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

[cbn]

Much smaller as in... $25?! Let's see how that would look like in $10 increments, not even counting all available SKUs:

A10-7850K +$25
A10-7700K +$15
A8-7650K +$5
A8-7600 -$5

Is this what you have in mind? $5 video card?

Assuming the CPU has the same specs (eg, A10-7850K vs. Athlon x 4 860K) I think $25 for a 512sp iGPU is reasonable enough, but $20 would be much better. If the throttling on the CPU were addressed or fixed in some way then AMD could bump that iGPU price premium to a higher level (re: now the iGPU would be purely additive in effect to CPU the same way a dGPU is).

Same goes for a 384sp iGPU. If the CPU specs are the same $15 would be appropriate. If the CPU throttling were fixed then the 384sp iGPU becomes more valuable and justifies a higher price premium than $15.

If the CPU is a lower spec than Athlon x 4 860K then deduct value accordingly. (eg, A8-7650K has a lower spec than Athlon x 4 860K so maybe deduct $5. This would make the A8-7650K $10 more expensive than the Athlon x 4 860K).

For APUs in 65W (like A8-7600) the baseline comparison should be different than the 95W APUs due to greater difficulty in binning to achieve any given clockspeed.

 

[coercitiv]

A8-7650K has a lower spec than Athlon x 4 860K so maybe deduct $5. This would make the A8-7650K $10 more expensive than the Athlon x 4 860K

For APUs in 65W (like A8-7600) the baseline comparison should be different than the 95W APUs due to greater difficulty in binning to achieve any given clockspeed.

You do know that right now in stores A8-7600 is $10+ cheaper than A8-7650K, do you not? You are effectively proposing that AMD sell the X4 860K at a higher price than A8 7600.

 

[cbn]

You do know that right now in stores A8-7600 is $10+ cheaper than A8-7650K, do you not? You are effectively proposing that AMD sell the X4 860K at a higher price than A8 7600.

How am I proposing that the Athlon x 4 860K be sold at a higher price than the A8-7600?

Look at the following caveat:

For APUs in 65W (like A8-7600) the baseline comparison should be different than the 95W APUs due to greater difficulty in binning to achieve any given clockspeed.

A8-7650K and Athlon x 4 860K are 95W APUs. A8-7600 is 65W APU.

 

[cbn]

If the A8-7600 is currently $10+ cheaper than the A8-7650k then I think the A8-7650K is overpriced.

AMD should lower the price on A8-7650K so it is only $10 more than the Athlon x 4 860K (see post #51). Then price the A8-7600 at maybe $5 over the Athlon x 4 860K. This, in turn, would price the A8-7600 at $5 less than A8-7650K (since A8-7600 is a locked CPU, but a 65W bin).

P.S. Currently on Amazon A8-7650K is $96.47 shipped, A8-7600 is $80.93 shipped and Athlon x 4 860K is $70.13 shipped:

http://www.amazon.com/AMD-A8-7650K-...=UTF8&qid=1449650011&sr=1-3&keywords=A8-7650K

http://www.amazon.com/AMD-Series-Graphics-Socket-AD7600YBJABOX/dp/B00LUH1N4O

http://www.amazon.com/AMD-Athlon-Bl...qid=1449647869&sr=1-1&keywords=athlon+x4+860k

 

[NTMBK]

If only AMD had a team of paid professionals to price their products appropriately! Oh wait, they do.

 

[cbn]

If only AMD had a team of paid professionals to price their products appropriately! Oh wait, they do.

That team of professionals has been getting progressively smaller over time though.

In November 2011 they laid off 10% of their workforce (10% at that time was 1400 employees).

In October 2012, they announced plans to lay off another 15%.

In October 2014, they announced plans to lay off another 7%.

In October 2015, there are plans for another 5% layoff --> http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327875

 

[DrMrLordX]

The 7670k is a whopping $.82 more expensive than the older 7650k. The 7650k needs to be pushed out of the channel.

No comment on AMD's sales team.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Just so we're clear, you are aware the 860K is a cut down chip obtained from an otherwise malfunctioning A10 chip, right? And not selling the 860K at all can only increase the cost of the iGPU, not lower it.



Really? Tell that to console makers.

Current PC APUs have failed due to bandwith limitations (and failure to adress that in a cost effective manner). Don't make the mistake of thinking this status quo will remain in place forever.

Hate to tell you, but dgpus *do* offer much more performance than even the special built console apus. Not to mention that an apu also includes the cpu, ans there the consoles would be woefully inadequate for general use.

