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

Results: Compression Apps

Our WinZip 18 benchmark has three components: a pure CPU test, a maximum compression (EZ) run, and an OpenCL-accelerated pass.

The fact that A10-6800K finishes the CPU-specific metric (in red) ahead of -7850K suggests that we aren’t getting maximum utilization. In any case, the Core i3 is both cheaper and faster than AMD’s fastest Kaveri-based APU.

Creating a more intense load with the EZ setting doesn’t change the finishing order—it only makes each run take longer.

Switching on OpenCL does help, though. In this case, the A10-6800K jumps in ahead of Intel’s Core i3. The A10-7850K roughly ties the Intel CPU (albeit at a $30+-higher price point). It also bears mention that the Core i3 is a 54 W part, while AMD is hitting 95 and 65 W thermal ceilings with the two Kaveri APUs in our chart.

The latest version of WinRAR is fairly effective at utilizing parallel computing resources; however, the Kaveri APUs trail a bit behind Richland. The Haswell-based Intel processors are significantly faster.

Shifting down to 45 W on the A8-7600 yields a completion time of 111 seconds. As enthusiasts, it’s most natural for us to look at the highest-end parts for inspiration. But in the case of Kaveri, AMD says it focused its attention in the 35 to 45 W band. It shows, too.

7-Zip is typically considered one of the best-threaded compression workloads in our benchmark suite, so it’s a bummer to see Kaveri receiving little validation at the 95 W level. Fortunately, the 65 W A8-7600 gives up fairly little performance for a big reduction in peak thermal dissipation. It’ll be interesting to see how this translates over to our efficiency calculations across the entire benchmark suite.