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Gaming: BioShock Infinite And Grid 2

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

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  • -3 Hide
    Sunius , 16 January 2014 22:57
    Hey! How come there are no benchmarks that test CPU performance in gaming on this chip? Nobody really cares about the integrated GPU...
  • 0 Hide
    beyondlogic , 17 January 2014 01:54
    what makes my mind boggle is the fact at full whack the a10 kaveri is better at power managment then the a8 7600 ?
  • 0 Hide
    LePhuronn , 17 January 2014 10:40
    @Sunius: You don't care about the graphics on an APU? Then either you don't understand what you're reading or you're trolling.
  • 0 Hide
    Sunius , 17 January 2014 14:23
    I perfectly understand it - it's the newest AMD cpu and even though it's also an APU, AMD is not gonna release traditional new CPUs in near future, so it would be great to see the benchmarks for it in real gaming scenario, that is with a discreet graphics card. That would answer the question of i3 vs piledriver vs kaveri for budget gaming.
  • 0 Hide
    beyondlogic , 17 January 2014 14:29
    Quote:
    I perfectly understand it - it's the newest AMD cpu and even though it's also an APU, AMD is not gonna release traditional new CPUs in near future, so it would be great to see the benchmarks for it in real gaming scenario, that is with a discreet graphics card. That would answer the question of i3 vs piledriver vs kaveri for budget gaming.


    They may still release a chip later on on the fm2 plus. kaveri is designed to be essentially for the casual gamer etc.
    They will most likely release a steamroller chip itself probly at 65w or 100w. Id be intrested to see what it can achieve without the graphics side i bet it would do better without the graphics ball and chain.

    Im happy to see apus taking of but amd really needs to die shrink better 28nm is barely better then 32nm

    the fact that the graphics side takes up half the die basicly limits the cpu side
  • 0 Hide
    LePhuronn , 17 January 2014 15:21
    What limits the CPU side is the Bulldozer architecture, and nothing will change until AMD develop something different.

    For me, there is no i3 vs Piledriver vs Kaveri for budget gaming argument: if you can fit a discreet graphics card then i3 or even Pentium (believe it or not I ran a Titan off a G840 Sandy Bridge Pentium for a while and there wasn't much of an overall performance hit - I love that lil Pentium lol). If you can't fit a discreet card, get as big an APU as your space and cooling will permit.

    There really isn't any argument for anything else given how poor the AMD CPU is right now.
  • 0 Hide
    zajc3w , 30 April 2014 00:05
    quick test:
    i3 4330 + cheapest board + 7750 ddr5 = £233
    A10-7850 +cheapest board = £180
    I would go for AMD and for saved £50 get more ram/HDD or better motherboard