ITT: We list current generation CPUs that are in most need of improvement

[cbn]

Here are my top five (in no particular order):

1. Braswell N3000: At 4W, I think Intel could do a lot better. (Even the N2807 on 22nm has faster clocks than this 14nm processor)

2. Sempron 2650: At 25W, I feel the clocks at 1.45Ghz are just too low for a dual core. This especially when the Athlon 5350 is a full quad core with 2.05 Ghz clock at the same TDP.

3. i7-5930K: This is actually a great CPU, but I feel the price premium over the i7-5820K is just too large to justify the minor clockspeed increase and 40 PCIe lanes vs. 28 PCIe lanes.

4. A10-7850K/A10-7870K: Like the i7-5930K these are just too expensive for what they offer.

5. Any dual core FM2 (eg, A4-7300) or FM2+ processor (eg, A6-7400K). Reason: I don't think so much of the iGPU should be disabled. IMO, 384sp should be the minimum iGPU size for a Kaveri dual core and 320sp in the case of Richland dual core.

 

[crashtech]

i5-6400: Anemic (2.7-3.3GHz) clock speeds make this almost an i5 in name only. A $50 cheaper i3 trounces it in ST performance while not giving up much except at the heaviest of loads.

 

[cbn]

i5-6400: Anemic (2.7-3.3GHz) clock speeds make this almost an i5 in name only. A $50 cheaper i3 trounces it in ST performance while not giving up much except at the heaviest of loads.

I totally agree.

Maybe Intel should have listed that processor as Core i3 quad core. (This wouldn't have the first time that Intel breaks the traditional i7=4C/8T, i5=4C/4T, i3=2C/4T, Pentium=2C/2T core#/thread# classification scheme as Pentium 3825U and 4405U and 4405Y are 2C/4T Pentiums)

 

[DrMrLordX]

7870k too expensive? Surely you jest. It was only $129 over black friday/cyber monday . . . it's that price now, too:

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/amd-cpu-ad787kxdjcbox

And please don't tell me that an 860k + $60 dGPU is a better buy, when a lot of the 860ks in the last 6 months have been topping out in the 4.3-4.5 GHz range. 7870k will hit the 4.7 GHz wall much, much more easily. And you don't even have to pop the lid - it's soldered.

 

[Fjodor2001]

i5-6400: Anemic (2.7-3.3GHz) clock speeds make this almost an i5 in name only. A $50 cheaper i3 trounces it in ST performance while not giving up much except at the heaviest of loads.

Agreed!

i5-6400: 2.7/3.3 GHz, $182
i5-6500: 3.2/3.6 GHz, $192

Who wouldn't get the 6500 for only $10 more?

Also, this one:

6Y30: 0.9/2.2 Ghz, $281
6Y57: 1.1/2.8 Ghz, $281

6Y57 is same price but has better performance. Why get the 6Y30?

 

[cbn]

7870k too expensive? Surely you jest. It was only $129 over black friday/cyber monday . . . it's that price now, too:

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/amd-cpu-ad787kxdjcbox

And please don't tell me that an 860k + $60 dGPU is a better buy, when a lot of the 860ks in the last 6 months have been topping out in the 4.3-4.5 GHz range. 7870k will hit the 4.7 GHz wall much, much more easily. And you don't even have to pop the lid - it's soldered.

But remember 860K doesn't throttle and 7870K does.

So at low resolution as we have seen with GTA V even a Athlon x 4 860K with a very humble R7 240 will edge out a A10-7850K with dual channel DDR3 2400:

I would assume the situation with A10-7870K is not much different.

P.S. I am glad to hear the A10-7870K uses solder. Is the same true for the A10-7850K (and Athlon x 4 860k)?

 

[Ansau]

i5-6400: Anemic (2.7-3.3GHz) clock speeds make this almost an i5 in name only. A $50 cheaper i3 trounces it in ST performance while not giving up much except at the heaviest of loads.

The i5 6400 turbo boost is 3.1-3.2-3.3-3.3, while turboboost for the i5 6500 is 3.3-3.4-3.5-3.6.
There's not such a big difference, specially with the new SpeedStep that makes that locw base clock from the 6400 a bit irrelevant.

 

[frozentundra123456]

7870k too expensive? Surely you jest. It was only $129 over black friday/cyber monday . . . it's that price now, too:

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/amd-cpu-ad787kxdjcbox

And please don't tell me that an 860k + $60 dGPU is a better buy, when a lot of the 860ks in the last 6 months have been topping out in the 4.3-4.5 GHz range. 7870k will hit the 4.7 GHz wall much, much more easily. And you don't even have to pop the lid - it's soldered.

