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A10-7870K "last review of AMD until Zen"

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Hi guys. We had nice years of Phenoms II, after little disappointment from Bulldozer FX-8150/8120. These CPus were not so bad, but people waited more. Multithread was solid, single worse. But much bigger issue we thought this will be real 8 core and 8 core performance. After some time we understand this is against 4c/8t Intel CPUs...Vishera was nice improvement over first Bulldozer. Yeah, OC awesome, performance clock to clock much better, better in games also. It was 2012 year. After 3 years are these CPUs still rock solid, but outdated also. Some reborn or interesting for someone could be high clockend FX-9590/9370 and last one steppings with FX-8320E, 8370E, 8370. E version as 95W TDP CPUs. Nice. But now we are waiting for new Zen...
APU world is different story. All APUs from hardware point and performance view were good. Sometimes price cost was not ideal, but its not about it today...Year and half before we can seen Kaveri CPU in desktop. 3rd Bulldozer family with new socket FM2+. Now, in last month, coming light refresh Kaveri in A10-7870K. With some tets the higher IPC per core from Bulldozers and AMD CPUs ever.





CPU is new stepping of old one A1 revision in 7850K etc. Interesting is also, under the heatspreader is not calssic TIM, but this metal plate.


The CPU-Z show some information about chip. The classic frequency is 3900 MHz, but maximal turbo is up to 4200 MHz for CPU cores. The iGPU running at quite high 866 MHz at default settings. Interesting could be, the VID of CPU in load is high. ussually around 1.475-1.488V! iGPU around 1.22x V.


Temperatures in idle and in load (stress test AMD stability overdrive). The metal between CPU and IHS is very good for temps. CPU with much higher voltage than 7850K is luke warm.




CPU BOX is nice and bigger than another APU CPUs.


New is also CPU cooler BOX. The similar is in the AMD FX! So copper heatpipes, and relatively quiet Cooler Master fan.



Lets go for some benchamrks at stock:

Superpi 4M (there is older CPUZ before after I updated it)



GPUPI CPU100M nad GPU 1B




AIDA bandwith memory and cache (2133 AMP profile memory)


y-cruncher with AVX suppoer and some others instructions, results for 500M test


wprime


x264FHD


x265


Fritzchess


Cinebench R10 single thread, R11.5, R15





3D Marks and few older Games (DX10+DX11 also)






UT3


Far Cry II


AVP


Sniper Elite 2



Undervolting and overlcocking
I think, the VID for CPU is very high, remmeber the 7850K had around 1.3V as VID, so why for next 100-200 MHz increase voltage so high? Interesting, the powerconsumption with this high voltage is not much higher than 7850K, only around +10W. But I was interesting for quick undervolting. Ater I saved around 25W of power consumption down...See results bellow.




And now overclocking. Also I was looking forward for overlcok the new chip. Ussually your Kaveri 7850K or 7700K will be able to get around 4400 MHz at CPU and around 950-1000 at iGPU in average. With solid aircooling of course. And what about new 7870K? Wow, it was fun! The chip is very good for OC. +300 MHz better!

With stock voltage I got 4600 MHz stable


With max voltage 1.53V I stabilized afterall CPU at excelent 4746 MHz!


Some test after OC= 4746 MHz CPU and 1050 MHz iGPU















The A10-7870K surprised me. I thought, this will be only new higher clocked and "boring" Kaveri, but the overclocking, undervolting and overall better voltage and temps behaviors are nice bonus for me. So if you are enthusiast of AMD and you are looking for FM2+ CPUs/APU I can recommend you this A10-7870K
 
good write up :) its nice to see that it comes with a half decent cooler at last i had one on an fx6200 for ages. is the memory controller any better now? none of my apu's could hold over 2400mhz. i think it would be nice to see them make use of the higher speeds ddr3 as the gpu gets big increases from memory speed.
 
its better. There was review that confirms the Trinity Athlon was better in average than Phenom II x4 in aplications and games in 2013. And Kaveri IPC is much better. Example with Kaveri 5 GHz you can get x87 Superpi test 32M in 12M 30s. With Phenom II impossible, with othres Bulldozer chips the same (max around 14:30 or so and there is bonus L3 cache)
 
Great post FlanK3r! Glad to see the 7870K isn't bundled with that utterly junk heatsink that they included with the 7850K!
Could it be bios issues for the high default voltage? Seems silly that it would be set so high.
 
