Kaveri Refresh "Godavari" performance

[Azuma Hazuki]

We use core 2 duo machines at my job, and they work perfectly fine for office tasks and web browsing, including chrome. I am sure a modern pentium is faster than those, and should be fine for office use and bowsing.

Define "fine." Remember, one hard and fast rule of my budget builds is "future proof as much as possible even on a tight allowance," so they always include at least a small SSD and a CPU with 4 threads unless there really is no room in the budget for it. These things are meant to last at least 4 years, ideally longer.

The experience is subjectively, to me, better with an A8 than a Pentium, though again slightly better with an i3 than an A8.

You must have noticed that the CPU-grunt demand for basic stuff like Office apps and the OS itself has been nearly flat for a good 5+ years, no? But so much goes on in the browser now, and THOSE keep getting hungrier and bloatier and more thread-demanding. That Pentium is not going to seem like such a good investment in another 2-3 years.

 

[Abwx]

Just downloading this single page with the single post above and the T4400 peak to 60%, that s a 2.2GHz C2D....

 

[TheELF]

FM2+ has its uses. I build customers FM2+/A8-7600 boxen when the H81/Core i3 machine is too pricey but they need a decent thread count. 2C/2T just does not cut it anymore, especially not for users of Chrome, and the A8 is near-i3 performance for near-Pentium pricing.

Chromes CPU usage is not even worth an after thought
G1820 + chrome +dragon age iquisition + kodi live stream +shadow play
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFPXTHm4Q1M

 

[Arachnotronic]

Just downloading this single page with the single post above and the T4400 peak to 60%, that s a 2.2GHz C2D....

Time to buy a new laptop, it would seem. Why don't you pick up a Carrizo laptop?

 

[DrMrLordX]

So it's less bad than 790. That doesn't make it good. No matter how you may feel about AMD CPUs, their chipsets have always sucked.

Less bad? What's bad about it? The 790FX-GD70 cost me something like $200 when I got it, and all I had to show for it was a crappy 4+1 phase VRM configuration. A lot of the 790FX boards had that. My A88x-Pro has a 6+2 phase design, and at the time I bought it, it retailed for only $100. Mine was $53 (I got a good deal off eBay).

It has the most modern features of all AMD chipsets, and it compares quite well to other boards from January 2014.

The A88x-Pro can boot NVMe drives. Many boards can not do that.

It has an excellent UEFI, with fully-tuneable voltages for every voltage plane on FM2+, and adjustable VRM settings (Asus Digi+).

The board itself has robust cooling for all critical board components.

It has never failed me in any respect. It has done anything and everything I have asked it to, without hesitation. UEFI flashing has been painless (compared to my GD70; I bricked one and had to replace it via RMA due to a bad BIOS flash).

 

[Phynaz]

You're talking about a board. I'm talking about AMD chipsets and the historical issues they have had. Even AMD has admitted they can't create a decent chipset, hence the outsourcing.

 

[Phynaz]

Time to buy a new laptop, it would seem. Why don't you pick up a Carrizo laptop?

It would probably be slower than the decade old Intel laptop ()

 

[Arachnotronic]

It would probably be slower than the decade old Intel laptop ()

Hah! Seriously though, a Carrizo laptop would blow the doors off of what he's got. For somebody who talks about how great AMD product is, I am genuinely surprised he uses a machine with Intel inside.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Define "fine." Remember, one hard and fast rule of my budget builds is "future proof as much as possible even on a tight allowance," so they always include at least a small SSD and a CPU with 4 threads unless there really is no room in the budget for it. These things are meant to last at least 4 years, ideally longer.

The experience is subjectively, to me, better with an A8 than a Pentium, though again slightly better with an i3 than an A8.

You must have noticed that the CPU-grunt demand for basic stuff like Office apps and the OS itself has been nearly flat for a good 5+ years, no? But so much goes on in the browser now, and THOSE keep getting hungrier and bloatier and more thread-demanding. That Pentium is not going to seem like such a good investment in another 2-3 years.

