The AMD A8-7670K APU Review: Aiming for Rocket League
by Ian Cutress on November 18, 2015 8:00 AM ESTThe Testing
A number of factors about the A8-7670K processor suggest that this is "another release of the same sort of stuff," albeit with increased frequencies. Nevertheless, we put the processor through our regular tests, to see what would happen. Our bench suite this time had one omission and one addition. For whatever reason, Linux Bench refused to run, with Ubuntu 14.04 throwing a hissy fit and not willing to start. I’m not sure if this was a BIOS issue or something more fundamental with the software stack, but it was odd. The addition, as the title of the review alluded to, is a Rocket League benchmark. At this time, we haven’t run it on many systems, but the A8-7670K is the sort of APU that enables games like Rocket League. Rocket League is a good contender for our 2016 CPU/APU benchmark suite on the integrated graphics side of things, and this serves as a good tester in the wild.
All of our regular benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench. Rocket League will be added in the future with the 2016 updates.
Test Setup
| Test Setup | |
| Processor | AMD A8-7670K 2 Modules, 4 Threads 3.6 GHz (3.9 GHz Turbo) R7 Integrated Graphics 384 SPs at 756 MHz |
| Motherboards | MSI A88X-G45 Gaming |
| Cooling | Cooler Master Nepton 140XL |
| Power Supply | OCZ 1250W Gold ZX Series Corsair AX1200i Platinum PSU |
| Memory | G.Skill 2x8 GB DDR3-2133 1.5V |
| Memory Settings | JEDEC |
| Video Cards | ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB (1150/1202 Boost) ASUS R7 240 2GB |
| Hard Drive | Crucial MX200 1TB |
| Optical Drive | LG GH22NS50 |
| Case | Open Test Bed |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit SP1 |
Many thanks to...
We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our test bed:
Thank you to AMD for providing us with the R9 290X 4GB GPUs.
Thank you to ASUS for providing us with GTX 980 Strix GPUs and the R7 240 DDR3 GPU.
Thank you to ASRock and ASUS for providing us with some IO testing kit.
Thank you to Cooler Master for providing us with Nepton 140XL CLCs.
Thank you to Corsair for providing us with an AX1200i PSU.
Thank you to Crucial for providing us with MX200 SSDs.
Thank you to G.Skill and Corsair for providing us with memory.
Thank you to MSI for providing us with the GTX 770 Lightning GPUs.
Thank you to OCZ for providing us with PSUs.
Thank you to Rosewill for providing us with PSUs and RK-9100 keyboards.
Load Delta Power Consumption
Power consumption was tested on the system while in a single GTX 770 configuration with a wall meter connected to the OCZ 1250W power supply. This power supply is Gold rated, and as I am in the U.K. on a 230-240 V supply, that leads to ~75% efficiency at greater than 50W, and 90%+ efficiency at 250W, suitable for both idle and multi-GPU loading. This method of power reading allows us to compare the power management of the UEFI and the board to supply components with power under load, and includes typical PSU losses due to efficiency.
The TDP for the A8-7670K is up at 95W, similar to many other AMD processors. However, at load, ours drew only an additional 83W, giving some headroom.
AMD A8-7670K Overclocking
For this review, we even tried our hand at overclocking on the MSI A88X-G45 Gaming motherboard and managed to get 4.6 GHz stable.
Methodology
Our standard overclocking methodology is as follows. We select the automatic overclock options and test for stability with POV-Ray and OCCT to simulate high-end workloads. These stability tests aim to catch any immediate causes for memory or CPU errors.
For manual overclocks, based on the information gathered from previous testing, we start off at a nominal voltage and CPU multiplier, and the multiplier is increased until the stability tests are failed. The CPU voltage is increased gradually until the stability tests are passed, and the process is repeated until the motherboard reduces the multiplier automatically (due to safety protocol) or the CPU temperature reaches a stupidly high level (100º C+, or 212º F). Our test bed is not in a case, which should push overclocks higher with fresher (cooler) air.
