APU results Just Cause 3

[DrMrLordX]

Thanks for testing it out. At least we now know this isn't specific to GCN 1.1.

That's kind of weird though. Wasn't the video from a 7870k? That thing should hitch LESS than a 6700. Unless it's throttling.

xorbe, was your 6700 overclocked in your testing?

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

The reality is you get what you pay for.

Maybe it'll help if you simply compare an A10 to an A6 since that will leave brand preference out of the equation for you. Then you'll understand why people who avoid AMD, avoid AMD.

You might want to learn how to read a graph -- because it looks like the cheaper chips are winning most of the benchmarks.

 

[Madpacket]

The point AtenRa was making which is clear from his post is that Intel IGP's are pretty useless for entry level gaming unless you spend upwards of two to three times the price of an AMD APU.

 

[frozentundra123456]

i dont get that. the cheaper one is performing better most of the time.

It all depends on what you are "paying for". With AMD you get both a mediocre cpu and a mediocre (i)gpu but it is relatively cheap. With intel you get state of the art (or very nearly so) cpu performance and again a mediocre (i)gpu.

So if you are interested in gaming only, AMD is a better choice. The only problem is, you still have borderline performance in any sort of demanding game, and except for very artificially constrained financial scenarios, you get much better value with a low end cpu like the 860k and a hundred dollar or so discrete card. In fact, the only APU that I remotely consider a "good value" even for gaming is the A8-7600. High end Kaveri is so bandwidth starved that it is only slightly faster the the A8, and the price is becoming too close to that of a system with a discrete card.

Obviously, Broadwell is a very poor value viewed from a gaming perspective only, but if you can find one for a similar price to Haswell or Skylake, you get great cpu performance and a "better" igpu thrown in, if that is worth anything. You also get improved cpu performance in some applications due to the cache.

Edit: @ madpacket. Intel igpus are hardly "worthless" for general use. In fact they are perfectly fine for anything but gaming. And for gaming, a dgpu is still a better choice in the vast majority of cases. Hence the abysmal sales of APUs. And lets not forget that APUs are "units" meaning both a cpu and igpu. AMD fans conveniently seem to focus on the igpu performance only for some strange reason.

 

[xthetenth]

Artificially constrained being can't spare much money and would get more from a few more games than somewhat better settings? That's a huge amount of people in that category.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Artificially constrained being can't spare much money and would get more from a few more games than somewhat better settings? That's a huge amount of people in that category.

The difference between a high end APU system and one with a discrete card is very minimal compared to what most people spend. Maybe 50.00 or so. How many of these "artificially constrained" people have cell phones, cable TV, High speed internet, Drink beer on Friday night, and so on? What do those cost *every month*, not just a one time purchase like a computer.

I just dont buy the scenario that there is this huge throng of people that can afford a 500.00 computer to play games but cant save a bit longer or cut out some expense to get 50.00 more to get vastly superior performance. Again, if there is this huge amount of people out there, why are APU sales so abysmal?

 

[xthetenth]

Uh oh. We're listing cell phones as a luxury, rather than being a need for a huge number of people ("hilariously", the people who need a cell phone most are the ones on work with inconsistent scheduling that tends to be at the bottom of the pay scale).

But anyway, that's luxury spending, and the exact sort of thing people with a slightly different priority would be saying could get trimmed, and they'd be just as right as you saying that other things could get trimmed. At a certain point that 50 matters plain and simple, and isn't necessarily worth the cost. If somebody wants to spend the minimum possible to gain the capacity and marginal increases once the capacity is bought aren't worth it, APUs are a very valid choice.

 

[dogen1]

It isnt half as fast. give me a chart that proves that

Did you even look?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i7-5775c-i5-5675c-broadwell,4169-6.html

 

[xorbe]

That's kind of weird though. Wasn't the video from a 7870k? That thing should hitch LESS than a 6700. Unless it's throttling.

xorbe, was your 6700 overclocked in your testing?

Nah, It was bone stock -- I don't know how to overclock on the apu platform.

The 7870K clearly throws down higher fps 40-ish sometimes, whereas my 6700 doesn't ever really even touch above 25-26 in that sequence. But when he tumbles from the plane into the free fall, mine is much smoother than the video. Possibly the recording process on the 7870K interfering with the performance? The video is way choppy.

Again, I was running 2x8GB, and the fine article says "8GB" without specifying dual or single channel memory, so ...

I am now curious, and want to see what the 6700's fps is at the absolute lowest setting, I wonder if 640x480 is an option, haha.

 

[AMDisTheBEST]

So basically you are saying that 9.9/10 of all games where the AMD IGP is actually producing better minimums than the Intel IGPs,you would go with the AMD ones?

Or are you saying since there is ONE,maybe,TWO games where the Intel IGP is better you would always buy the Intel chip all the time,even though all the Intel chips tested are £80+ which at that point I would rather have a Core i3 6100 and a GTX950 for £220 rather than game on £200+ Intel Core i7 and its IGP.