For gaming, a dgpu is much more useful than an extra 300 or so MHz of CPU clock speed. In fact, if one insists on torturing themselves by trying to game on the igpu, an A8-7600 is a better buy, because it is cheaper and has very nearly the same gaming performance because the 7870k is so bandwidth limited.

 

[Raftina]

Maybe Intel should have listed that processor as Core i3 quad core. (This wouldn't have the first time that Intel breaks the traditional i7=4C/8T, i5=4C/4T, i3=2C/4T, Pentium=2C/2T core#/thread# classification scheme as Pentium 3825U and 4405U and 4405Y are 2C/4T Pentiums)

That naming scheme has never been true of mobile processors like the 3825U, 4405U, and 4405Y. The traditional scheme is:
Celeron/Pentium: Applied to a lot of very different low price range processors
i3 to i5: turbo boost
i5 to i7-non-Q: 3 MB cache to 4 MB
i7-non-Q to i7-Q/X: 2C/4T to 4C/8T

All the Cores other than Q/X i7s are 2C/4T.

 

[DrMrLordX]

But remember 860K doesn't throttle and 7870K does.

You are a broken record.

 

[cbn]

You are a broken record.

And until AMD fixes the throttling issue I intend to keep the APU folks accountable to that fact.

 

[DrMrLordX]

an A8-7600 is a better buy, because it is cheaper and has very nearly the same gaming performance because the 7870k is so bandwidth limited.

So what you're trying to say is, an a8-7600 is going to be just as good as a 7870k @ 4.7 GHz, DDR3-2400, and the GPU running at 1028 mhz or so?

Here's an a8-7600 running firestrike, cloudgate, and icestorm:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/5776716

I can clear 1800 on my firestrike and 80k+ on icestorm (forget my cloudgate score) with a mere A10-7700k. Now here's an A10-7870k:

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/6486880

Not all that much better than my 7700k, but definitely better than a 7600. And it only needed 918mhz on the iGPU to get there. Sadly, extra GPU speed doesn't do much thanks to the RAM bottleneck, but there's a lot of room for performance growth between the a8-7600 and A10-7870k.

Believe it or not, people do run more than just games on their machines, and I'd much rather have a GV-A1 under the hood than a KV-A1 chip. My 7700k was lucky. Many 7700ks, 7850ks, and 860ks are not so lucky.

 

[DrMrLordX]

And until AMD fixes the throttling issue I intend to keep the APU folks accountable to that fact.

They are. It's fixable for anyone that knows how to run a .bat file. Good grief.

 

[cbn]

They are. It's fixable for anyone that knows how to run a .bat file. Good grief.

1.) AMDMsrTweaker is not something geared towards the average person.

2.) And even if they could get AMDMsrTweaker to work would the throttling still exist with the stock heatsink? If so, that means an upgrade heatsink would need to be purchased further increasing the total cost of APU vs. Athlon x 4 860K (and stock heatsink) + dGPU.

 

[frozentundra123456]

So what you're trying to say is, an a8-7600 is going to be just as good as a 7870k @ 4.7 GHz, DDR3-2400, and the GPU running at 1028 mhz or so?

Here's an a8-7600 running firestrike, cloudgate, and icestorm:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/5776716

I can clear 1800 on my firestrike and 80k+ on icestorm (forget my cloudgate score) with a mere A10-7700k. Now here's an A10-7870k:

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/6486880

Not all that much better than my 7700k, but definitely better than a 7600. And it only needed 918mhz on the iGPU to get there. Sadly, extra GPU speed doesn't do much thanks to the RAM bottleneck, but there's a lot of room for performance growth between the a8-7600 and A10-7870k.

Believe it or not, people do run more than just games on their machines, and I'd much rather have a GV-A1 under the hood than a KV-A1 chip. My 7700k was lucky. Many 7700ks, 7850ks, and 860ks are not so lucky.

Dont put words in my mouth. You know I did not say that. I said the A8-7600 is a better buy for gaming than the 7870k because the increase in performance is not even close to the extra cost because of bandwidth limitations. Borne out by the latest game.gpu APU tests : War Thunder bench . 10% increase in performance and 54% more expensive (New Egg prices). And if you are interested in some other productivity benchmark, there are much better choices than an APU, unless you cherry pick some gpu accelerated app. And the A8 has a lower TDP as well, making it more suited for the *only* case where an APU makes sense anyway, a SFF or Steambox type system.