 

[NTMBK]

Hate to tell you, but dgpus *do* offer much more performance than even the special built console apus. Not to mention that an apu also includes the cpu, ans there the consoles would be woefully inadequate for general use.

Given that you can get an entire console for less than the price of a GTX 970, I should expect so.

Strapping a few CPU cores onto a GPU doesn't particularly limit its top end potential, and eliminates the PCIe bottleneck.

 

[turn_pike]

Actually I'm kinda impressed how the iGPU does ok with modern games @ 720p. I've got an old 5770 sitting around with a loud fan but I really didn't fell the need to toss it in her rig as the iGPU does well enough.

As a user of the A8-7600 I can only concur.

After tasting life with APU I really dont want to go back to dGPUs with all that heat, noise, opening it every few months to clean the fan, etc.
Now that the best games for me are mostly indie / kickstarted games and the one I play the most is a MOBA, having dGPU is just a luxury. Wanting to spare my ears, I shelved mine in the drawer and it's been sitting there for almost a year now.

What I want from AMD is a slightly faster APU in terms of CPU (10-30% is enough) but way faster iGPU that scales well with really fast DDR4.

 

[crashtech]

What I want from an APU is the ability to peg both iGP and CPU without throttling, out of the box.

 

[coercitiv]

Hate to tell you, but dgpus *do* offer much more performance than even the special built console apus.

Thank you for your astute observation, I had hoped a 330mm2 APU could best even a 600 mm2 behemoth, but I was left with hope alone.

I guess I'll leave this subject be and just go back to listening midi music on my discrete Yahama soundcard.

 

[SPBHM]

Given that you can get an entire console for less than the price of a GTX 970, I should expect so.

Strapping a few CPU cores onto a GPU doesn't particularly limit its top end potential, and eliminates the PCIe bottleneck.

1.6GHz Jaguar cores would be a joke for PC gaming, if you try the bigger cores from AMD aiming for desktop performance (high clock) you might have serious problems with the space they take and power.

a 750 TI seems to perform close to the PS4 GPU, a 970 is way faster.

I think the shared memory bandwidth from CPU+GPU is not a win 100% of the time for a fast GPU!?

also GDDR5 is not ideal for CPUs

 

[DrMrLordX]

Strapping a few CPU cores onto a GPU doesn't particularly limit its top end potential, and eliminates the PCIe bottleneck.

Yes! That's the whole idea. Making the GPU a fully-fledged citizen of the main system link/bus can only be a good thing. Having everything in one package lets you cool the whole thing with an oversized HSF (that is, in my opinion, easier to deal with than various aftermarket dGPU coolerS).

As a user of the A8-7600 I can only concur.

After tasting life with APU I really dont want to go back to dGPUs with all that heat, noise, opening it every few months to clean the fan, etc.
Now that the best games for me are mostly indie / kickstarted games and the one I play the most is a MOBA, having dGPU is just a luxury. Wanting to spare my ears, I shelved mine in the drawer and it's been sitting there for almost a year now.

What I want from AMD is a slightly faster APU in terms of CPU (10-30% is enough) but way faster iGPU that scales well with really fast DDR4.

As an A10-7700k user, I mostly agree, though noise was never a problem for me. Shelving the hand-me-down 8800GTX ACS that was starting to act funny was nice though. Raven Ridge may just be what you want in a future APU. I wouldn't expect too much from Bristol Ridge . . .

What I want from an APU is the ability to peg both iGP and CPU without throttling, out of the box.

Well, you know, I was tempted to say "okay get an i7-5775C" but that didn't end well. Sorry.

 

[cbn]

The 7670k is a whopping $.82 more expensive than the older 7650k. The 7650k needs to be pushed out of the channel.

On Amazon, the price is very close as well:

http://www.amazon.com/AMD-A8-Proces...8&qid=1449711016&sr=8-3&keywords=AMD+A8-7670K ($98.93 shipped)

http://www.amazon.com/AMD-A8-7650K-...=UTF8&qid=1449650011&sr=1-3&keywords=A8-7650K ($96.47 shipped)

Considering the A8-7600 is so much cheaper at $80.93 shipped (and for the reason stated in post #51), IMO both A8-7650K and A8-7670K APUs are overpriced.

P.S. According to the pricing found in Anandtech's recent A8-7670K review, A8-7600 is $4 more than Athlon x 4 860K (which seems appropriate to me), but the A8-7650K is listed at $19 above and the A8-7670K at $33 above.

