AMD A10-7850K And A8-7600: Kaveri Gives Us A Taste Of HSA

Gaming: BioShock Infinite And Grid 2

On-die graphics engines occupy more die area than ever; Kaveri’s Radeon R7-class GPU gets 47% of the SoC. And yet it seems that 1920x1080 remains just out of reach.

Yes, A10-7850K is 11% faster than A10-6800K. But at less than 30 FPS using the Medium detail setting, your choices are either to dial back graphics quality even more or play at a lower resolution.

I imagine AMD is more excited about the A8-7600’s performance. Configured as a 65 W device, it’s a hair quicker than the A10-6800K, and even with a 45 W TDP it comes within 1 FPS of the 100 W Richland-based flagship. AMD is shooting for a roughly $120 price tag—about $20 cheaper than what the -6800K is selling for right now.

It’s unfortunate that even the -7850K’s average frame rates leave us wanting more. In a world where current-gen gaming consoles yield good frame rates at impressive detail levels, it’s not enough to say “turn BioShock’s settings as low as they can go” or “just step back to 720p”. Getting the gaming performance we’d recommend still requires purchasing discrete graphics in this case.

Grid 2 is typically more platform-bound than BioShock, benefiting greatly from fast system memory. In this title, we can use the game’s Medium detail preset at 1920x1080 and race around fairly smoothly.

AMD will want to flaunt this chart. Not only do we get playable performance from three different Kaveri-based configurations, but the 45 W A8-7600 decimates the Richland-based A8-6500T and both of Intel’s HD Graphics 4600-powered CPUs.

Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini is an Editor Emeritus at Tom's Hardware US. He edits hardware reviews and covers high-profile CPU and GPU launches.
  • vipervoid1
    Somethings with Diagram u provided at page 9 ~ Core i5 4760k @@Please fix that ~
    Reply
  • Someone Somewhere
    Yeah, almost all the diagrams refer to the 4760K.

    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.
    Reply
  • cangelini
    Will get the charts fixed shortly--thanks for the catch!
    Reply
  • spp85
    A10-7850k is slower than A10-6800K ?? WTF. Its all hype than actual performance to the table. Even on OpenCL GPU accelerated apps doesn't have any advantage with A10-7850k over i5 or sometimes i3 CPUs. Hopeless is what I feel about AMD CPUs.
    Reply
  • Someone Somewhere
    12454254 said:
    A10-7850k is slower than A10-6800K ?? WTF.

    I got the opposite impression. Which graph are you looking at?
    Reply
  • Jaroslav Jandek
    Thank you for the article (especially the power consumption measurements), Chris. It is definitely an improvement over Richland but kind of boring (disappointingly expectable).

    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.
    Reply
  • Someone Somewhere
    I'm fairly sure that this is on TSMC's 28nm node. GlobalFoundries can't do that yet; this is on the same process used for AMD GPUs currently.
    Reply
  • Jaroslav Jandek
    12454280 said:
    I'm fairly sure that this is on TSMC's 28nm node. GlobalFoundries can't do that yet; this is on the same process used for AMD GPUs currently.
    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.
    Reply
  • jacobian
    I don't really believe into the whole HSA smoke-screen. By the time HSA-enabled apps take off, you will be ready to upgrade from your CPU again. The one terrible truth that stands out right now is that at current prices, the flagship Kaveri A10 doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Kaveri A8? Maybe. Richland A10-6790K? Perhaps. But the Kaveri A10 at $180 is a just a joke, specially after all that hype.
    Reply
  • Someone Somewhere
    CPUs are usually released at ridiculous prices, and come down over a month or two.
    Reply