 

[frozentundra123456]

They are. It's fixable for anyone that knows how to run a .bat file. Good grief.

Yea, these people who are supposed to run an APU because they are too stupid to stick a dgpu into a PCI-E slot are supposed to figure out how to use some special AMD tweaking software they probably have never even heard of to modify .bat files. Okay.......if you say so.

 

[LTC8K6]

Some of these chip variations must be for OEMs.

 

[cbn]

i5-6400: Anemic (2.7-3.3GHz) clock speeds make this almost an i5 in name only. A $50 cheaper i3 trounces it in ST performance while not giving up much except at the heaviest of loads.

The i5 6400 turbo boost is 3.1-3.2-3.3-3.3, while turboboost for the i5 6500 is 3.3-3.4-3.5-3.6.
There's not such a big difference, specially with the new SpeedStep that makes that locw base clock from the 6400 a bit irrelevant.

Ok, so if a i5 6400 can turbo to 3.1 on all four cores that means the 2.7 Ghz base clock must be for extreme conditions like AVX2 and/or iGPU usage.

 

[cbn]

Speaking of extreme conditions (as mentioned in post #18), I think AMD should revise the way they list their FM2+ APUs. For example, on the A10-7850K it is well known to throttle down to 3Ghz during gaming. Therefore instead of AMD listing the chip as 3.7 Ghz base/4.0 Ghz turbo (like the Athlon x 4 860K) it should be listed as 3.0 Ghz base/4.0 Ghz turbo.

Likewise, the 65W A8-7600 should be listed as 2.7 Ghz base/3.8 Ghz turbo.

 

[fourdegrees11]

Not much point in listing AMD since they are so far behind process wise and are already developing an entire new architecture for when they can finally move past 28/32nm. Nothing new about any of that.

Intel's entire lineup needs a refresh next year

Pentium = current i3 with k model
i3 = current i5 with k model
i5 = current i7
i7 = hex core with HT

Do they or will they need to do any of that? No not until AMD actually challenges them.

 

[DrMrLordX]

1.) AMDMsrTweaker is not something geared towards the average person.

Who said anything about the average person? Is the mass market the only thing that matters?

2.) And even if they could get AMDMsrTweaker to work would the throttling still exist with the stock heatsink?

Answer the question for yourself if you're that curious. I specifically chose APUs so I could cool my CPU and GPU with one HSF and so I could cheap out on graphics. It worked.

Dont put words in my mouth. You know I did not say that.

No, I specifically do not know that. The 7870k offers you better gaming performance, hence the higher price. It can get you to playable frames in some games where the 7600 might not do so well, making the 7600 a non-starter for those games. On top of that, unless you do some serious bclk tweaking, you'll never go north of 3.8 GHz which is going to be a major bummer for a lot of folks.

I said the A8-7600 is a better buy for gaming than the 7870k because the increase in performance is not even close to the extra cost because of bandwidth limitations. Borne out by the latest game.gpu APU tests : War Thunder bench . 10% increase in performance and 54% more expensive (New Egg prices).

. . . and they didn't bother to overclock either of the K CPUs. Good joerb, gamegpu! As you can see, the overclocking made a significant difference in the 3DMark scores I posted above, where the $129 7870k beats the $80 7600 by being 64% faster despite only costing 61% more. So um, no, the 7600 isn't a better buy for gaming (or much of anything else), no matter how you slice it. Maybe the 7600 would show up a little better if someone pegged the clockspeeds @ 3.8 GHz, but unless you can get those GPU clocks higher, the 3DMark scores aren't going to go up by much. And I'm pretty sure the clocks are locked at 720 mhz (or lower) for that chip.

There WAS a hot deal on the 7600 where you could get it for something like $60 from Amazon, but that's over. The 7870k has been floating around $130 for about a month now, which is a severely depressed price, making it a pretty good buy. I was hoping it would go down around $120 or lower, but it never got there over black friday/cyber monday.

And if you are interested in some other productivity benchmark, there are much better choices than an APU,

So why are we discussing APUs at all? You've basically argued that they're all inadequate, so you may as well buy the cheapest one since they're all going to fail anyway.

Yea, these people who are supposed to run an APU because they are too stupid to stick a dgpu into a PCI-E slot are supposed to figure out how to use some special AMD tweaking software they probably have never even heard of to modify .bat files. Okay.......if you say so.

