
Based on our earlier exploration of per-cycle performance, we know that AMD’s Steamroller architecture yields a nice speed-up in 3ds Max. And even though A10-6800K enjoys higher frequencies, the A10-7850K and A8-7600 (65 W) still turn in slightly better results.
The top Richland-based APU trades blows with Intel’s Core i3-4330, incidentally at the same price. AMD’s A8-7600 isn’t available yet, but once it is, we expect it’ll impress at around $120. We’d have a much harder time arguing in favor of the A10-7850K for $50 more when it’s only marginally faster.

Both 3ds Max and Blender might be considered heavy lifting for low-cost PCs. But that doesn’t stop Intel’s dual-core Core i3 from performing surprisingly well in our render project, besting AMD’s dual-module Kaveri APUs. The A10-7850K narrowly beats AMD’s A10-6800K, while the A8-7600 lands just behind Richland’s quickest incarnation.
Benchmarks make it pretty clear that it’s worth stepping up to Core i5 (or better) if you’re into more demanding content creation apps…at least for now. After all, this would seem to be the type of workload AMD is talking about when it extols the virtues of HSA.

A pure CPU test, Maxon’s Cinebench strictly gives us the difference between host processing performance. Steamroller, operating at its manufacturing process-limited peak and base clock rates, turns out to be slower than A10-6800K.
No surprise—the Haswell-based chips are faster than Piledriver and Steamroller in a single-threaded benchmark. It’s less expected to see Core i3 in front of the APUs, though.

The same thing happens in Sony’s Vegas Pro 12 as Intel’s CPUs take first and second place, while A10-6800K slides past the Kaveri-based APUs. This is an OpenCL-accelerated workload, so it’s strange that AMD’s latest doesn’t turn in stronger numbers. But when we turn off OpenCL and run the same benchmark, completion time nearly doubles. So hardware acceleration is definitely helping, just not as much as we would have thought given AMD's more modern graphics architecture.
- Steamroller, GCN, HSA, 28 nm: Oh My!
- Meet The Compute Core
- A More Capable GPU: GCN Surfaces In Kaveri
- Enabling HSA On The Kaveri APU
- Test Hardware And Software
- Gaming: BioShock Infinite And Grid 2
- Gaming: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim And World Of Warcraft
- Dual Graphics: Does Kaveri Fix CrossFire's Problems?
- Results: Synthetics
- Results: Content Creation
- Results: Adobe CC
- Results: Productivity
- Results: Compression Apps
- Results: Media Encoding
- Results: Power Consumption And Efficiency
- Hoping The Best Is Yet To Come
Of course, the other part of this story will be the adoption of HSA and Mantle. In this regard, I think AMD is playing its cards right. If you want to provide incentive for game developers to invest in developing for Mantle, that economic incentive is not going to come from providing a high-end part that tries to compete with high-end discrete GPUs. That economic incentive, and I believe it's huge, is in lowering the cost of entry to play your game.
With the A8-7600, I believe AMD is providing a tremendous market opportunity and incentive if, with the combination of Kaveri plus embedded technologies (Mantle & True Audio), you can provide a playable gaming environment for the mass market. Admittedly, it may not be a "playable gaming environment" from an enthusiast standpoint, but as an entry point, it is quite good enough. It will be important for AMD to show that the release of Mantle for BF4 impacts performance for the Kaveri APUs in particular. More specifically, they will need to show that Mantle makes BF4 playable on a 7600. If they are successful in that regard, then I think they may really have something exciting here.
I'm hoping AMD is successful in this, because it's obvious that the desktop CPU performance race has reached a point of diminishing returns. Kudus for AMD for potentially changing the game in the industry.
All that said, they screwed up the pricing for the high-end. It needs to be $30 cheaper, and what is even the point of the 7700K? The 7850K at ~$145 and the 7600 where it is would have made much more sense if they want to incent adoption of this technology. The other point is they need to get motherboard manufacturers on-board with bringing more ITX FM2+ motherboards to market at different price points.
I got the opposite impression. Which graph are you looking at?
Given that AM3+ looks like it's done, it would have been nice to see a 6-core chip. Still, one of these may end up in my next laptop.
I got the opposite impression. Which graph are you looking at?
I really like where AMD is going (HSA, GCN and TrueAudio).Too bad the manufacturing process of GlobalFoundries just can't match Intel's.
Also, it would be interesting to see the new Bay Trail Pentium or Celeron CPUs (whichever is closer in performance) in the Efficiency graphs.
28nm SHP from GlobalFoundries. AMD bought over $1 billion worth of wafers from them in december...
I guess you have been reading the articles from a year ago about AMD still using TSMC despite promises of GlobalFoundries' new 28nm SHP process.
Of course, the other part of this story will be the adoption of HSA and Mantle. In this regard, I think AMD is playing its cards right. If you want to provide incentive for game developers to invest in developing for Mantle, that economic incentive is not going to come from providing a high-end part that tries to compete with high-end discrete GPUs. That economic incentive, and I believe it's huge, is in lowering the cost of entry to play your game.
With the A8-7600, I believe AMD is providing a tremendous market opportunity and incentive if, with the combination of Kaveri plus embedded technologies (Mantle & True Audio), you can provide a playable gaming environment for the mass market. Admittedly, it may not be a "playable gaming environment" from an enthusiast standpoint, but as an entry point, it is quite good enough. It will be important for AMD to show that the release of Mantle for BF4 impacts performance for the Kaveri APUs in particular. More specifically, they will need to show that Mantle makes BF4 playable on a 7600. If they are successful in that regard, then I think they may really have something exciting here.
I'm hoping AMD is successful in this, because it's obvious that the desktop CPU performance race has reached a point of diminishing returns. Kudus for AMD for potentially changing the game in the industry.
All that said, they screwed up the pricing for the high-end. It needs to be $30 cheaper, and what is even the point of the 7700K? The 7850K at ~$145 and the 7600 where it is would have made much more sense if they want to incent adoption of this technology. The other point is they need to get motherboard manufacturers on-board with bringing more ITX FM2+ motherboards to market at different price points.
Yesterday there was an HD7770 so low that you could get that and an FX 6300 for like $5 more than what newegg is asking for the 7850k. You can get an HD 7750 in that general price range with an FX 6300 now. In desktop, APU's still hold no appeal to me at all. Mobile, they have promise for sure.