A look into APU graphics performance in modern games.

[Mopetar]

I do wonder how a 4C8T Zen APU with Polaris grafics and 8GB HBM2 would stack up. Put an SSD where RAM would have been and we have a 1 card computer with some grunt.

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Quite well actually. Even though Zen probably won't be as good as Intel's most recent designs, it won't be the utter mess that Bulldozer was. More importantly, getting off a 28 nm process node and moving to something more modern will be another big leg up for AMD. I expect their APUs to do quite well in the market a year from now.

 

[William Gaatjes]

We've been hearing something similar for about 10 years. By the time HSA is mainstream, the 7850K will be long OOP.

It would be a lot easier if there was a visual studio express edition with a plug in for hsa application and easy to start template and examples so that people could just fiddle and have fun with it. I do not know what is the state of current free program tools for programming gpgpu.

It could also be that people just have to be academic to be able to use HSA.
Or that it is feared that brute force password crackers are the most popular programs to write...
Which still would need a very smart person...

 

[AtenRa]

From the latest AT Core i3 Skylake review, It is clear how far behind Skylake iGPU is.
The situation for the Intel iGPU is worse if we take in to account that the AMD APUs are more than a year older (2014) and manufactured with 2 generations older process (28nm vs 14nm).

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10543/the-skylake-core-i3-51w-cpu-review-i3-6320-6300-6100-tested

Total War Attila. A10-7860K is 37% faster at the same 65W TDP vs Core i5 6600 for half the price
and 52% faster than Core i3 6100 at the same price

GTAV : A10-7860K is 37% faster at the same 65W TDP vs Core i5 6600 for half the price
and 73% faster than Core i3 6100 at the same price

GRID : A10-7860K is 37% faster at the same 65W TDP vs Core i5 6600 for half the price
and 48% faster than Core i3 6100 at the same price

Shadow of Mordor : A10-7860K is 37% faster at the same 65W TDP vs Core i5 6600 for half the price
and 58% faster than Core i3 6100 at the same price

Also, a few of the latest 2016 games from gamegpu.ru.

http://gamegpu.com/тест-apu/valentino-rossi-the-game-test-apu

http://gamegpu.com/тест-apu/p-o-l-l-e-n-test-apu

http://gamegpu.com/тест-apu/lego-star-wars-the-force-awakens-test-apu

http://gamegpu.com/тест-apu/witcher-3-wild-hunt-blood-and-wine-test-apu

 

[DaveSimmons]

Witcher 3 is not kind to intel IGP

I have a much older i3-2100 with HD2000 and was able to play Torchlight 1 and Half-Life 2 on it, but it seems like anything more than 5+ year old and low-spec indie games requires AMD or discrete graphics.

I wish for gaming systems there were intel i5/i7s without the die space wasted on the IGP, but since they sell most CPUs for business and home productivity use that isn't going to happen.

 

[beginner99]

From the latest AT Core i3 Skylake review, It is clear how far behind Skylake iGPU is.
The situation for the Intel iGPU is worse if we take in to account that the AMD APUs are more than a year older (2014) and manufactured with 2 generations older process (28nm vs 14nm).

I don't disagree but personally we need to account for total cost of ownership of the whole PC (case, PSU, mobo, fans,...) and also games. In that aspect a $150 dGPU is not a huge investment but giving you easily double the performance of an APU. Yeah I get it if you live in Africa or Greece it's not such a small amount. But if you live in such "shitty" condition maybe gaming shouldn't be a priority anyway. $150 is more or less a night-out here, maybe 2 if you are cheap. So you can decide to stay at home twice and have a system twice as powerful for next 5 years. So the argument for strong iGPU will always fall flat on it's face in my opinion. And for office use even Atom/celeron iGPU is good enough

 

[AtenRa]

It has nothing to do with the country, there are people buying GTX 1080 in Greece as we speak.
Not everyone wants to spend more for a dGPU, not every OEM PC has an iGPU and the majority of Laptops sold dont have dGPUs.

The fact remains the same, Intel iGPUs are still behind AMD even when they have a 2 generations litho process advantage.