Great post FlanK3r! Glad to see the 7870K isn't bundled with that utterly junk heatsink that they included with the 7850K!
Could it be bios issues for the high default voltage? Seems silly that it would be set so high.
they probably put it at that because they could with the new heatsink.
 
Emlyn_Dewar: Im not sure. Because the CPU had the same voltage with BIOS 0903 and the same with last one 1101. And few others guys have similar VID of chips 7870K.
 
Thank you for the review.

I must download some of those benchmarks and see what I get with my 4.5Ghz 7850K :-) (If you have some links to them for the versions you used, that would be great!)

I downloaded super pi mod 1.5XS like you have. Got varying results (I think...) from 1m 25s to 1m 28s on 4M setting. 4.5Ghz / 1028Mhz iGPU on 7850K and 2400Mhz memory. Note, I ran out of paste so had to reuse what I already had on the cooler lol. Still haven't gone back and reapplied paste. Using an Evo 212 cooler with 1 fan, and no case fans so pretty impressed with my chip (using mostly auto settings though)

I can only run benchmarks at 1680*1050 at the moment.
 
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wooo now that's kinda tempting to get to possibly replace aging 6600k - or move the 6600k to new mb and put that in there for the kids pc.....

though 6600k at 4.2ghz *all I'll attempt on standard heatsink* isn't too shabby still; really held back more than anything by 4 gigs of ram; need to put another 4 in at least......

specially for 1440 by 900 monitors.....
 
y-cruncher is last official version example
Fritzchess older 4.3 version
Catzilla 1.4
as examples. Some small difference can be between my Win7 SP1 and Win8.1
 
Nice work man.

I like the APU's. Just not quite enough yet for any serious gaming. Hopefully Zen and update graphics architecture will change all this in a couple of years.

For someone building a PC for general use, browsing, movies, web gaming etc. AMD APU's are ideal.
 
They are not aimed at serious gamers though, not really. The graphics this thing can kick out though is pretty damn good for it just being on the chip.

Only games I've really had any issues with so far are Planetside 2 (brutally CPU bound) and Crysis 3. For Crysis 3 I would just have to lower the settings a little more, but it still looks damn good. Planetside 2, I've lowered the rendering but it still plays well and I can be competitive.

All I will say is that for someone like me that didn't want to fork out too much (at the time) for a GPU and decent CPU it has been perfect. It did just what I needed to do and exceeded my expectations. If you think all it can do is web gaming, you are seriously underestimating this chip.

I just wish they had made this new cpu (7870k) stronger and tweaked it more.. this barely seems like a spit and polish.
 
I got to agree with Scougar- I've built for the kids 6600k and 7700k systems they play at 1440 by 900......6600k at 4.2ghz will do mmos without major issues like GW2; secret world; Aion and have no issues; though 4 gigs of ram is holding it back alittle.

7700k at 3.9ghz; does all that; WoTs at 40+ fps with high settings; Roblox etc.....they are great little cpus for the price to do everything on including gaming.

There is a 3rd system I need to replace as its old 5600 X2 system with 6770 in it. they all moan its too slow lol.....
 
yeah, I have one system with older A8-5600K for playing Starcraft II at 1280x1024 (oLD LCD) and its very OK :) Btw, 7850/7870K are much stronger at iGPU part, its something as HD5770-HD6850
 
FlanK3r, could you clock your 7870k at 4.5 and run super pi 4M to compare against my result please?
 
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Ok, today update with APUNB scaling. Usually higher APUNB is better. The sweetpoints seems between 2000-2200 MHz. More is not possible to get without very high voltage at APUNB. I tested only Superpi 16M, Fritzchess test and 3DMark 11 (focused at overall score and physic score) In all results I set CPU to 4 GHz and memory at 2400 MHz XMP profile, iGPU 867 MHz core.


basic is APUNB 1800 MHz





OC 2100 MHz APUNB





OC 2000 MHz APUNB





OC 2200 MHZ APUNB






If someone want only the chart
 
*snip*
Got varying results (I think...) from 1m 25s to 1m 28s on 4M setting. 4.5Ghz / 1028Mhz iGPU on 7850K and 2400Mhz memory. *SNIP*

(I am running my 7850K with 2000Mhz on the Northbridge)

And there is it :)
*SNIPPED picture showing 1m 25s *

Thank you very much :) I actually expected there might be some process improvements that would have got better performance with the 7870K. It seems this chip - just on this one test though - is just an increase in Mhz. I do keep eyeing it up though, because it's new and shiny :D

For now I think I will stick with my 7850K, and try to clock it higher on the CPU side of things.
 
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