Finals Words & Conclusion
Final Words & Conclusion
You know, I think Godavari really was intended for the OEM market and as such the AMD A10-7870K launch has not been a release that makes much sense. The token "Godavari" appeared on the web and that created some fuzz on the web. Little time later all of the sudden there is this 7870K SKU, and after people realized what it is, they where disappointed, yet another Kaveri spin. Fact remains, this is a slightly tweaked 7850 with roughly 5% more performance on the CPU cores and roughly 10 to 15% more performance on the graphics segment and related tech like OpenCL. While it seriously is time for something new and faster CPU wise, the fact remains that the A10 series APUs are nice mainstream products for any internet PC or a simple game. As such the A10 7870K offers a good balance in terms of features and price. CPU wise, it takes AMD 4 cores for what Intel can do with two of them and that distance keeps growing. GPU/IGP wise this APU offers very strong performance amid the competition. And if you need a little more gaming performance, use a decent dedicated graphics card, you can still play your games at Full HD quite well. Especially with Windows 10 and DirectX 12 in mid these APUs will receive a free boost. Future DX12 games will much less dependant on the CPU and that will work in AMDs advantage, but for Intel the same rules apply. Keep in mind that if you need a cheap PC that ticks alot of boxes, this product is dirt cheap for what you get, a motherboard can be purchased for 60 EURO, the APU 140 EURO.
The A10-7870K APU as tested today is performance wise roughly at similar performance levels as the previous generation A10 APUs. We feel that the AMD 10-7800 series are products for entry-level towards mainstream PCs, it is an excellent solution for HTPCs really. The focus on the A10 system and the capabilities will be small form factor PCs for casual gaming, media etc and on that front it definitely excels.
Performance
Overall though our conclusion remains close to all other APU reviews we have written in the last year or so, the danger for the success of the APU on the desktop PC platform lies in the lack of raw processor power. With for normal usage and with Windows 8 or 10 it'll be more than sufficient as the infrastructure supporting this APU is fast with SATA3, fast memory bandwidth and what not. The integrated graphics solution that resides inside the APU is great (for its purpose) and highly programmable. OpenCL and anything compute related is exactly where this APU shines. Gaming wise a migration of the architecture to GCN is a very clever step as well. With mediocre settings you can actually play games at 1080P, please do pair it with fast DDR3 memory though as the graphics processor is very dependant on your system memory. But you can even play games at 720P quite easily and some even at 1080P if flick down image quality settings. Foir everyday usage like the web, photoshopping and office applications a setup like this is plenty fast.
The Platform Overall
Now in the beginning of this conclusion I wrote an entire chapter about processing performance, but the truth is also (and you do need to realize this) that a Kaveri APU based platform will offer value for money. AMD is intensely strong with the embedded GPU and can spin-off many functions from that GPU. Combined with the series 8 chipset you will gain features like a SATA-600 and USB 3.0 support. Also a very powerful Catalyst based software suite surrounding AMDs APUs definitely brings heaps of advantages to them opposed to the competition. Remember, the A10 7870K APU offers 'OK' CPU performance at best, yet offers excellent multi-media options, a Full HD media experience and sure, even gaming albeit entry level, will work just fine.
Concluding
My conclusion will be similar to other series A8 and A10 APU reviews we did for AMD. Until the new architecture arrives the current APU will remain a mediocre product in terms of its overall serial processing performance (raw processor performance). For the mainstream and higher demanding end-users this simply is not enough to make a big enough difference, as you guys demand something faster on the processor side of things. The flip-coin side of things is that the budget minded and limited end-users can gain heaps of features and performance in the entry-level to mainstream range of PC desktop products, within that segment the APU will impress me and will make for an excellent APU to run your average PC for browsing, photos and multi-media functionality. Also for things like a NAS or HTPC and other small form factor functionality an A10 APU is excellent. Combine it with a series 68 motherboard, you'll have a processor, graphics subsystem, up-to four SATA-600 ports, USB 3.0, heaps of USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, HD audio and you simply get a very up-to-date PC. So for 139 EUR the A10-7870K can make a lot of sense combined with a 59 EURO motherboard. We remain very interested to see how the upcoming DirectX 12 and Windows 10 are going to help out the gaming experience with AMD APUs. The A10-7870K is a relatively good in price-performance APU combined with the a budget motherboard, within its range and channel positioning of course. But hey here is a tip, search for the A10 7850 and you'll notice that it sells for 129 USD ;)
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