Reviews - AMD A8-7600 (28nm Kaveri)

[HEXUS]

So just how does AMD's newest APU perform?

Read more.

[shaithis]

Shame the game benchmarks are so slim....especially when to many people it is the only thing to worry about. We all know it can handle everything else.......

[HalloweenJack]

oh wow it takes 1. seconds longer to open a word document...


and you can dual graphics them with an R7 240.... which is now working well


oh and iris pro is FCBGA only and costs more than the whole of an A8 based machine...

[flufflogic]

It'd have been nice to see it against the last A8, TBH - especially as I am looking to redo my mainboard (CPU, memory, motherboard).

[kingpotnoodle]

Well looks like balance of power unchanged, if you like unaccelerated CPU performance or want the lowest power usage than buy Intel, if you prefer GPU performance then it's AMD. I'd say it was now a closer call though... and for those with no clear usage preference it's a tough call.

[The Hand]

The Rome Total War 2 benchmark looks interesting, the A10-7850K should really do well if the A8-7600 performs like this, though I assume thats set at medium quality graphics.. I can't find on that section whether this is the case or not?

[MaverickWill]

The Rome Total War 2 benchmark looks interesting, the A10-7850K should really do well if the A8-7600 performs like this, though I assume thats set at medium quality graphics.. I can't find on that section whether this is the case or not?

From the Testing Methodology page (page 2), Bioshock and TW Rome II are tested at medium settings, GRID 2 at high.

[davidcrofter]

I am not so sure about the value angle on these new AMD chips either.

When you consider that the Core i3 4130 can be picked up for around £82 and beats them in everything apart from the integrated graphics side - so if you want to build a low powered Micro ATX or HTPC system the i3 4130 seems to be the chip of choice unless you plan to game ... the H81 motherboards are also dirt cheap.

That is the road I am just about to embark on and was holding out to see what AMD Kaveri came up with ...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I am not so sure about the value angle on these new AMD chips either.

When you consider that the Core i3 4130 can be picked up for around £82 and beats them in everything apart from the integrated graphics side - so if you want to build a low powered Micro ATX or HTPC system the i3 4130 seems to be the chip of choice unless you plan to game ... the H81 motherboards are also dirt cheap.

That is the road I am just about to embark on and was holding out to see what AMD Kaveri came up with ...

Considering the A8 7600,will be around the same price,I would probably still get the A8 7600,unless you were going from the start with a discrete card. For a lot of family rigs the A8 would be a good fit - the CPU is more than enough for most general tasks,and the IGP is good enough for some games too.

For HTPC usage the A8 7600 IMHO is the perfect chip and in 45W mode its more or less the same in power consumption as the Core i3.I only see the point of a Core i3 4130 with a discrete card or if you are running something which is like 60% to 70% faster on it.

I am also more confident of AMD keeping up with driver updates for its IGPs too.

Heck,even all those ARM based SOCs,you find in tablets and phones are graphics heavy too,not CPU heavy,if you look at the chip layouts.

[cjs150]

I am struggling to see what market AMD is aiming for.

HTPC: the TDP is high, and high translates into need for more active and therefore noisier cooling. Intel T versions are just that bit lower TDP, but at least at 45W the AMD T version is in roughly the right area.

Gaming: would do a lot better with a discrete GPU, and when you have a discrete GPU the Intel chips have more horses.

Small desktop work computer: No need for super smooth graphics, INtel have more horses in the CPU and AMD not cheap enough.

So the question is what is the point of these chips?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I am struggling to see what market AMD is aiming for.

HTPC: the TDP is high, and high translates into need for more active and therefore noisier cooling. Intel T versions are just that bit lower TDP, but at least at 45W the AMD T version is in roughly the right area.

wPrime. Lets look at the second results for earlier reviews. Wait,they use less intensive X264.

So I wonder if X264 would mean lower power consumption.Yes it would.

So for HTPC perfectly fine. The TDP is fine.

I thought SB and IB Core i3 were meant to be frugal and could be used in ITX rigs. Now all of a sudden they are not.

Here is news for you. I used a 80W TDP Xeon E3 in a modified Shuttle G2 case and I used a Core i3 2100. BOTH probably consume as much power(probably more) than that A8 7600 especially in 45W TDP mode.

People on Hexus who saw my build,know how cramped it was.

Gaming: would do a lot better with a discrete GPU, and when you have a discrete GPU the Intel chips have more horses.

Intel is still slower though. So ultimately a moot point. It would not surprise me that even an A8 5500 or A8 5600K at under £70 is still faster.

Small desktop work computer: No need for super smooth graphics, INtel have more horses in the CPU and AMD not cheap enough.

Still fine with the A8 7600. You see most work computers are still P4 or Core2 era. The A8 7600 is still faster.

Most workplaces host most of the stuff on central servers. Even Bay Trail or Jaguar based low end chips would be fine and they are arriving on the desktop in a few months.

So the question is what is the point of these chips?

