AMD Kaveri - A10 7850K APU - performance

[CargoRunner]

I replaced my 4 year old dual core system with a shiny new Kaveri APU system. I wanted a small steam playing system for the living room. I can't remember what the old GPU was, but I did try and compare stats before buying and thought the APU was a more powerful GPU and more powerful CPU.

I have installed and re-installed different catalyst drivers and everything seems to run pretty badly what ever I do. I have 16GB of memory over clocked. So I don't think memory is an issue (except for the fact that windows only gives me 6.92GB from the 16GB installed, the rest is hardware reserved, I assume for the GPU?).

My windows experience graphics score is just 4.5 which is lower than my old system! Skyrim at 720p high setting used to run at 50fps now runs at 25. At higher resolutions the difference is more 40+ old system vs just 15 fps on the Kaveri.

Hitman absolution benchmarking at medium 720p is just 16fps on the Kaveri. The new tomb raider is better at 20-25 fps at 720p and "Normal" (which is one of the lowest settings possible).

Maybe I fell for the hype, but I thought the APU was powerful enough to run modern games. It seems way, way worse than my old system!

Does anybody else have a Kaveri APU only system? Is it really this bad for games? Or is my setup just totally broken somehow?

I really don't know what to do. The other disappointment is that the APU does not crossfire with the better AMD graphics cards. Do I wait for a future AMD graphics card that does crossfire with Kaveri??? Do I try and sell this hunk of junk and start again? Do I just change case and install a new graphics card and ignore the APU graphics?

Any advice greatly appreciated!

[_I_]

you fell for it, sorry

they are good for budget systems, but not great

if your 5yr old dual core was an i3 or pentium g it would be a stronger cpu than the amd apu
and most dedicated cards are better than the apu gpus

what ram did you get for the apu build?
ram speed is directly proportional to the apus gpu performance
going from 1333 cl9 to 1866 cl8 will nearly doulbe its performance

amd hybrid crossfire (dual graphics) has never been better than just buying a single better card
on a budget system, it can help, but it will give higher highs but lower lows than the paried gpu

[rotNdude]

Integrated graphics are still integrated and they sort of suck.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7677/amd-kaveri-review-a8-7600-a10-7850k/16

For casual gaming, AMD is hitting the nail square on the head in its quest for 1080p gaming at 30 frames per second, albeit generally at lower quality settings

[The Crimson Kestrels]

Agreed. It's better than most intergrated, but it doesn't close the gap between integrated and an actual graphics card.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Such an APU can make a decent CPU by itself, but yea if u find the APU's GPU power a bit lacking for what you want to do, CrossFire isn't going to make it much better, especially since u have to use a low/mid range GPU that works with it. Reason the higher-end GPUs don't CF with it is because a higher end GPU would be fine all on it's own and the GPU power between the two wouldn't be equal, thus why CF with an APU.

If you need more GPU power/performance, get a better single dedicated GPU card instead.

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

Get R9 270X card if you have good enough PSU, 550-600W.

[senseidongen]

@everyone, please stop telling the OP he has simply been suckered in - yes, we all know that a dedicated GPU is much more powerful, but the OP said that he's getting a WEI score of 4.5. I have an A10-6800K and that gets a score of 6.9 for graphics - the bottom line is that SOMETHING IS CLEARLY WRONG!

Opinions aside, the OP has an issue and his APU should perform WAY better than it actually is. I play all my games at 1080p (apart from Shogun 2) and yeah I get fps drops sometimes but it has no trouble maintaining a 25-30 fps average in Far Cry 3 - Skyrim at 720p should be at least 40 fps with an A10-7850K

You say your RAM is OCed - what have you OCed it too? Have you tried going back to stock settings and seeing if that helps? Have you checked temps? I replaced the stock cooler cause it wasn't up to the task in the case I chose

EDIT: also, the GPU asking for 9 GB of RAM is just nuts - the default setting for my A10 is only 768 MB dedicated and 3 GB total (dedicated + shared). I'm very much of the opinion that something is awry with your RAM...

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Check the BIOS and ensure the CPU/RAM/FSB settings are correct and that it is actually running at the correct CPU speed/voltage in Windows with CPU-Z.

Set the DRAM to XMP Mode in BIOS. Then ensure that the RAM speed/voltage is correct.

Disable AMD Cool & Quiet in BIOS.

In Windows, set Power Profile in Control Panel to High Performance.

In Windows, ensure that you install latest
AMD Chipset Drivers[support.amd.com]
and
AMD APU Catalyst[support.amd.com]

Install AMD System Monitor[sites.amd.com]

Then set the APU's GPU to Max Performance in Catalyst.

U can monitor a GPU onboard an AMD APU as well as a dedicated AMD Radeon/R-series GPU with AMD System Monitor.

Then re-run the WEI test.

[senseidongen]

Opprinnelig skrevet av BDK:

You dont buy an intel and expect it to play all games super smooth with its laughable integrated graphics either, or at least I hope you don't. For proper gaming you'll need a dedicated graphics card, there's no other way to put it.

If you're interested in playing games and don't mind lower settings, gaming is just fine on an APU. Integrated graphics have improved massively in the past few years on both AMD and Intel chips and no one should argue that is anything but a good thing - it makes so many more games accessible for laptop users, for example, which is a good thing

[CargoRunner]

Thanks for all the replies. Really interesting to hear the 6800K results. Sounds like I should be getting more out of the APU which is nice to know. Maybe I don't feel QUITE so stupid buying one. I will start the build again and see what happens. Looks like I might have to give up on the tiny console sized PC and get a seperate GPU to get the frame rate I now want. I guess I didn't realise that 20-25 fps looked so choppy.

[CargoRunner]

The memory is kingston xmp beast and should be running at 2133mhz. It was expensive so I guess it is dual-channel.

[Blaagh]

Dual channel only works with 2 (or 4) modules, not 1. No matter the quality, timing and speed. They have to be exact same, so buy 1 kit with 2x 8 GB is better.

[Joker]

Opprinnelig skrevet av CargoRunner:

The memory is kingston xmp beast and should be running at 2133mhz. It was expensive so I guess it is dual-channel.

Did you enable an XMP profile in the bios for your RAM? It will run at the slowest speed by default until XMP is enabled. Look in the bios for overclocking options. Somewhere you should see an XMP (or AMP) option for the memory.

It would still be better to just buy a dedicated graphics card, but even then you should make sure your memory is running at the best speed it can.

edit: like mario said...

Make sure your memory is x2 or x4 configuration for dual channel. It's like RAID or SLI for your memory.

[senseidongen]

If your motherboard has 4 RAM slots, make sure you've plugged your RAM into 1 and 3 or 2 and 4 (the corresponding pairs should be the same colour)

[Kuehnau]

I'll be perfectly honest, I am really surprised your system is suffering as much as it is. When I finally got around to building a new rig, I actually went in for the AMD Trinity A10-5800K series APU. I built the system with 4GB of ram and I was running Windows 7.

My Windows index wasn't remotely close to yours, my gaming graphics was at around a 6.5 and I was playing games like Skyrim and Sleeping Dogs on medium settings, I run all my games at 1080.

[< blank >]

I dont know what is happening to your system but I also have a kaveri system that runs great with ddr3-2400 ram and a slight OC. You can see gameplay samples at http://apusilicon.com Your WEI score should be ~6.8.
what are exactly the parts you are using?
what drivers are you running?
what mbo are you running?