Overclock Results
MSI’s motherboard doesn’t allow fixed voltages to be set but prefers to rely on an offset system only. There is a problem here that we are also fighting a DVFS implementation, which will automatically raise the voltage when an overclock is applied, with an end result of stacking the overclock voltage offset on top of the DVFS voltage boost. On our cooling system, the processor passed quite easily up to 4.6 GHz without much issue, but 4.7 GHz produced an instant blue screen when a rendering workload was applied. Hitting 4.6 GHz on a midrange AMD processor is quite good, indicating our sample is some nice silicon, but your mileage might vary.
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AS118 - Wednesday, November 18, 2015 - link
Well to be fair, the FX chips are strong enough and cheap (especially the $100 FX-6300) and you can pair them with a discrete GPU with ease. If you're trying to get a 1080p gaming rig for absolute cheapest price, a double AMD FX / GPU build works pretty well.That said, next year with Zen on 14nm will probably give people a good reason to get AMD. I just support AMD whenever I can because I dislike monopolies, and don't want Nvidia and Intel to become ones.
Sure they give good price for performance NOW, but that's because they have AMD to compete with them. If they didn't, I doubt the price would be "only a little higher" than AMD.
Oxford Guy - Wednesday, November 18, 2015 - link
8320E at $110 at Microcenter with UD3P 2.0 board is the best deal.JoeMonco - Wednesday, November 18, 2015 - link
"That said, next year with Zen on 14nm will probably give people a good reason to get AMD."Yeah, yeah. We hear this ever time a new AMD microarchitecture comes out and yet not a single one has lived up to the hype in more than a decade.
medi03 - Thursday, November 19, 2015 - link
Do you get paid to spread FUD about AMD or is it for free?JoeMonco - Thursday, November 19, 2015 - link
How can facts be "FUD"? If I'm wrong, please do tell which AMD CPU has been able to beat Intel in anything performance or TDP-wise since the Core2 from 2006. I won't hold my breath, though, since you'll just sling ad homs with no real facts.Deshi - Friday, November 20, 2015 - link
Yes, and that would be because only one new architecture (buldozer and its many variants) has been released in that past Decade, and we all know how that played out. Before that Athlon actually beat Intel for a good amount of time, and the same guy that worked on that is working on Zen. I'm somewhat hopeful that it won't be a bad design decision this time. I'm just hopeing its not too late. back in Athlon days, Intel was too pridefull and choose to ignore AMD initially, which is why AMD was able to take so much market share from them. I don't expect Intel to make the same mistake again this time.alistair.brogan - Wednesday, November 18, 2015 - link
This review doesn't compare with the new Pentium G4500. Skylake Pentium CPU cores with i5 Skylake integrated graphics. Faster and 1/3 the electricity/heat compared with the AMD APU. Only advantage amd has left is how some newer games don't run right without quad core, as they are bad ports from consoles....alistair.brogan - Wednesday, November 18, 2015 - link
50 dollars cheaper too, in Canadaalistair.brogan - Wednesday, November 18, 2015 - link
40-50 fps borderlands 2 on minimum settings (30-40 ultra settings) with HD 530 and the G4500Ian Cutress - Thursday, November 19, 2015 - link
As posted above, we don't have any of the other Skylake processors in yet. Benchmarking is always an iterative task - with limited space and resources you can't all benchmark them on the same day.But sure, if I could get all the processors in on day one, I would totally try test them all for comparion points.
Come back when/if we test the G4500 and see the numbers then.
And no, it's not a simple case of going out and buying this one SKU just for the niche comparison that you're interested in - there have been requests in the comment sections of reviews for other SKUs as well, and I've had a couple of emails for more SKUs on top of that.
Some SKUs are region limited (or slow roll out), or others are OEM only, so it can be hard to source outside the usual channels. So let me try and talk to Intel so we can get them all in, and then go from there. It's never an issue of lack of interest or subversion, just procurement (and ensuring we can communicate with the manufacturer at the point of testing).
Of course, the more readers that register their interest, the more I can pass it on up the chain to get them in.