AMD Kaveri Update: A10-7800 APU Review

Name: AMD Kaveri Update: A10-7800 APU Review
Brand: AMD

by Marco Chiappetta — Thursday, July 31, 2014, 03:29 PM EDT

Test System Configuration Notes: When configuring our test systems for this article, we first entered their respective system BIOSes or UEFIs and set each board to its "Optimized" or "High performance Defaults". We then saved the settings, re-entered the BIOS/UEFI, and set the memory speed to each platform's maximum, officially supported speed--DDR3-1866 in the case of the A8-6500T, DDR3-2133 for the A10-6800K, A8-7600, and A10-7800 and DDR3-1600 on the Intel systems.

The solid state drives were then formatted, and Windows 8.1 x64 was installed. When the Windows installation was complete, we fully updated the OS, and installed the drivers necessary for our components. We then installed all of our benchmarking software, performed a disk clean-up, cleared any prefetch and temp data, and ran the tests.

ASUS A88X-Pro Socket FM2+ Motherboard

We tested AMD's latest APU in a full-sized ATX motherboard from ASUS, the A88X-Pro you see pictured here.

HotHardware's Test Systems

Intel and AMD - Head To Head

System 1:
AMD A10-6800K
(4.1GHz - Quad-Core)
AMD A8-6500T
(3.5GHz - Quad-Core)
AMD A8-7600
(3.8GHz/3.3GHz Quad-Core)
AMD A10-7800
(3.9GHz/3.5GHz Quad-Core)

Asus A88X-Pro
(AMD A88 Chipset)

2x8GB AMD DDR3-2133
(@1866 with 6700)

On-Processor Graphics
On-Board Ethernet
On-board Audio

Samsung SSD 840 Pro

Windows 8.1 x64

System 2:
Intel Core i5-4670K
(3.8GHz - Quad-Core)
Intel Core i3-4330
(3.5GHz - Dual-Core + HT)

Gigabyte Z87X-UD7 TH
(Z87 Express Chipset)

2x8GB AMD DDR3-2133
(@1600 with Haswell)

Intel HD 4600
On-Board Ethernet
On-board Audio

Samsung SSD 840 Pro

Windows 8.1 x64

PCMark 8 v2

System Level Benchmark

PCMark 8 v2 is the latest version in Futuremark’s series of popular PC benchmarking tools. It is designed to test the performance of all types of systems, from tablets to desktops. PCMark 8 offers five separate benchmark tests--plus battery life testing—to help consumers find the devices that offers the perfect combination of efficiency and performance for their particular use case. This latest version of the suite improve the Home, Creative and Work benchmarks with new tests using popular open source applications for image processing, video editing and spreadsheets. A wide variety of workloads have also been added to the Work benchmark to better reflect the way PCs are used in enterprise environments.

These tests can be run with our without OpenCL acceleration. We chose to run with OpenCL acceleration enabled to leverage all of the platforms’ CPU and GPU compute resources…

The new A10-7800 outpaced both of the Intel processors in PCMark 8 v2's Work and Home tests, and it squeaked past the Richland-based A10-6800K as well.

Tags: AMD, GPU, CPU, processor, A-8, APU, Kaveri, FM2

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com