CPU Anyone have experience with AMD APUs? Considering one for a light gaming build

[CC Ricers]

I have a R7 240 just chilling in my room and from several accounts it seems too weak to even be helped much by crossfire with an APU. Ugghhh...

Also I realize it would be more of a hassle to sell my Intel CPU/mobo setup for a A10 and FM2 board, unless I find a cheap deal on a used A10 and use that by itself.

Barring that, I'll just sell my GTX 1050 to get a dedicated low-profile card and cut my losses.

 

[IntoxicatedPuma]

I'll need to find it again but someone did a Kaveri review with crossfire or dual graphics tested.

 

[IntoxicatedPuma]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9307/the-kaveri-refresh-godavari-review-testing-amds-a10-7870k/5


http://www.techspot.com/review/781-amd-a10-7850k-graphics-performance/page5.html

Even an R7 250 (doesn't say in the article but I assume GDDR5 version) with the APU graphics disabled is faster in most cases with dual graphics.

 

[CC Ricers]

From what I know, GDDR5 doesn't make a difference in hybrid Crossfire with an APU since the APU relies on DDR3, so it's more cost effective to get a DDR3 card.

Test results on it seem to vary wildly by game- sometimes hybrid CF scales well, (moreso in lower resolutions), and sometimes it has no effect and disabling APU graphics is better.

 

[IntoxicatedPuma]

From what I know, GDDR5 doesn't make a difference in hybrid Crossfire with an APU since the APU relies on DDR3, so it's more cost effective to get a DDR3 card.

Also read the same thing, that DDR3 card will perform better than a GDDR5 card in Dual Graphics mode. However, most said that a GDDR5 card by itself will perform as well or even better than a DDR3 + APU in dual graphics. If you combine this with the excellent scaling of performance as related to system RAM speed, I would assume this means the APU is heavily constricted by memory bandwidth. If rumors are true and Zen APU's have HBM built in, this should make them significantly faster than current APU's. If the rumors are not true and we are stuck with DDR4 memory, then try and find the fastest DDR4 you can buy for your Zen APU - I guess 4000mhz would scale nicely!

 

[cleveland]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9307/the-kaveri-refresh-godavari-review-testing-amds-a10-7870k/5

The anandtech's benchmark is just retarded. Picking the second best APU, in terms of iGPU, and pairing with with a GPU that is several times slower is just asking for a worse overall result.

 

[IntoxicatedPuma]

The anandtech's benchmark is just retarded. Picking the second best APU, in terms of iGPU, and pairing with with a GPU that is several times slower is just asking for a worse overall result.

I don't quite follow what you mean. But the A8 7600 and A10 7800 have very little difference in performance between the two of them. The same goes for using R7 240 instead of R7 250.

R7 250X : 640 stream cores + 1 or 2GB GDDR5 or DDR3
R7 250E: 512 stream cores + 1 or 2GB GDDR5 or DDR3
R7 250: 384 stream cores + 1,2, or 4GB DDR3 or 1GB GDDR5
R7 240: 320 stream cores + 1,2, or 4GB DDR3

Dual Graphics only supports the last two on the list above.

I think the main point is, AMD APU kind of sucks for newer games. Maybe it's a bit better than an HD6670 with DDR3 memory.