Once you get above the A8 7600/A8 7650K or a G4500 I am not sure whether any IGP wins are that useful too!!

If someone wants a slim factor pc, he probably isnt gonna fit a discrete card in the case or a decent power supply. iGPU is the clear choice here.

 

[Madpacket]

Edit: @ madpacket. Intel igpus are hardly "worthless" for general use. In fact they are perfectly fine for anything but gaming. And for gaming, a dgpu is still a better choice in the vast majority of cases. Hence the abysmal sales of APUs. And lets not forget that APUs are "units" meaning both a cpu and igpu. AMD fans conveniently seem to focus on the igpu performance only for some strange reason.

Fair enough. I've rephrased my statement to be more specific on Intel's failure.

These comparisons are dumb anyway. Look at the price differences. Where is the $100.00 Intel CPU/IGP comparisons? AtenRa's post just shows how bad Intel is at providing abysmal gaming performance on such an expensive CPU and what a waste of money on how much silicon realistate they dedicate for their GPU's. It's simply embarrassing that a 6700K, a processor 5x the cost of the 7400K and it can barely keep up.

I mean if you're going to advertise how good your CPU's are at gaming (Intel) why keep embarrasing yourself? How many years and revisions has Intel done, how much money do they spend on R&D and they still lag behind. Why not just spend the silicon realistate on extra cores or cache and just focus on video playback and encoding?

Also I love the argument on how you should just throw in a dedicated GPU instead of relying on APU performance when it comes to low end AMD chips yet the same advice needs to be said for *all* but one or two Intel CPU's since they suck so bad at gaming. At least with an APU you have the choice of having 720P gaming now, and later on adding in a more capable GPU if needed. That option doesn't really exist for any Intel CPU in the 75-150 price range, you are forced to buy both a CPU and GPU immediately.

As for sales, it's obviously not always the lack of technology that keeps them down. People for many many years kept buying crappy American cars where Japanese cars offered a much better value during in the late 80's and 90's.

Given Intel's monopoly and history of bullying the compeition and OEM's, pointing out the lack of sales of a decent chip for the money isn't a good argument.

 

[frozentundra123456]

As you can tell, I am not a fan of igpu gaming on either intel or AMD. I will agree though that I would rather see intel just provide a basic igp and devote more resources to a mainstream hex core, at least for the desktop line up.

 

[Madpacket]

As you can tell, I am not a fan of igpu gaming on either intel or AMD. I will agree though that I would rather see intel just provide a basic igp and devote more resources to a mainstream hex core, at least for the desktop line up.

They could easily do this but then they would have to cut into the fat margins on HEDT platforms. It's really just the lack of competition, being a monopoly in the X86 space and having to improve profits every quarter because they're publicly traded. Sad but true.

This is also why OEM's are super excited for Zen as it gives them a leg to stand on when having to negotiate with Intel. I hope for all of us Zen is good enough to at least force some changes at Intel, it will benefit the industry and us immensely.

 

[2is]

So basically you are saying that 9.9/10 of all games where the AMD IGP is actually producing better minimums than the Intel IGPs,you would go with the AMD ones?

Or are you saying since there is ONE,maybe,TWO games where the Intel IGP is better you would always buy the Intel chip all the time,even though all the Intel chips tested are £80+ which at that point I would rather have a Core i3 6100 and a GTX950 for £220 rather than game on £200+ Intel Core i7 and its IGP.

Once you get above the A8 7600/A8 7650K or a G4500 I am not sure whether any IGP wins are that useful too!!

Except that "one" game is completely unplayable on the AMD chip. That's the problem.

You might want to learn how to read a graph -- because it looks like the cheaper chips are winning most of the benchmarks.

You might want to learn to read, period. I followed up that post clarifying my position, I did so again here. Sounds like you're mad. Don't blame me, it's not my fault AMD can only manage 1-2 fps in this game.

 

[USER8000]

Except that "one" game is completely unplayable on the AMD chip. That's the problem.

Yet,there are plenty which are not very playable on Intel chips too. So basically its a case of cherry picking one game which might not run well on an AMD IGP,but then ignore all the ones which run sub-par on Intel ones,especially when even via Anandtech's own reviews of the Haswell IGPs,showed the Core i3 equivalents with the same IGPs were running worse than the Core i7 equivalents.

Edit to Post.

You talk about minimums - look at the graphs in other games from another poster.

The Intel chips are having really poor minimums in those games.

Also,the Anandtech review shows a big problem too:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation/20

Look at the scores for the Core i7 4770 and Core i3 4330.

Both have the same HD4600 IGP with the latter having around an 8% reduction in peak clockspeed IIRC.

However,the actual reduction in performance is between 20% to 30% which is big.

