AMD A10-7850K vs. Intel/AMD CPU/APU Comparison

Unfortunately, no OpenCL results are available to share in this article. AMD provides OpenCL support on Linux via their official Catalyst driver while there is limited support (it can handle some Bitcoin mining and other small workloads right now) within AMD's open-source driver via the Gallium3D state tracker. The problem though for this comparison is that when it comes to Intel Linux OpenCL support there is a Linux closed-source OpenCL SDK, but it is limited to running just on the CPU and not the graphics processor where it's supported with Ivy Bridge and Haswell. When it comes to Intel HD Graphics supporting OpenCL on Linux, there's just the experimental Beignet project. In other words, AMD easily wins without trouble on Linux for their OpenCL support both via their closed-source driver with first-rate support and for limited but evolving open-source OpenCL support in R600g and RadeonSI Gallium3D drivers. OpenCL benchmarks of Kaveri will come in the next few days on Phoronix when comparing the OpenCL capabilities against various discrete GPUs.

In terms of the results shown in this article, the processor performance was rather disappointing. In looking at the results the AMD A10-7850K is supposed to be in line with the Intel Core i5 4670K according to AMD's expectations. However, with Ubuntu Linux on this hardware the Core i5 4670 (non-K) was generally running noticeably faster than the Kaveri APU. This is a big deal since the Kaveri APU sells for $190 USD where as the i5-4670 is not much more at a price of about $218. When compared to the previous-generation A10-6800K, the Kaveri APU was between a few percent faster to around 30% faster than the Richland APU.

Besides AMD being the winner when it comes to OpenCL support on Linux, AMD's Kaveri with Radeon R7 Graphics was able to dominate over the Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, and Haswell graphics. This happened when using AMD's official Catalyst Linux graphics driver with full Kaveri enablement. On the Intel HD Graphics side we used their latest available driver, which is just the Linux 3.13 Git kernel and Mesa 10.0.1. Forthcoming benchmarks on Phoronix will look at the open-source RadeonSI Gallium3D driver on Kaveri to see if the A10-7850K can still lead over Intel's graphics on Linux. With Kaveri and Catalyst there's also OpenGL 4 support where as Intel on Linux has no form of complete GL4 compatibility right now, but it's being worked on by their Open-Source Technology Center.

While I still have several more areas I am still investigating -- like more OpenCL benchmarks, the open-source graphics driver tests, compiler tuning, and other low-level Linux testing -- my feeling at the moment is that Kaveri is good enough if you just want a budget PC that you will not be pressuring with heavy CPU workloads. The A10-7850K performance wasn't the best and generally the i5-4670 that costs just about $20~30 more was doing a much better job at keeping up with the demanding benchmarks. In some of the benchmarks the A10-7850K was even losing out to the tested Intel Core i3 CPUs on Linux.

Where Kaveri is coming out strong though is with AMD's Linux OpenCL support in open and closed-source forms, very good graphics capabilities with Catalyst, and low-price point. It's great to see AMD supporting the Kaveri APUs on Linux from day-one and it will be really interesting to see if the lower-end Kaveri APUs still to launch are able to deliver greater value and performance-per-Watt over the latest Intel CPUs. It will also be more interesting when more Linux software supports OpenCL/HSA, but that will surely take a while. There's also greater graphics performance potential if AMD were to bring Mantle to Linux. While AMD has expressed the possibility of bringing their Mantle graphics API to Linux, we have yet to see a full-on commitment to do so nor any possible timetable.

Stay tuned for more AMD Kaveri Linux benchmarks on Phoronix and thanks again to AMD with the A10-7850K sample. If you appreciate this thorough AMD Linux testing that happens at Phoronix, please consider subscribing to Phoronix Premium.