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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milli - Thursday, November 19, 2015 - link
Sounds good :)BrokenCrayons - Thursday, November 19, 2015 - link
95 watts is too much for a modern CPU to require.plonk420 - Thursday, November 19, 2015 - link
that's watts TDP, not watts at the wall.BrokenCrayons - Friday, November 20, 2015 - link
Yes, that's fine. It's too high for a modern CPU. Half that would be more reasonable and a tenth would be better still, but not at all perfect.TheinsanegamerN - Friday, November 20, 2015 - link
The i3 is still a 47 watt chip. the skylake i7s are 95 watt. It seems most "modern" cpus are in the 65-95 watt range, with 47 watt for dual cores.A tenth of 95 watt is only 9.5, which is core m territory. it works, but it ISNT for power users. So i'm not sure what 'modern' cpu you are referring to, as it doesn't seem to exist. And AMD's APUs can be set to 65 or 45 watt mode as well, but you get a performance hit. So half the TDP already exists, and a tenth is too little for a big CPU.
BrokenCrayons - Friday, November 20, 2015 - link
Yes, the i3 is an Intel processor. Skylake's 95 watt chip is an outlier that's highly uncommon. The vast majority of computers purchased are inexpensive laptops which regularly only rise to 35 watts. Desktop processors are not only a rarity, but those that range above 65 watts are very uncommon and largely the domain of expensive workstations and the very small number of gaming systems out there. It's pretty odd of AMD to sell a budget processor that puts those kinds of demands on a system and, in my opinion, unreasonable given the competition in the same approximate performance.silverblue - Friday, November 20, 2015 - link
I know it's hardly comparable, but I wonder what power an i3 with Godavari-level GPU would use if at 28nm. Besides, TDP != actual power usage.TheinsanegamerN - Friday, November 20, 2015 - link
Desktops are rare now? Ok. You must not work in business. Desktops Are still common, not as much as laptops, but the forecast for all of 2015 was north of 120 million desktops, the vast majority of which are business machines with i5 processors, which are 65-84 watt. I7s are rated at 84 watt for haswell, 77 for ivy bridge, and 95 for sandy bridge, and 95 for skylake, so it's much more common than you think.As for laptops, I'm not sure why you brought them up, seeing as the a8 is a DESKTOP chip. on DESKTOPs, CPUs with 65 watt TDPs are very common. Any i5, i7, pretty much any APU from AMD, are all 65 watt+. Laptops typically use dual core chips with much lower clock rates and power restricted GPUs. The vast majority of laptops, with those 35 watt chips (and most of the skylake and broadwell chips in laptops are 15 watt BTW, 35 watt isn't really used much anymore) can't compare to a 95 watt desktop chip in performance, so it still won't work for power users.
So when you say that the TDP is too high for a modern processor, you mean it's too much for a mobile processor, ignoring that this is a processor for desktops. Unless you want a desktop processor with a mobile TDP but desktop performance, which will never happen, because a higher TDP chip will be clocked higher. Always.
Deshi - Friday, November 20, 2015 - link
Does that 95 watts include the onboard GPU? if thats the case, thats not so bad, since you would need to addin the added dGPU TDP if you build an intel + nvidia/radeon to match the performance.nos024 - Thursday, November 19, 2015 - link
blah...after 4 years and Intel's IGP is still on the heels of AMD's APU. Bleh.Give me graphics performance comparable to a 750ti and an ITX motherboard with M.2 storage option and I'll will go and buy it this very instance. I want something like that.
Low profile ITX-case + 8gb RA
M + 240/256GB M.2 RAM (SATA or PCIe) + 300W PSU + ITX MB with AC wireless + APU with 750ti GPU performance. Is that so hard to ask for?! Apparantly so.