I expect the Core i3 6100 to be a decent amount slower than the Core i7 6700 in the IGP tests if it follows the same trend.

Plus the Anandtech review is still showing the A8 IGPs to be quicker than the one in the Core i7 6700.

The worst thing is Grid:Autosport.

Grid 2 and Grid:Autosport are Intel sponsored and even have their CMAA tech in the games.

The Core i3 6100 is going to be slower too than a Core i7 6700. The performance increase is massive with the AMD chips,and that's only looklng at the A8 chips due to the price.

 

[frozentundra123456]

They could easily do this but then they would have to cut into the fat margins on HEDT platforms. It's really just the lack of competition, being a monopoly in the X86 space and having to improve profits every quarter because they're publicly traded. Sad but true.

This is also why OEM's are super excited for Zen as it gives them a leg to stand on when having to negotiate with Intel. I hope for all of us Zen is good enough to at least force some changes at Intel, it will benefit the industry and us immensely.

Have a link for those "super excited" OEMs about Zen? Plenty of fans on these forums that are super excited, but I have not heard much from OEMs yet.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Nah, It was bone stock -- I don't know how to overclock on the apu platform.

The 7870K clearly throws down higher fps 40-ish sometimes, whereas my 6700 doesn't ever really even touch above 25-26 in that sequence. But when he tumbles from the plane into the free fall, mine is much smoother than the video. Possibly the recording process on the 7870K interfering with the performance? The video is way choppy.

Again, I was running 2x8GB, and the fine article says "8GB" without specifying dual or single channel memory, so ...

I am now curious, and want to see what the 6700's fps is at the absolute lowest setting, I wonder if 640x480 is an option, haha.

By all means, continue testing. One must wonder if the memory amount or recording method(s) were to blame for the Kaveri's performance.

I'm still looking for someone to run JC3 on an 860k and see how that goes.

 

[Madpacket]

Have a link for those "super excited" OEMs about Zen? Plenty of fans on these forums that are super excited, but I have not heard much from OEMs yet.

Admittedly it's not much but it's something interesting.

http://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=154302&curpostid=154823

If you think about it though it's logical for OEM's to be excited, even if they plan on sticking with Intel they'll have something (Zen) to bargain with to reduce their costs.

The question I ponder over:

Are OEM's super excited because Zen performs better than expected or are they just good enough to wraggle better deals out of Intel?

 

[xorbe]

I'm still looking for someone to run JC3 on an 860k and see how that goes.

The 7870K with a discrete card should turn in basically the same results? Both 95W, and clocks are only 100-200 MHz apart, both steamroller (kv/gv).

 

[Headfoot]

I'd rather buy a PS4 than an APU for the same budget. The cost of the windows license, and less flashy hardware (case, fans, hard drives, disc drives, power supply, KB+M, speakers/headphones) add up without adding a ton of immediately perceptible value over a console for people who already own a TV.

 

[frozentundra123456]

For AAA games, definitely. But there are a lot of free online games and cheap older games on steam that cant be played on console.

 

[Madpacket]

I'd rather buy a PS4 than an APU for the same budget. The cost of the windows license, and less flashy hardware (case, fans, hard drives, disc drives, power supply, KB+M, speakers/headphones) add up without adding a ton of immediately perceptible value over a console for people who already own a TV.

Apples and oranges really. That's why I own (and use) both.

 

[xorbe]

Madpacket you might find this interesting. A10-6700 + gtx 960, it's about the same fps whether selecting 640x480 low or 1600x1200 high. Very high starts to take a small bite out the 960 though, just a few fps. I can't find an hdmi cable around here to enable 1920x1080, haha. I have piles of cards and cpus and ram, but no cables.

 

[Headfoot]

For AAA games, definitely. But there are a lot of free online games and cheap older games on steam that cant be played on console.

True -- though my assumptions for building a cheap gaming APU are as follows:
Person probably owns 1) An HDMI capable TV, 2) Somewhat crappy laptop from 2007-8 or newer.
Crappy laptop takes care of Facebook and kongregate style games and internet browsing, leaving console to be superior to building a cheap APU based gaming box for AAA.

But there is certainly a spot for MMO focused players and other PC gaming strengths. But at the same time, I'd agree with whoever was talking about waiting for another $50 to go dedicated GPU when you're already spending $500.

Saving that last $50 and not getting a dGPU for gaming on a $500 is penny wise and pound foolish.

 

[Madpacket]

Madpacket you might find this interesting. A10-6700 + gtx 960, it's about the same fps whether selecting 640x480 low or 1600x1200 high. Very high starts to take a small bite out the 960 though, just a few fps. I can't find an hdmi cable around here to enable 1920x1080, haha. I have piles of cards and cpus and ram, but no cables.

Yeah that's a classical CPU limitation. I may just buy the damn game so I can recreate the test to see if that video is BS with those minimums.