AMD - Piledriver chitchat

[DanceswithUnix]

It seems the A8 6500T and A10 6700T are finally available:
http://www.morecomputers.com/extra.a...FZGWtAodAXYAfQ
http://www.ebuyer.com/613489-amd-a10...-ad670tyhhlbox

Edit!!

Here is a review of the A10 6700T:

http://translate.google.com/translat...2Findex-2.html

Looking at the CB scores the A10 6700T seems to be running at between 2.8GHZ and 3.2GHZ it seems. IGP performance is very similar to the A10 6800K.

More interesting to me on ebuyer is the 6790K which I see is in stock at quite a discount over the 6800K

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This was posted on SA forums:

http://www.gdm.or.jp/voices/2013/1230/56219

The CB R15 score is around 4GHZ to 4.2GHZ Trinity level(the Kaveri CPU is running at around 3.7GHZ).

Edit!!

Score is the same as the A10 6790K:

http://blackholetec.com/drupal7/site...bench%2015.jpg

So that is a 4.0GHZ to 4.30GHZ PD part.

Edit!!

CB is FPU heavy BTW,and AFAIK most of the improvements of the SR core are not in the FPU.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Another one off SA forums:

http://s27.postimg.org/k6qz2paub/gig...pport_list.png

Surely a typo??

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Ballina APU:

http://www.zauba.com/import-apu-fp3-hs-code.html

[watercooled]

Another one off SA forums:

http://s27.postimg.org/k6qz2paub/gig...pport_list.png

Surely a typo??

The 4 channels bit you mean? 4 channels would be nice for GPU bandwidth, but I suspect they mean 4 slots (2 in each channel) - some memory may may behave differently with the extra load on the IMC.

[inf64]

4ch thing in that pdf is intriguing indeed but I don't think it's real (I could be wrong but chances are slim for that). Looks like a typo for some other board's memory qual. report.

As for the Kaveri score, it's on par with PD's ST performance at the same clock and ahead of PD (again at the same clock) by 7-8% in MT portion of the test. C15 is valid benchmark but probably not the best one. Some other benchmarks that AMD will use(cherry pick ) will show greater improvements. Specially tuned(compiled for bdver3) workloads will undoubtedly show very good improvements.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

More info about Mullins:

http://www.slideshare.net/DevCentral...by-reed-hinkel

[inf64]

Another website leaked some more benchmarks:
http://tieba.baidu.com/p/2795083406

Backup imgur gallery:
http://imgur.com/a/OYWL0#0

It's locked 7800 part,3.5-3.9Ghz, but apparently rarely turbos in x86 workloads. It has 65W TDP and base clock for iGPU of 654Mhz (turbo is 720Mhz). Some CPU benchmarks, done @ fixed 3.5Ghz clock show healthy improvements while others not so much of an improvement. Overall it's ~10-15% faster per clock(~average) with unknown OC headroom.
iGPU has some issues with driver and memory BW starvation. Hopefully driver issues will be fixed at launch.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It looks like clockspeeds are a major issue here - hopefully the A10 7850K will boost higher more often. This looks more like the Llano launch with regards to the CPU - GF strikes again.

[Terbinator]

Been tasked with a build (CPU/GPU/MB/HDD) for a friend that needs to be fairly cheapish. He wants it for gaming an Uni purposes which is basically video/film editing. Programs used are from Avid, as well as Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro yet I can't seem to find any benchmarks for these on Intel, let alone AMD/Intel.

It will need to be gaming (Day-Z/LoL) capable to an extent so I was erring towards the Kaveri chips but I can't find any results for video editing at all and in this regard, I suppose Intel is the "safer bet".

Ideas? Also trying to keep towards ITX.

[watercooled]

It can really depend on whether the programs make use of GPU acceleration while working on the project, in which case something like Kaveri could work really well. Of course, the rendering itself isn't real-time so a small % difference in performance isn't realistically going to change much, but if that's the main focus, then something like Vishera should offer excellent value for money provided the app isn't ancient and can scale threads. For example, an 8350 generally outperforms even a Haswell i7 at threaded encoding with x264.

If you want smaller form factor ITX i.e. no discrete GPU, then the best bet would likely be an AMD APU if any gaming is planned of course.

In a given price range, AMD is generally at least on par with Intel for encoding performance, but if money is no object, you could fit something like an i7 into an ITX build. And I have no idea about those apps, but if they're not particularly well optimised, an Intel CPU would probably be ale to brute-force through the code faster. I don't think AM3+ chipset graphics are really suitable for gaming so probably not an ideal platform without a discrete GPU here. An APU would likely fall behind the more expensive i7 for encoding, but the real-time stuff where performance is more immediately noticeable e.g. gaming and potentially accelerated editing apps, the APU's GPU would be far superior to anything Intel has to offer.

But like I say I'm not sure how those applications perform, which could have a big influence on the decision.

[Terbinator]

Snip...

Strictly speaking I was working on the notion of CPU encoding only as, I'm guessing, GPU acceleration in these programs is patchy at best, more so with AMD APUs (Avid is a featured partner on Nvidia's site). I just don't want to suggest the APU route if it turns out the stuff he's using doesn't work well with Steamroller/modules and getting him a 4670K/Xeon equivalent would have been a better shout. The only downside here is Intel's iGPU.

Budget will be ~£300 I suppose. I'm giving him 8GB of RAM so he just needs CPU(GPU)/MB/HDD and a case.

But, like I said, seems to be very few benchmark results, and definitely not reliable ones, knocking around the web.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The latest version of the Adobe CS has switched over to OpenCL acceleration as the default means,over CUDA. OpenCL works better on AMD graphics cards ATM.

I would look at the following:
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/amd-a...he-100w-retail
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigab...-dvi-hdmi-mitx
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/450w-...n-atx-v231-psu
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/500gb...rpm-32mb-cache
http://www.ebuyer.com/568991-powerco...x7730-1gbd5-he

The graphics card is an HD7730 GDDR5.
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/coole...-w-o-psu-%28st

The motherboard has wireless too.

[Terbinator]

Is the 7730 worth looking at? If i go the APU route it will be with a 7850K.

[DanceswithUnix]

Is the 7730 worth looking at? If i go the APU route it will be with a 7850K.

I think he was using the ~£46 price saving of the 760K over a 6800K to justify a discrete GPU complete with its own ram.

For 7850K I don't think we have reliable enough benchmarks to know yet, though for Open-CL I wonder if 1GB on a discrete graphics card would be enough. For gaming I would expect Cat's list to be better than a 7850K if only for the extra memory bandwidth in the system from the discrete card.

Wonder how well Crossfire works on these chips though

[The Hand]

I'm waiting to see how Kaveri/A10-7850K performs too, as I've bought a few games on the Steam Sale that my laptop (i5+ Geforce 315m) struggles with graphically and might just upgrade my old athlon 64 (lol) desktop.
I've heard Kaveri will work well with an SSD, though I suspect the SSD might end up costing more than the APU. If AMD are bundling BF4 with it then it may be safe to assume it'll run quite well on the A10-7850k? It supports DirectX11.2 too, so thats another bonus.

Edit:

Just found a video demo of BF4 using Kaveri: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axyHkKn_e80
Looking hopeful IMO.

Edit 2: Actually, with the res set at 1280x720 on Ultra, it gets about 25-30fps, I was looking at maybe 1680x1080 res gaming, but still looks ok considering the expected price.