AMD Athlon and A10 FM2+ 2016 Roundup

Keith May
•
Apr 25, 2016 at 05:00pm EDT

High End GPU Performance and Conclusion

AMD recently refreshed their FM2+ APU/CPU lineup with some new SKUs and began shipping their new “Near Silent Cooling Solution”.  We recently reviewed the A10 7860k and were sent several other FM2+ CPUs and APUs for review, and instead of offering up several repetitive reviews we decided to offer up a fairly extensive Athlon and A10 FM2+ roundup to show where each of the chips stand and which ones offer the best value.  Not only are we lining them up against each other we also included an i3 4130 (Haswell) iGPU and dGPU and an i5 6400 (Skylake) iGPU and dGPU to see how they perform to similarly priced Intel parts.

Athlon x4 845 ($69.99)

The only fully new CPU in the lineup the Athlon x4 845 is a quad-core cpu based on the Excavator cores instead of the Steamroller architecture.  Featuring a core clock of 3.5ghz and turbo of 3.8ghz and a TDP of 65w.  Something to keep note with the Athlon x4 845 is that, because it’s derived of a mobile APU you only get 8 lanes of PCIe 3.0.  The 845 comes bundled with their new low power silent cooling solution.

Athlon x4 860k ($69.99)

The first of the Kaveri line to be launched as a standalone CPU the Steamroller based Athlon x4 860k features a base clock of 3.8ghz and a turbo clock of 4.0ghz.  The 860k has a TDP of 95w and came with the old style 95w cooling solution.

Athlon x4 880k ($94.99)

The highest clocked Athlon x4 880k, Steamroller based like the 860k, comes in a base clock of 4ghz and a turbo of 4.2ghz.  The Athlon x4 880k retains the 95w TDP but this go around comes packaged with the “Near Silent” 125w cooling solution.

 

A10 7860k ($117.99)

The A10 7860k was launched as AMDs most efficient A10 APU.  This APU comes with a CPU core clock of 3.6ghz with a turbo 4ghz turbo.  The iGPU features the full 512 Stream Processors and a GPU core clock of 754mhz.  The 7860k features a TDP of 65w and comes with the new 95w Near Silent Cooling solution.

A10 7870k ($139.99)

The A10 7870k has been around for a while now with its Steamroller base quad-core design.  Featuring a CPU clock of 3.9ghz and a turbo of 4.1ghz.  The iGPU features full 512 Stream Processors at a core clock 866mhz.  The A10 7870k once came with the old style 125w turbine cooler and has now been replaced with the same 125 near silent cooler as the Athlon x4 880k.

A10 7890k ($164.99)

The A10 7890k comes in at the highest price for a current APU, but also comes with the fastest Kaveri and Steamroller based APU to come to market.  Comes with an core clock of 4.1ghz and a turbo of 4.3ghz.  The iGPU features the full 512 Stream Processors and comes at the same iGPU frequency of the A10 7870k of 866mhz.  The A10 7890k is the only APU or Athlon CPU in the new lineup to feature the new Wraith Cooler.

Current Desktop Processors with New Near Silent Cooling Solutions

 

Test benches and Power Draw Tests

FM2+ test bench

Z87 test bench

Z170 test bench

 Power Draw

Testing the power draw of these processors we needed to see the power draw while using just the iGPU and then again with the GTX 960.  We took the idle readings at the desktop with no other applications running.  The load reading was taken during the benchmark for DiRT Rally.

 

CPU Performance

Before we jump into gaming performance it's important to take a look at general performance from each of the processors that we're going to be going over throughout this lineup.

Cinebench 11.5

Using Cinebench 11.5 we measure the general rendering performance of each processor, we took both Single Core and Multi Core into account here and ran the test with the cpu priority set to "High"

Geekbench 3 32bit

We took single and multi core performance score from the 32bit version of Geekbench 3.

HWBot x265 Encoding

The HWBot x265 Encoding benchmark puts the CPUs through their paces rendering a full scene using x265.  We ran the benchmark at both 1080p and 4k with priority set to High on all tests.

Firestrike Physics

For the last CPU benchmark we used the Physics portion of the standard 3DMark Firestrike benchmark suite.

iGPU Performance

*noted APU and Intel iGPU were allotted 1gb of VRAM*

Firestrike

We ran standard Firestrike using just the iGPU of each chip.  We did separate the Graphics score and the Overall score so give a clear look at the Graphics capability but also give the overall picture.

