
The benchmarks on this page employ workloads that we imagine are high on AMD’s list of tasks to accelerate through OpenCL, and ultimately to optimize for its HSA features. In fact, there’s already a beta version of HandBrake with OpenCL-based optimizations that offload cropping and down-scaling to the GPU.
At least in TotalCode Studio, however, encoding happens on x86 cores. This application leverage’s Rovi’s popular MainConcept codecs, which run well on Intel’s Core i5-4670K. The dual-core Core i3 and dual-module A10 and A8 APUs all turn in very similar results. Only the 45 W A8-6500T is completely blown away.
Switch over to the -7600 with a 45 W ceiling and you can take that 144-second finish time down to 98 seconds. We've already pointed this out several times, but AMD says it optimized Kaveri for that 45 W ceiling. In this case, those improvements cut 31% from the test's completion time.

Although we’re not using the OpenCL-accelerated beta of HandBrake, the stable version in our suite does explicitly leverage Kaveri’s support for FMA3/4, LZCNT, and BMI1. Then again, so does Richland’s Piledriver architecture.
Either way, A10-7850K manages a win against -6800K (for that matter, A8-7600 does too).
Dialed down to 45 W, the -7600 finishes in 213 seconds. Compared to the other 45 W part in our chart, AMD’s A8-6500T, that’s a phenomenal improvement. It’s just particularly sexy in a desktop environment.

Our LAME audio conversion test is single-threaded. It’ll allow each of these CPUs to spin up to their maximum Turbo Boost or Core frequency (unlike the per-cycle comparison we ran earlier, which sought to compare architectural efficiency at a fixed 4 GHz).
Intel’s Haswell design maintains its advantage. Richland, as it appears on the A10-6800K, hits higher clock rates and therefore is faster than Kaveri.
Again, curious as to how the 45 W version of A8-7600 would size up with its peak clock rate constrained to 3.3 GHz, I adjusted down the configurable TDP in ASRock’s firmware. The outcome was a finish time of 139 seconds—an impressive improvement over the A8-6500T standing in as our 45 W Richland-based APU.

The same story applies to iTunes, which is also single-threaded.
- 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.