That's a silly argument. If I can figure it out, so can anyone else here, on this forum, in this discussion. Who gives a toss about anyone else? Can we go back to being an enthusiast forum for just a few minutes? Please? We don't have to pander to the LCD all the time.

Here's a reality check: the 7870k is AMD's flagship APU. It replaced the 7850k. The 7850k introed at over $180 in 2014. The 7870k had to launch at ~$140, and it's already down to $130 and falling (albeit slowly). It's been on the market for less than a year (launched May 28th). All the APU prices are depressed, and the "high end" ones have seen the biggest decrease in price relative to the launch price of the 7850k which set the benchmark for what AMD wanted to charge for those units.

If you or anyone else doesn't want an APU, don't buy one. But don't try to sell the idea that the 7870k is overpriced when its price - and the 7850k's price - has taken a major dump since the 7850k's launch. These are clearinghouse prices.

Speaking of extreme conditions (as mentioned in post #18), I think AMD should revise the way they list their FM2+ APUs. For example, on the A10-7850K it is well known to throttle down to 3Ghz during gaming. Therefore instead of AMD listing the chip as 3.7 Ghz base/4.0 Ghz turbo (like the Athlon x 4 860K) it should be listed as 3.0 Ghz base/4.0 Ghz turbo.

Likewise, the 65W A8-7600 should be listed as 2.7 Ghz base/3.8 Ghz turbo.

Brilliant! That'll sell some more units. Oh wait, no. It won't.

Look, everyone here either knows how to stop the throttling or could figure it out in a heartbeat. The "average consumer", if they even bother with these APUs (which they frequently do not), do not know about or care that the CPUs throttle during gaming. Of course if you want to know more about the throttling behavior, you'd discover that SOMETIMES they throttle to p5, and SOMETIMES they throttle to p4, and . . . sometimes they don't throttle at all. They jump rapidly between states, in fact, which is odd. If you do fire up a game with a Kaveri APU and record framerates with and without throttling, you'll find that it makes dick all difference. I picked up maybe 60 points in Fire Strike and 4k points in Ice Storm by disabling throttling in full benchmark mode (4.7 GHz, throttle down to 2.8 GHz where applicable).

People won't and don't notice the throttling.

 

[cbn]

Speaking of extreme conditions (as mentioned in post #18), I think AMD should revise the way they list their FM2+ APUs. For example, on the A10-7850K it is well known to throttle down to 3Ghz during gaming. Therefore instead of AMD listing the chip as 3.7 Ghz base/4.0 Ghz turbo (like the Athlon x 4 860K) it should be listed as 3.0 Ghz base/4.0 Ghz turbo.

Likewise, the 65W A8-7600 should be listed as 2.7 Ghz base/3.8 Ghz turbo.

Brilliant! That'll sell some more units. Oh wait, no. It won't.

If accurately labeling the APU specs reduces sales then so be it.

If you do fire up a game with a Kaveri APU and record framerates with and without throttling, you'll find that it makes dick all difference.

Only if the detail settings are increased to make the iGPU a strong bottleneck.

I picked up maybe 60 points in Fire Strike and 4k points in Ice Storm by disabling throttling in full benchmark mode (4.7 GHz, throttle down to 2.8 GHz where applicable).

That is a graphical benchmark, not a game.

And in this scenario the iGPU will be a strong bottleneck.

With that mentioned, a person could reproduce the same effect by dialing up settings in a game (and making the iGPU a strong bottleneck). However, not all people like to play that way. Some will prefer the higher frame rates that come with lower detail settings. And as we have seen in post #6 even a weak R7 240 can allow a Athlon x 4 860K to edge out the graphically more powerful A10-7850K with DDR3 2400 RAM because of this.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Who said anything about the average person? Is the mass market the only thing that matters?



Answer the question for yourself if you're that curious. I specifically chose APUs so I could cool my CPU and GPU with one HSF and so I could cheap out on graphics. It worked.



No, I specifically do not know that. The 7870k offers you better gaming performance, hence the higher price. It can get you to playable frames in some games where the 7600 might not do so well, making the 7600 a non-starter for those games. On top of that, unless you do some serious bclk tweaking, you'll never go north of 3.8 GHz which is going to be a major bummer for a lot of folks.



