But since you can overclock the chips the limits on that are what your ram and APU can take, but the nice thing is that the GPU gains increase almost linearly with ram performance, don't expect miracles of performance out of it though, it's still just an APU, so if you are building a new system you'd have to weigh the cost of better ram against the potential for 5-10% increases in performance. Generally DDR3 2400 isn't that much more then DDR3 2133, though IIRC the guys that are competition class overclockers have scaled the ram speed much higher, like over 3Ghz...

[Kivada]

Yeah, the about:new isn't. Heavy web pages make them squeal. Not to mention Flash.


Most games are 'dual core at best'. Paying extra for quad core for gaming is silly.


I still like AMD's APUs. Just pointing out the possible reasons behind people paying more attention to single/dual core performance.

What Zan Lynx said and the fact that the new consoles are all 8 core with 8Gb of ram and a GCN GPU means that in the next year or so you'll be seeing alot more games using more cores and ram, titles like Watch Dogs and a few others are already using over 6Gb of ram and many games made over the last few years have been making use of more then 2 cores.

I mean just look at Star Citizen, that game is going to need one beast of a comp to run as the devs intended.

[Kivada]

It's called install an ad blocker like ghostery, also ever since they released a 64-bit version of flash for linux I haven't had a problem with it running things up and any non-netbook modern x86 processor is more than capable of dealing with flash regardless.


Zan answered this well, and I don't have anything to add here



the real reason is three words: Intel Viral Marketing. They basically pay off Anandtech, Tom's hardware and a few other key sites to manipulate the enthusiast market which then trickles down into the more general public as the unwashed masses go ask their resident enthusiast what computer they should buy.

The simple fact is outside of a few poorly designed games, games have stopped being CPU bound (in terms of single thread performance) since the core 2 era, Crysis 3 minimum requirements just specify a dual core CPU and specifically point out the Core 2 duo, Witcher 2 is the same, and for both their high end requirements just specify a modern quad core.

If you look at this benchmarks this is basically born out. For a game run under real world settings you gain at most a few frames per second, and they're primarily GPU bound. Sure if you turn the settings all the way down to get absurd FPS there might be a much bigger gap but pray tell who does that in practice? The only real exceptions are poorly written games like Skyrim, and things like RTSes, but in the later case there's a lot more to be gained by going parallel as opposed to throwing more power at any particular thread.

Exactly, just look at how many reviews on AMD APUs pit them against far more expensive Intel parts and then when you look at the Intel part reviews they compare it to mostly just other Intel parts instead of being honest and pairing them up with parts in the same price bracket for a fair comparison.

[Kivada]

Actually you'd be surprised.

And the followup with an upgrade to the FX-9590 https://teksyndicate.com/videos/pist...gaming-editing

I meant this one as the followup https://teksyndicate.com/videos/loga...930k-gtx-780ti the previous link contains no actual testing, it just does an overview of the parts and why they where selected.