Now you are shifting the goal posts. You specifically said two core/two thread cpus "do not cut it", present tense. I still disagree with that statement for general use, including browsing and light productivity apps. As for future proofing, I dont pretend to be able to predict the future, but my feeling is that if an app becomes so demanding that a high IPC dual core like a pentium becomes inadequate, a lower end FM2 APU will struggle as well. But honestly, for general light use I think either will be fine for the foreseeable future.

 

[escrow4]

Define "fine." Remember, one hard and fast rule of my budget builds is "future proof as much as possible even on a tight allowance," so they always include at least a small SSD and a CPU with 4 threads unless there really is no room in the budget for it. These things are meant to last at least 4 years, ideally longer.

The experience is subjectively, to me, better with an A8 than a Pentium, though again slightly better with an i3 than an A8.

You must have noticed that the CPU-grunt demand for basic stuff like Office apps and the OS itself has been nearly flat for a good 5+ years, no? But so much goes on in the browser now, and THOSE keep getting hungrier and bloatier and more thread-demanding. That Pentium is not going to seem like such a good investment in another 2-3 years.

Nope. Using a G1850 here @ 2.9GHz. Peaks to 100% fairly regularly on opening Chrome and some sites, no real stutters or actual issues. Using precisely what I paid for it (and it was a rather tiny amount). You can still use a shitbox E8400 and it will YouPorn just fine. And Youtube. Which is less important. Yes an i3 is slightly faster and yes I can tell the difference. That i3 is nearly three times the cost of this Celeron. I'd rather pocket the difference.

 

[Abwx]

Hah! Seriously though, a Carrizo laptop would blow the doors off of what he's got. For somebody who talks about how great AMD product is, I am genuinely surprised he uses a machine with Intel inside.

Reason is that i got it at IIRC 400€ while it wasnt available below 650€ in usual stores..

Other than that there seems to be some irrational beliefs about Intel s chips perfs level, in Cinebench 11.5 the T4400 does barely 1 despite its 2.2GHz frequency and 35W TDP...

Comparatively my Athlon 5350 does 2.05 in the same bench ( at 12W5..), so FP IPC wise a Kabini is already up to C2D Pentium on a core/core basis, and would be a decent choice given the prices..

Carrizos, SKL sand BDWs yield in the 2.3-2.5 range when they are 15W power constrained, one should admit that it s not that big of an advantage, main attractivity are the features like USB3,hardware decoding, for the rest any 5-7 years 25-35W TDP 2C CPU does the job adequatly, no wonder that the market is shrinking..

 

[ShintaiDK]

Where do you get your CB11.5 numbers from? i3 6100U scores 2.69, well below its TDP.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2443441

5350 scores 2.02 at 25W.

T4400 does 1.21. But it was a low end product over 6 years ago.

 

[Abwx]

As for future proofing, I dont pretend to be able to predict the future, but my feeling is that if an app becomes so demanding that a high IPC dual core like a pentium becomes inadequate, a lower end FM2 APU will struggle as well. But honestly, for general light use I think either will be fine for the foreseeable future.

You are assuming that IPC is constant whatever the loading distribution, it is not as demonstrated by Computerbase.de.

Throw two tasks simultaneously that would take 1s each separately and the result wont be 2s but significantly more, and the less cores and cache the more the penalty.

With a single MT app this doesnt of course not happen but who has a PC that deal with only a single soft at a given time..?.

 

[Abwx]

Where do you get your CB11.5 numbers from? because they dont tend to match reality. i3 6100U scores 2.69, well below its TDP.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2443441

There s also scores in excess of 3 at NBC if you want...

Recent laptops CPUs are TDP boosted and the colling apparatus has as much importance as the SKU if not more, get at Geekbench to have an idea...

5350 scores 2.02 at 25W.

I said 12W5 and i made the measurement on my 5350 PC, barely 15W with Prime 95 and 14W with Linpack despite AVX being enabled...

 

[ShintaiDK]

There s also scores in excess of 3 at NBC if you want...

Recent laptops CPUs are TDP boosted and the colling apparatus has as much importance as the SKU if not more, get at Geekbench to have an idea...

The i3 6100U got no boost. Its a fixed clock.

I said 12W5 and i made the measurement on my 5350 PC, barely 15W with Prime 95 and 14W with Linpack despite AVX being enabled...