. . . and they didn't bother to overclock either of the K CPUs. Good joerb, gamegpu! As you can see, the overclocking made a significant difference in the 3DMark scores I posted above, where the $129 7870k beats the $80 7600 by being 64% faster despite only costing 61% more. So um, no, the 7600 isn't a better buy for gaming (or much of anything else), no matter how you slice it. Maybe the 7600 would show up a little better if someone pegged the clockspeeds @ 3.8 GHz, but unless you can get those GPU clocks higher, the 3DMark scores aren't going to go up by much. And I'm pretty sure the clocks are locked at 720 mhz (or lower) for that chip.

There WAS a hot deal on the 7600 where you could get it for something like $60 from Amazon, but that's over. The 7870k has been floating around $130 for about a month now, which is a severely depressed price, making it a pretty good buy. I was hoping it would go down around $120 or lower, but it never got there over black friday/cyber monday.



So why are we discussing APUs at all? You've basically argued that they're all inadequate, so you may as well buy the cheapest one since they're all going to fail anyway.



That's a silly argument. If I can figure it out, so can anyone else here, on this forum, in this discussion. Who gives a toss about anyone else? Can we go back to being an enthusiast forum for just a few minutes? Please? We don't have to pander to the LCD all the time.

Here's a reality check: the 7870k is AMD's flagship APU. It replaced the 7850k. The 7850k introed at over $180 in 2014. The 7870k had to launch at ~$140, and it's already down to $130 and falling (albeit slowly). It's been on the market for less than a year (launched May 28th). All the APU prices are depressed, and the "high end" ones have seen the biggest decrease in price relative to the launch price of the 7850k which set the benchmark for what AMD wanted to charge for those units.

If you or anyone else doesn't want an APU, don't buy one. But don't try to sell the idea that the 7870k is overpriced when its price - and the 7850k's price - has taken a major dump since the 7850k's launch. These are clearinghouse prices.



Brilliant! That'll sell some more units. Oh wait, no. It won't.

Look, everyone here either knows how to stop the throttling or could figure it out in a heartbeat. The "average consumer", if they even bother with these APUs (which they frequently do not), do not know about or care that the CPUs throttle during gaming. Of course if you want to know more about the throttling behavior, you'd discover that SOMETIMES they throttle to p5, and SOMETIMES they throttle to p4, and . . . sometimes they don't throttle at all. They jump rapidly between states, in fact, which is odd. If you do fire up a game with a Kaveri APU and record framerates with and without throttling, you'll find that it makes dick all difference. I picked up maybe 60 points in Fire Strike and 4k points in Ice Storm by disabling throttling in full benchmark mode (4.7 GHz, throttle down to 2.8 GHz where applicable).

People won't and don't notice the throttling.

Well, the A8-7600 is only 20.00 more than the 860k. You get basically an igpu free. To me that is a good deal if you only want to do lite gaming. Granted the 7870k is "better", but it is also getting very close in price to an 860k plus dgpu, which will give far better gaming performance. And if you want cpu performance, an i3 will in most cases give better performance at nearly the same price as well, while using much less power. If you think the 7870 is some kind of great deal, more power to you, but I certainly dont see it. And if you think it is a great deal just because the price has plummeted from the inflated initial cost, well just ask yourself *why* the price has fallen so much.

 

[cbn]

Well, the A8-7600 is only 20.00 more than the 860k. You get basically an igpu free.

A8-7600 will run around 1300 Mhz slower than the 860K in games. (4.0 Ghz vs. 2.7 Ghz).

Then there is the issue of dual channel DDR3 2400 Ram currently being $15 more expensive than dual channel DDR3 1600 RAM:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...39&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&Order=PRICE&PageSize=30

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007611 600006069 600006050&IsNodeId=1

So for about $35 more than Athlon x 4 860K, a person gets a 2.7 Ghz quad core and 384sp iGPU @ 720 Mhz (with dual channel DDR3 2400) if the intent was gaming.

For $35 less I would rather have the faster 4Ghz CPU and add my own dGPU in.

 

[beginner99]

1.) AMDMsrTweaker is not something geared towards the average person.

2.) And even if they could get AMDMsrTweaker to work would the throttling still exist with the stock heatsink? If so, that means an upgrade heatsink would need to be purchased further increasing the total cost of APU vs. Athlon x 4 860K (and stock heatsink) + dGPU.

Not to mention that if you pay say $50 more with the dGPU route you easily get double the performance. Since you are probably using this build with multiple games that together cost >$100 and get a hugely improved experience I can see why anyone would not invest that additional $50.

Personally I don't see why you would not invest even $200 more to get another doubling of performance at least. If you can't afford that you should probably invest the money in a better education and job instead of gaming anyway...