Battlefield 4

We ran Battlefield 4 at 1080p with the low preset through a portion of the single player game .

Counter Strike Global Offensive

We ran CS:GO at 1080 medium settings through a recorded round of Deathmatch on Dust II so that we were able to have repeatable consistent results.

DiRT Rally

We ran DiRT Rally at 1080p with no AA and at the Low Preset using t he in game benchmark.

Rocket League

We ran Rocket league at 1080p using the Quality Preset and used Fraps to record min/max/avg across three matches.

Dota 2

Dota 2’s results were taken by running the game at 1080p and 74% quality preset.  We used a recorded match to have consistent results with the benchmark

Dedicated GPU Performance with GTX 960

Our first wave of benchmarking done with a dedicated GPU we use the EVGA GTX 960 SSC

Firestrike

While testing with the GTX 960 we recorded the Overall score with 3dMark Firestrike since it gives a well rounded look at overall system performance.

Battlefield 4

This go around with battlefield 4 we bumped it up to High settings and rand through the same area as we did with the iGPU benchmark.

DiRT Rally

This go around with Dirt Rally we bumped the settings to 1090 Ultra with 2xMSAA and used the in game benchmark for our results.

Star Wars Battlefront

We ran this title at 1080p Ultra and played through the first 5 waves of Survival on Hoth.

The Witcher 3

In this title we ran it at 1090 with Post Processing set to Medium and Graphics set to High.  Our run went from Hangman’s Ally to Crow’s Perch and took our results from there.

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

We ran Shadow of Mordor at 1080p Ultra Preset using the in game benchmark.

Grand Theft Auto V

GTAV was set to 1080p with the game settings at Very High, Shadows set to Nvidia’s PCSS, and 2xMSAA.  We used the in game benchmark to gather these results.

We see that paired with a mainstream GPU, such as our GTX 960, any of the Athlon or A10’s are plenty capable of handling gaming at 1080p.  But, what happens when you pair one of these with a high end GPU such as the GTX 980ti? We explore that on the next page by comparing the highest clocked A10 7890k to the i5 6400.

 

High End GPU Results

These tests were done to exhibit the CPU constraints when paired with a high end GPU.  For this test we paired the A10 7890k (as it was the highest clocked Athlon/APU) with the EVGA GTX 980ti Hybrid and then did the same with the i5 6400 as it’s only $25 more than this A10.

 

Firestrike

While testing with the GTX 960 we recorded the Overall score with 3dMark Firestrike since it gives a well rounded look at overall system performance.

DiRT Rally

This go around with Dirt Rally we bumped the settings to 1090 Ultra with 2xMSAA and used the in game benchmark for our results.

Star Wars Battlefront

We ran this title at 1080p Ultra and played through the first 5 waves of Survival on Hoth.

 

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

We ran Shadow of Mordor at 1080p Ultra Preset using the in game benchmark.

Grand Theft Auto V

GTAV was set to 1080p with the game settings at Very High, Shadows set to Nvidia’s PCSS, and 2xMSAA.  We used the in game benchmark to gather these results.

 

 

Conclusion

 

At the end of the day the entire line up of Athlon x4 and A10’s are fairly capable processors.  The R7 graphics handily outpaces both the HD4600 and the HD530.  We also see that the Athlon x4s handle driving a mainstream GPU at 1080p with relative and comparative ease when put up against both the i3 4130 and i5 6400.  That begins to change once you throw in a higher performance GPU and the i5 begins to stretch out and walk away.  But I have to give a solid nod to the Athlon x4 845 for having the strongest cores of any of the Steamroller based Athon or A10s.  While the 845 is still behind the i3 and i5 in raw CPU performance it’s quite impressive what the $70 CPU can bring to the table, and doing so at 65w which is really nice to see AMD doing.  If anything can come from seeing how well that CPU does (remember, the lowest clocked Athlon/A10) then it bodes well for the performance of AMD’s upcoming Zen architecture which is claimed to be ‘greater than 40% faster IPC over Carrizo”.

 

But guys…you didn’t include the A10 7890k and Athlon x4 880k overclocked results!  Don’t worry, that is being handled in a separate article where we see just what kind of overclocking potential the included New Cooling Solutions will allow us to achieve.

 

 

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