HTPC,small general purpose rigs for families,even a tiny gaming rig.

It is only not suitable for hardware enthusiasts who like Core i7s.

Its the same all tired line we have heard since Llano.

Even with £64 A8 5600K and the A6 3670K at under £60,people were bleating on how you should get a magical Pentium dual core at the same price.

[davidcrofter]

Considering the A8 7600,will be around the same price,I would probably still get the A8 7600,unless you were going from the start with a discrete card. For a lot of family rigs the A8 would be a good fit - the CPU is more than enough for most general tasks,and the IGP is good enough for some games too.

For HTPC usage the A8 7600 IMHO is the perfect chip and in 45W mode its more or less the same in power consumption as the Core i3.I only see the point of a Core i3 4130 with a discrete card or if you are running something which is like 60% to 70% faster on it.

I am also more confident of AMD keeping up with driver updates for its IGPs too.

Heck,even all those ARM based SOCs,you find in tablets and phones are graphics heavy too,not CPU heavy,if you look at the chip layouts.

I don't plan to game so for me the i3 would be the better chip by quite a distance and is slightly cheaper - these AMD chips only come into the equation if you want to game.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I don't plan to game so for me the i3 would be the better chip by quite a distance and is slightly cheaper - these AMD chips only come into the equation if you want to game.

What are you planing to do??

What is your current rig??

For most intents and purposes,plonking an SSD into an older rig and getting a low end card will probably do the trick.

Honestly,I wrote massive work documents on a Pentium M 1.7GHZ,1GB of DDR with VIA integrated graphics(Office 2007). I am talking 200+ pages.

I did image deconvolution on a Q6600 and dual Xeon dual core rigs. People talk about CPU power,but unless you are doing 4K video editing,rendering projects,bioinformatic work,heavy VMs or running some really hardware intensive game,we have an excess of CPU power for everything.

Look at how the market is going.

People ditched desktops for less powerful laptops. Now laptops are being ditched for less powerful tablets/hybrid tablets.

Most people would not tell the difference between a Core i3 4330 and a Q6600 in CPU performance as long as the later had at least a low end card for GPU compute,ie,flash and the like. People would notice the GMA950 quite easily,when their youtube videos don't play well.

For general multi-tasking as long as you have 4 reasonably threads available you are usually good to go.

Even with LR,I am finding disk speed and RAM quantity are more important,as long as the GPU can do some acceleration.

There are lots of general purpose rigs,which might need a bit of performance in each area to have all areas covered,and even HTPC again the same thing applies. With a Core i3 it does not really apply. Intel is too CPU centric with them for my liking.

I would rather they plonked the HD5000 down on the Core i3 CPUs at £85 even if meant "lower" CPU performance. However,only ULV versions have them since Intel wants to make more money. Plus with GPU compute getting more and more attention,it probably would mean you would get a bigger performance boost in the long run anyway.

[watercooled]

Kudos to Hexus for testing Richland on the same motherboard - he we can clearly see Kaveri uses no more power at idle than Richland, unlike a number of other sites who have tested Kaveri on a different, more power-hungry board.

Also, given the right board, Richland (and by extension, Kaveri) can equal or use less idle power than an i3. It's not necessarily as simple as this, but for a ballpark estimate, the review motherboard/setup is using ~23W (112-89) more power under 2D load than the previous review board. So say we also subtract 23W from the load power of Kaveri, we get 43W load (AC) for the 45W setting 7600. The i3 looks a lot less impressive now doesn't it?

Same for 3D load; the difference is ~12W here. 12W off the 45W Kaveri measurement gives us 61W, and significantly better 3D performance than any i3 can hope to offer.

Again, kudos to Hexus for pointing that difference out. It would be nice to see some measurements on a more efficient board to validate the above of course, but the same sort of thing applied to the Llano chip I'm running now - it comes in a lot lower at idle/load than most sites measured it at as I picked a fairly efficient motherboard.

[george1979]

Like CAT and others have said - for most mainstream users the CPU power available will be more than enough on this chip and for light(ish) gaming the GPU is fine too. I'm still using an i5 760 and it handles everything I throw at it pretty well three years on - if I were to upgrade now I'd stick with Intel but that's only because I use it for video editing, after effects, etc.
This is a decent little chip for HTPCs or 1st gaming PCs. The ability to xfire with an R7 is good too.
I'm much more interested in HSA though - if it catches on then it will be interesting to see how they perform. Personally I really hope AMD can up their game in terms of CPU performance as Intel need a competitor in the higher end.

[scaryjim]

tbh, 45W - 65W is the kind of TDP AMD should've been targeting with APUs from the start. I'm kind of sad that, despite most of the reviews demonstrating that the A8-7600 is in many ways the best of the Kaveri chips released so far, it's the one that isn't available at retail yet.

I'll be interested to see what happens with the dual cores - given the performance of the 7600 in 45W mode, they might even be able to get 35W desktop chips out, which would be excellent for HTPC usage...