AMD A10-7800 Kaveri APU review

#4885570

iancook221188

2014-07-31 14:16

do you think there will still be a performance difference with higher speed memory, how high do you think these can go?

#4885573

Hilbert Hagedoorn

Administrator

2014-07-31 14:20

do you think there will still be a performance difference with higher speed memory, how high do you think these can go?

2400 MHz but it will only benefit the IGP perf substantially enough over say 1600 MHz.

#4885585

AzzKickr

2014-07-31 14:54

I have a 6000 or 5000 series in my HTPC (can't really remember anymore which one, the one with an iGPU with 256 shaders supporting DDR1866). I can overclock that GPU massively and allows me to play full-HD, full detail (ex FSAA and such) on my TV for slightly older titels such as NFS: Hot pursuit, Diablo 3, etc. Incredible punch for the money !

#4885594

BLEH!

2014-07-31 15:06

The IGP on the 7850K can reach 1 GHz with a bit of tweaking IIRC.

#4885731

fusion

2014-07-31 18:37

What I don't understand is how would increasing the memory channels improve iGPU performance. Is it memory bandwidth, frequency, or transfers that are making the big improvement. How bigger improvement could we expect from DDR4? Would moving to triple channel memory work better for the iGPU?

#4885749

CPC_RedDawn

2014-07-31 19:06

What I don't understand is how would increasing the memory channels improve iGPU performance. Is it memory bandwidth, frequency, or transfers that are making the big improvement. How bigger improvement could we expect from DDR4? Would moving to triple channel memory work better for the iGPU?

Not really, we really need AMD to push GDDR5 memory as system memory. Much like they are using in the current consoles. Having it unified memory and at this kind of speed would greatly increase performance for the iGPU. How it would perform in terms of every day usage is another question. Also how much would it cost for say 8GB (2X4GB) of GDDR5 memory? Probably quite a bit more than DDR3.

#4885794

BLEH!

2014-07-31 20:09

Not really, we really need AMD to push GDDR5 memory as system memory. Much like they are using in the current consoles. Having it unified memory and at this kind of speed would greatly increase performance for the iGPU. How it would perform in terms of every day usage is another question. Also how much would it cost for say 8GB (2X4GB) of GDDR5 memory? Probably quite a bit more than DDR3.

Making it triple or quad channel even would probably help things a bit.

#4885798

Fox2232

2014-07-31 20:13

Not really, we really need AMD to push GDDR5 memory as system memory. Much like they are using in the current consoles. Having it unified memory and at this kind of speed would greatly increase performance for the iGPU. How it would perform in terms of every day usage is another question. Also how much would it cost for say 8GB (2X4GB) of GDDR5 memory? Probably quite a bit more than DDR3.

GDDR5 is too power hungry, cost is issue too. I wonder why you do not mention HBM which is in play for AMD 2015/16.

#4886107

zzzaac

2014-08-01 04:47

I'm planning on building a desktop, and haven't decided yet on Intel (as usual) or to try out AMD. Hmm...decisions decisions.

#4886108

zzzaac

2014-08-01 04:48

EDIT: double post. Apologies

#4886135

Fox2232

2014-08-01 06:19

I'm planning on building a desktop, and haven't decided yet on Intel (as usual) or to try out AMD. Hmm...decisions decisions.

I've built one very cheap system with a10-7850k. It is sufficient for 60fps gaming. If you want to be able to reach 120fps+ in most of games due to having 120Hz+ monitor, then go with intel.

#4886215

Ven0m

2014-08-01 09:53

I'm planning on building a desktop, and haven't decided yet on Intel (as usual) or to try out AMD. Hmm...decisions decisions.

You have to think about what you're going to do with this computer. My experience shows that if you want to play games at comfortable speeds, it's good to get a CPU that offers maximum per-core performance. 4+ cores would come in handy too. While many games officially support 4+ active threads, usually 1 does most of the work, and the other might as well get packed on 1 or 2 cores without greater issues. For example I have yet to see a computer that can handle Diablo 3 without dropping <60fps @ high details.

#4886238

fusion

2014-08-01 10:48

Not really, we really need AMD to push GDDR5 memory as system memory.

I'm not totally sure about this since every new iteration of ddr doubles the size of the chunks of data collected per call. GDDR does the same thing, since GDDR 5 is based of DDR3 and you get double data from GDDR5 than DDR3 you should roughly get the same amound of data though a GDDR 5 connection per call as you would with DDR4. GDDR is more about saturating the memory channels and minimizing bottlenecks where as DDR is more about responsiveness which is latency and frequency. Although frequency is important for both bandwidth and latency. So GDDR may not be necessary. Pump the frequency and both the GPU and CPU benefit at the price of heat mainly. Looks like we are shifting the price of powering and cooling a discrete video card over to the system memory.

#4888100

garbagejuicer

2014-08-04 19:18

Above an IGP test run with the A10-7800 APU and Thief at Normal image quality settings. We also tried Mantle activated with a GeForce GTX 780 Ti, unfortunately Mantle messed up big-time resulting into very low frame-rates.

I think the author meant R9 290?

#4888128

Hilbert Hagedoorn

Administrator

2014-08-04 20:10

I think the author meant R9 290?

Correct this has been altered in the article. Thanks.