 

[SPBHM]

ouch, even Iris Pro with the huge cache can't beat the old 6800K VLIW4 IGP on Witcher 3 (which is the most demanding/impressive game on the graphs listed)

 

[Sweepr]

ouch, even Iris Pro with the huge cache can't beat the old 6800K VLIW4 IGP on Witcher 3 (which is the most demanding/impressive game on the graphs listed)

Don't bother with GameGPU's misleading results, they are using January 2015 drivers (15.36.14.64.4080) for the Intel systems.

 

[TheELF]

1) A-poo-s heavily underclock the CPU whenever the GPU works.
http://www.tomshardware.de/amd-a10-...enchmark-budget-pc,testberichte-242059-2.html

2)Game benchmarks are made to test different GPUs for the same system meaning they only stress the GPU,hence a-poo-s do well in them.
3)If you actually want to run a game you will actually have to run the game-code's main thread + Dx + driver to finally get a frame,good luck doing that with an <3Ghz AMD core.
http://www.tekgrains.com/best-features-directx-12-vulkan-explained/

 

[AtenRa]

Don't bother with GameGPU's misleading results, they are using January 2015 drivers (15.36.14.64.4080) for the Intel systems.

15.36.14.64.4080 is not compatible with Broadwell Iris 6200 and Skylake HD520/530 etc. So it is unlikely they are using this driver which is not even Win 10 compatible.

 

[Sweepr]

15.36.14.64.4080 is not compatible with Broadwell Iris 6200 and Skylake HD520/530 etc. So it is unlikely they are using this driver which is not even Win 10 compatible.

That's the driver listed in their latest APU test, 19-20 months old software while AMD gets the benefit of the latest and greatest 16.7.3. One just needs to look at the AnandTech benchmarks you just posted, Skylake GT2 is already a lot closer to AMD's APUs in their tests than the misleading GameGPU data suggest. Also according to AnandTech AMD's APUs are still so slow that an anemic R7 240 DDR3 can match them.

 

[poofyhairguy]

It's so sad that three years after the new consoles we don't even have a APU close to an Xbone. I wish AMD would start making products worth buying.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G925A using Tapatalk

 

[4960X]

From the latest AT Core i3 Skylake review, It is clear how far behind Skylake iGPU is.
The situation for the Intel iGPU is worse if we take in to account that the AMD APUs are more than a year older (2014) and manufactured with 2 generations older process (28nm vs 14nm).

This. The Skylake iGPU is so far behind AMD's APUs that it's not even funny. Intel really needs to catch up.

http://www.relaxedtech.com/reviews/amd/a10-7870k/4

 

[dogen1]

This. The Skylake iGPU is so far behind AMD's APUs that it's not even funny. Intel really needs to catch up.

http://www.relaxedtech.com/reviews/amd/a10-7870k/4

Yeah, but that's just because the GPU is much smaller. We're looking at a 800+ GFlop GPU vs a 400 GFlop one. So yeah, it's faster, but I don't think we can assume it's due to some technical advantage.

 

[AtenRa]

Yeah, but that's just because the GPU is much smaller. We're looking at a 800+ GFlop GPU vs a 400 GFlop one. So yeah, it's faster, but I don't think we can assume it's due to some technical advantage.

Intel Skylake GT2 Gen 9 (Core i7 6700K) is ~42mm2 at 14nm
AMD Kaveri iGPU (A10-7879K) is ~ 112mm2 at 28nm

Since Intel 14nm is more that 2x denser (perhaps x2.5-3 ??) than GloFos 28nm, we can easily see that Intels GT2 Gen 9 would be bigger than 112mm2 at 28nm.
Technically, AMD can pack more transistors at the same mm2 and have more GFlops per mm2. So AMD definitely has the more advance technology in iGPU and Intel is behind 2-3 years because they havent reached 2014 Kaveris performance in 2016 with a larger mm2.

 

[dogen1]

So AMD definitely has the more advance technology in iGPU

How does Intel's 800 GFlop GPU compare to AMDs?

