The Official Kaveri Review Thread (A10-7850K, etc)

[inf64]

And it drives the PS4 and XBox1.

What we actually see here are 2 SMT FPUs vs. 4 FPUs.

It's quite an achievement that 2 SMT FPUs can have the same throughput at the same clock as 4 full FPUs. On top of that SR's ST IPC in Cinebench is 6% higher while that evens out in MT portion as Jaguar scales 6% better hence the same MT score. But, Jaguar cannot clock up to ~4Ghz under any circumstances and I would like to know how much power does 2Ghz SR take to finish the benchmark. Jaguar still has advantage in die area and probably in idle/load power.

 

[mnewsham]

Yeah the 7850K's price right now is kind of ridiculous. It's the price I paid for my 2500K over two years ago. I could buy a much cheaper CPU from either AMD or Intel, throw in a 250X, and have equal or better gaming performance on the CPU side and much better performance on the GPU side. The 7850K's price needs to come down in order to be appealing for simple budget gaming.

Only reason to get the 7850k is if you have a microcenter near by. I picked up a 7850k and the asus A88x-pro motherboard combo for $200

 

[el etro]

Ehm, from the same link Kaveri at 2GHz is faster in single thread and same performance with 4 threads against Kabini at 2GHz.

Per-core scaling was one of worst aspects of the entire Bulldozer architecture, if not it biggest fail. It improved so much with Kaveri.

 

[Enigmoid]

It's quite an achievement that 2 SMT FPUs can have the same throughput at the same clock as 4 full FPUs. On top of that SR's ST IPC in Cinebench is 6% higher while that evens out in MT portion as Jaguar scales 6% better hence the same MT score. But, Jaguar cannot clock up to ~4Ghz under any circumstances and I would like to know how much power does 2Ghz SR take to finish the benchmark. Jaguar still has advantage in die area and probably in idle/load power.

Its really two FPU with HT+. Not the same as two plain jane FPU.

Its scaling 180%.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Only reason to get the 7850k is if you have a microcenter near by. I picked up a 7850k and the asus A88x-pro motherboard combo for $200

Does that include BF4? Otherwise, it still seems expensive. For 50.00 or so more, you could get an i5, or for less you could get an FX6300 with motherboard, but you would have to add a discrete card.

 

[mnewsham]

Does that include BF4? Otherwise, it still seems expensive. For 50.00 or so more, you could get an i5, or for less you could get an FX6300 with motherboard, but you would have to add a discrete card.

that is with BF4, and since the motherboard is one of the better FM2+ boards it will OC decently well and allows for 2400Mhz RAM which the a10-7850k loves.


This is the post from my upgrade thread, I was upgrading my sig rig since it's platform was so outdated (q6600, 9800GTX, 8GB DDR2).

I only had $400 to play with though so I had to go cheap.

Here is the final list of parts for the upgrade

AMD A10-7850k

Asus A88X-pro

Enermax ETS-T40-TB

Rosewill Galaxy-03

Rosewill RNX-N250PCE (wireless N 2x2 PCIe card)

Thermaltake TR-600

2x4GB G.Skill F3-2400C11D (2400Mhz CAS 11)



Total: $418.94

After rebates
$388.94

I expect to hit 900-1000Mhz on the GPU and 4.2-4.4Ghz on the CPU.

 

[Red Hawk]

I'm curious, has anyone managed to get the GPU clock on the 7850K all the way up to 1 GHz?

 

[mnewsham]

I'm curious, has anyone managed to get the GPU clock on the 7850K all the way up to 1 GHz?

yes, 1.1Ghz seems to be around where they hit a bit of a wall.

 

[Enigmoid]

yes, 1.1Ghz seems to be around where they hit a bit of a wall.

Looking at the massive memory bandwidth deficit, is the OC even worth anything?

 

[mnewsham]

Looking at the massive memory bandwidth deficit, is the OC even worth anything?

if paired with 2133mhz or faster RAM you can get 20% or more FPS than stock.

 

[SPBHM]

Looking at the massive memory bandwidth deficit, is the OC even worth anything?

a few results here at 1GHz, but the CPU is also OCed by 1GHz (and memory to 2.4)

http://www.hardcoreware.net/amd-kaveri-a10-7850k-apu-overclocked/2/

Kaveri (Steamroller) @ 2GHz

Kabini (Jaguar) A6-5200 @ 2GHz

this is an interesting oportunity to compare with the 4t CPUs I have at the moment, since there is no turbo involved,

Sandy Bridge i3 2100 @ 2GHz

Harpertown Xeon @ 2GHz (same as Yorkfield, Core 2 Quad)

Jaguar, Kaveri and sandy bridge dc with ht perform basically the same at MT per clock

the core 2 quad had a good advantage considering there is not "CMT penalty" and ST performance is higher anyway.