$19 (with lower CPU clocks) and especially $33 (with similar CPU clocks) above Athlon x 4 860K given the CPU throttling issue and the need for costing adding RAM (+$10 for DDR3 2133, +$15 for DDR3 2400) is just too much in light of dGPU prices.

 

[crashtech]

Well, you know, I was tempted to say "okay get an i7-5775C" but that didn't end well. Sorry.

I probably should have been more patient. Gigabyte released a BIOS update that supposedly fixed things a week or two after I sold my Z97 board.

 

[cbn]

Strapping a few CPU cores onto a GPU doesn't particularly limit its top end potential, and eliminates the PCIe bottleneck.

PCIe is not a bottleneck though (at least in terms of FPS). In fact, isn't there enough room to grow with PCIe 3.0 x 16 for quite some time.

This compared to something like SATA 6 Gbps which was very quickly a bottleneck for SSDs.

 

[cbn]

After tasting life with APU I really dont want to go back to dGPUs with all that heat, noise, opening it every few months to clean the fan, etc.

Not all dGPUs have a fan though. Last year we could buy the fanless Zotac GT630 (GK208 with 64 bit DDR 1600) for $34.99 shipped (regular price for about seven or eight straight months in a row).

At one point fanless GT630 (in the form of the ASUS) even dropped to as low as $24.99 AR shipped.

GT630 trades blows with R7 240 (320sp @ 720Mhz/780Mhz) at 720p (due to more powerful core, but less bandwidth). Still waiting to see what Nvidia brings as a replacement to this. I am assuming it will be a GM108 card (Maxwell v1 with 384 CUDA cores with 64 bit bus).

 

[Zodiark1593]

PCIe is not a bottleneck though (at least in terms of FPS). In fact, isn't there enough room to grow with PCIe 3.0 x 16 for quite some time.

This compared to something like SATA 6 Gbps which was very quickly a bottleneck for SSDs.

There is the factor of latency though. While an APU/console gives both the cpu and gpu direct access to main memory, in the case of a dGPU, it needs to go through the Northbridge and the data needed piped back.

 

[frozentundra123456]

That may be true, but if the dgpu has four or five time the shaders of the APU, and the APU is bandwidth limited on top of that, which is going to win?

 

[NTMBK]

PCIe is not a bottleneck though (at least in terms of FPS). In fact, isn't there enough room to grow with PCIe 3.0 x 16 for quite some time.

This compared to something like SATA 6 Gbps which was very quickly a bottleneck for SSDs.

Heh, just look at all the complaints about stuttering in open world games recently. It's hard streaming that much data into the GPU.

 

[DrMrLordX]

IMO both A8-7650K and A8-7670K APUs are overpriced.

Ugh, no. Sorry. The 7670k is a bargain at that price, the 7650k just needs to be discounted to get it out of the channel, that's all.

P.S. According to the pricing found in Anandtech's recent A8-7670K review,

Those prices are off. Nobody has to pay that much for a 7670k. They're only $98.93 shipped from Amazon, and who buys an 68H motherboard for Kaveri for that much?!?! The A88x-Pro was selling for that price months ago. Looks like supplies of that board have dried up, maybe that's the problem.

 

[cbn]

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)?

Here are the Anandtech GTA V results to add to those above:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9217/the-amd-a8-7650k-apu-review-also-new-testing-methodology/7

In this case a A8-7650K with R7 240 is about 10 FPS faster than the A8-7650K using its iGPU.

Keep in mind the A8-7650K has around 10% more GPU core than a R7 240 (ie, 384sp @ 720 Mhz vs. 320sp @ 780 Mhz turbo). Memory used for the APU was dual channel DDR3 2133 Cas 9.

My guess is that other CPU intensive games @ low resolution would show a similar trend (ie, substituting a dGPU that is actually weaker than the iGPU shows positive FPS gain. This primarily due to the lack of CPU throttling more than offsetting the decrease in graphics).

 

[waltchan]

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)

I missed the Celeron G470 Sandy Bridge days from 2013. In terms of marketing, Braswell Celeron N3050 is the successor for 2016 year, which replaced both J1800 and N2840 in 2014-2015.

Wally-World has the Acer desktop with Celeron N3050 Braswell for $248 right now.

 

[coercitiv]

In this case a A8-7650K with R7 240 is about 10 FPS faster than the A8-7650K using its iGPU.

And in other cases? Any other games tested in that Anandtech review?