 

[DidelisDiskas]

Yeah I get it if you live in Africa or Greece it's not such a small amount. But if you live in such "shitty" condition maybe gaming shouldn't be a priority anyway

I see this argument all the time, but it makes no sense to me, because you can potentially build a whole pc and play free games like Dota or Team Fortress etc (maybe pick up some 3-4 dollar games on steam sale) for under 200$ if you use an apu like AMD A8-7600. That means you get years of entertainment for around 200$. That's the best bang for buck entertainment in a shitty 3d world country.

 

[nathanddrews]

What are the expectations of the Zen IGP? 30% better than Excavator? 5%?

 

[hrga225]

What are the expectations of the Zen IGP? 30% better than Excavator? 5%?

Up to 50%.Zen APU is expected to have up to 12 CU,paired to faster RAM up to 3200 DDR4 and of course improved GCN arch.,gen4.

 

[dogen1]

Intel Skylake GT2 Gen 9 (Core i7 6700K) is ~42mm2 at 14nm
AMD Kaveri iGPU (A10-7879K) is ~ 112mm2 at 28nm

Since Intel 14nm is more that 2x denser (perhaps x2.5-3 ??) than GloFos 28nm, we can easily see that Intels GT2 Gen 9 would be bigger than 112mm2 at 28nm.
Technically, AMD can pack more transistors at the same mm2 and have more GFlops per mm2. So AMD definitely has the more advance technology in iGPU and Intel is behind 2-3 years because they havent reached 2014 Kaveris performance in 2016 with a larger mm2.

How does Intel's 800 GFlop GPU compare to AMDs?

Well, I found how Intel and AMDs 400 GFlop GPUs compare, and the Intel seems faster on average.

Intel HD 530
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-530.148358.0.html

Radeon R6 (Kaveri) 384 ALU
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-R6-Kaveri.117382.0.html

 

[AtenRa]

How does Intel's 800 GFlop GPU compare to AMDs?

GFlops for GFlops the Intel is faster BUT,

the problem is they need more than 2x the space and that has a negative effect in SKU performance because die space cost billions.

 

[nismotigerwvu]

I'd argue they are hurting more on the odd design choices, but it certainly is true that from a density and performance per mm^2 point Intel is generations behind AMD. That said, they could catch up in a heartbeat if they decided to put Iris Pro class graphics on an entry level chip, but they've been reluctant to do so for whatever reason.

 

[boozzer]

I'd argue they are hurting more on the odd design choices, but it certainly is true that from a density and performance per mm^2 point Intel is generations behind AMD. That said, they could catch up in a heartbeat if they decided to put Iris Pro class graphics on an entry level chip, but they've been reluctant to do so for whatever reason.

lack of competition is why intel isn't doing anything about it. they also need drivers. with dx12/vulkan, hopefully the drivers per game would go the way of history. zen just need to come within 10% performance of skylake to finally put pressure on intel again. damn, just realized that there hasn't been a competitive cpu from amd since core 2 duo.

when APUs can do 1080p medium is when I will stop buying gpus forever. hopefully dx12/vulkan can eliminate the need for drivers per game release that was the norm for dx11 games.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Zen+8GB HBM+Polaris 11 class GPU = console killer if they would make it

 

[CriticalOne]

It doesn't really matter how much faster the Kaveri GPU is since it still doesn't produce the performance that is anywhere near desirable for anyone trying to do a decent amount of gaming on their computer. This is the problem with APUs and the reason why they sell poorly: the iGPU's greater speed doesn't make a difference for Joe Average who just watches Youtube and checks facebook, but the iGPU is far, far too slow for anyone trying to play games from this decade.

If an OEM chose a Kaveri CPU over an Intel one, they would be sacrificing power efficiency* and single threaded performance, things that matter very much in consumer laptops, for a pretty meaningless boost in graphics power.

* Kaveri's CPU may not use a lot of energy but it is not fast, which just makes it a low power architecture rather than an energy efficient one. A 51w Skylake i3 CPU is a whole lot faster than a 65w Kaveri CPU.