 

[coercitiv]

Does that include BF4? Otherwise, it still seems expensive. For 50.00 or so more, you could get an i5, or for less you could get an FX6300 with motherboard, but you would have to add a discrete card.

It's kind of baffling how he spent less money to get the more expensive alternative, isn't it?

 

[el etro]

Harpertown Xeon @ 2GHz (same as Yorkfield, Core 2 Quad)


Jaguar, Kaveri and sandy bridge dc with ht perform basically the same at MT per clock

the core 2 quad had a good advantage considering there is not "CMT penalty" and ST performance is higher anyway.

If you calcule the CPU die sizes of Xeon and Jaguar, you will find the worth in AMD's architecture.

 

[SPBHM]

If you calcule the CPU die sizes of Xeon and Jaguar, you will find the worth in AMD's architecture.

well, the intention was to compare 4 pretty different "4t" CPUs at the same clock ignoring the rest, because the C2Q is from Q4 2007, the i3 from Q1 2011, hardly competitors to Kabini and Kaveri, Kabini is more efficient, but can't go much higher in terms of performance while the others can easily work with 50%+ more clock,

the c2q was not a low power product, kabini is not a high performance product.

 

[el etro]

Comparing these three scores end in two doubts:

1) Bobcat design can help with some tech to AMD architects improve Bulldozer arch;

2) Bulldozer module approach totally failed and we don't know if it failed theoretically(if it was a bad idea from the start) or practically.

 

[Dresdenboy]

Every arch is a compromise. We'd have to compare core size, COG, R&D, power/performance range, etc.

 

[inf64]

It’s time for AMD to take a page from Intel and dump Steamroller
source: www.extremetech.com

Have you seen the date of that "article"? It's been posted before. I think Joel should stop writing about stuff he has no clue about.

 

[Phynaz]

It’s time for AMD to take a page from Intel and dump Steamroller
source: www.extremetech.com

They will. You can't do it right away. You're looking at years to replace the product.

 

[Deceneu]

What is the NB clock of this APU-s.
Is there any proper review for this APU-s with detailed overclocking info ?!
The NB clocks are as critical as the RAM speed used.

For consumer market the actual architecture is good enough as long as the price is the right one.
Otherwise Jaguar can be very well the replacement.

 

[burninatortech4]

This card is stupid overpriced. That fact alone kills any benefit that the new architecture and HSA bring (at least for now). I can't think of a single reason to buy kaveri at the current price. If it dropped down to the 120-130 range maybe it would be worth it but even then only if they expanded the dual graphics capability.

It's frankly kind of stupid that this can't pair with a r7 260x. That combo would be a beast. As it is it makes more sense to go with a 760k and a 260x or 265. Or better yet an i5-4670k and a Nvidia 750ti. AMD is missing the ball for the higher end of this chips potential.

 

[Haserath]

It's quite an achievement that 2 SMT FPUs can have the same throughput at the same clock as 4 full FPUs. On top of that SR's ST IPC in Cinebench is 6% higher while that evens out in MT portion as Jaguar scales 6% better hence the same MT score. But, Jaguar cannot clock up to ~4Ghz under any circumstances and I would like to know how much power does 2Ghz SR take to finish the benchmark. Jaguar still has advantage in die area and probably in idle/load power.

But it isn't...

The bigger core has more resources to not only feed the FPU; the unit itself has twice the width(4 128-bit FPU in 4 cores vs 4 128-bit SSE FPU in 2 modules).

Kaveri might be more efficient at 2Ghz in dynamic power simply because it's only using half of its potential(voltage needs to go down too) while Jaguar is nearing its peak performance.

 

[CHADBOGA]

How well is Kaveri selling?

The reason I ask is that the most prominent computer store in my city usually has AMD CPU's for sale very early on, but they don't have any Kaveri's, so I can't work out if it means that supply issues have prevented Kaveri from finding its way to my part of the world, or if the computer store isn't breaking its neck to get it in, because it perceives it will be a poor seller, especially with the higher prices.

 

[SPBHM]

what is strange for me is that the 5800K was released for $122?! 6800K $142!? 7850k $173,

maybe as the previous post suggested this launch had extremely limited supply? I'm also not seeing any 7600 available....

 

[AtenRa]

There is no retail availability of the A10-7850K now from what i can see. It is expected in late February.

A8-7600 hasn't been released yet.

 

[OCGuy]

There is no retail availability of the A10-7850K now from what i can see. It is expected in late February.

There is here in the US, maybe your channel just hasn't had them allocated yet.

Supply looks fine, but reviews were not great. Anyone know what the tray price is on this? I can't imagine margins for the retailer are that great when they are priced this low.