As always we are missing the evidence. Please provide it. And you better do good.

i3 6100U uses ~8W running CB11.5 at 2.3Ghz.

 

[Rngwn]

There s also scores in excess of 3 at NBC if you want...

Did a quick look on NBC, the 6100U's CB11.5 is 2.75. You probably mistook the 6100H (yea, the 6100H scored 3.22 on CB11.5) for it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

You're talking about a board. I'm talking about AMD chipsets and the historical issues they have had. Even AMD has admitted they can't create a decent chipset, hence the outsourcing.

Yet you overlook the fact that in the Sandy Bridge era, the Intel platform chipset only had two SATA6G ports, whereas the AMD SB950 southbridge had ALL SATA6G ports. (Which is one reason I picked my Thuban rig with 990FX mobo, over a competing Sandy Bridge 2500K + mobo.)

 

[TheELF]

You are assuming that IPC is constant whatever the loading distribution, it is not as demonstrated by Computerbase.de.

Throw two tasks simultaneously that would take 1s each separately and the result wont be 2s but significantly more, and the less cores and cache the more the penalty.

Nope, 7zip when compressing files and not running it's benchmark will only occupy so much of an multicore due to several bottlenecks from hdd mem and whatever and that's the only reason multicores do better in these benchmarks.

 

[Abwx]

Nope, 7zip when compressing files and not running it's benchmark will only occupy so much of an multicore due to several bottlenecks from hdd mem and whatever and that's the only reason multicores do better in these benchmarks.

The point is elsewhere, flashplayers + wifi + firewall + antivirus + browser tabs are all differents apps running simultaneaously.

 

[ShintaiDK]

The point is elsewhere, flashplayers + wifi + firewall + antivirus + browser tabs are all differents apps running simultaneaously.

Its a tiny insignificant usage on a modern PC. But if the best you got is a Kabini based one I can see why you think it takes a toll of some sort.

 

[Abwx]

Its a tiny insignificant usage on a modern PC. But if the best you got is a Kabini based one I can see why you think it takes a toll of some sort.

The Kabini has a SSD and is on an other level CPU wise, CPU usage is much lower...

To get back on topic Godavari seems much better than a i3 even for H265, CPU usage for such task is 65% for a A8 7600 with pre Crimson drivers, a i5 is at 40-42%, so an i3 would be likely overloaded most of the time.

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/940-23/hd-graphics-530-pratique-h-265-consommation.html

 

[ShintaiDK]

The Kabini has a SSD and is on an other level CPU wise, CPU usage is much lower...

To get back on topic Godavari seems much better than a i3 even for H265, CPU usage for such task is 65% for a A8 7600 with pre Crimson drivers, a i5 is at 40-42%, so an i3 would be likely overloaded most of the time.

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/940-23/hd-graphics-530-pratique-h-265-consommation.html

Ask yourself why there are 2 numbers for the i5 6600K for H265. Then reconsider your post since its 6.6% CPU in that case. The file posted was only 17Mbit btw. Bluray will be ~128Mbit. A higher bitrate wont affect the Skylake CPU usage.

And please show me it for an i3. The i3 I got uses ~5% CPU for H265. About the same with Wifi, Edge tabs, Firewall, webserver, Skype, ICQ, movie running etc. Without movie its 0-3% at 500Mhz.

Still waiting for your Kabini power numbers.

 

[dark zero]

Chromes CPU usage is not even worth an after thought
G1820 + chrome +dragon age iquisition + kodi live stream +shadow play
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFPXTHm4Q1M

Game is decent... video is lagging hard.

 

[TheELF]

Game is decent... video is lagging hard.

Video is being broadcasted with odd FPS, that's why it's always compensating.
You can tell in the beginning where CPU usage is ~50% (lower left corner of process hacker)and it is still fluctuating.
I don't think there is a way to fix this in windowed mode, you would have to adjust the display refresh rate to the video and that's only possible in full screen.

 

[Dresdenboy]

As always we are missing the evidence. Please provide it. And you better do good.

i3 6100U uses ~8W running CB11.5 at 2.3Ghz.

His numbers look OK to me. Multiple reviews show similar power consumption deltas (idle->load) in that range for the whole system.

The FPU is not fully pipelined for heavy stuff (FMULs).