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Does anyone actually game on an AMD APU?

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Check that out; it's comparing the i3-6100 with the A10-7870K, which are very similar in terms of price. They are also very similar in terms of both overall CPU performance and overall GPU performance, both both are useless for "gaming" compared to a GeForce 750 Ti which at this point isn't even that great of a card, just the first number that popped into my mind for a dedicated GPU for comparison purposes. The Intel is pretty much the same price, uses half the power, has a quieter stock cooler, and can later be upgraded to an i5 or i7 while the AMD has no upgrade path, with no discernable difference in performance in terms of CPU and GPU between the two processors I mentioned. I'm also not going to include price of motherboard

I'm not trying to get into an AMD vs Intel debate (though I'm personally a diehard Intel fanboy), but I'm wondering if anybody actually uses an AMD APU for gaming? It just, to me, doesn't seem any different than gaming on the Intel integrated graphics which pretty much any gamer would not even think of doing. I will say I'm impressed how far integrated graphics have come for both companies.

The reason I'm asking is because AMD markets the APUs for gaming, though I don't think anybody would actually game on it. Again, not trying to start an AMD vs Intel flame war, just want to know if the AMD A10 makes a viable combination for a super low budget gaming rig (I say no, but maybe I'm wrong?). Thank you for any input.

"The new AMD A-Series APUs support the latest graphics APIs to bring next generation games to life. With support for these latest technologies in the latest AMD APUs, you can game at unprecedented levels of performance, with impressive effects and details."
 
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It all depends on the games. AMD usually mentions DOTA, LOL and other MOBAs in their APU promotion and frankly for those games an APU is pretty much all you need. I play LOL on my Athlon 5350 and it runs fine on mixed medium-high settings. Granted it's OCed to 2.6Ghz (igp runs at 750Mhz and RAM at 2000Mhz) but the A series IGP is way faster than the R3 on the 5350.
 

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I have an A6-7400K and athlon 5350 I have done light gaming on both, but for the most part I will just stream from my desktop using steam streaming.
 
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My first computer was in 1994 so I like games from the early 90's through today. My A8-5500 can't play everything, but I could keep busy for a decade with what it can play.
 
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I just built a system with a A10-7870K. It plays current games at 1080p (MGS V, Dirt Rally, etc.) on low settings around 30 fps. You can maybe get 60 fps at 720p. It will be absolutely enough for most MOBA's, older games, and the tons of less demanding games on Steam. You can't expect it to play the newest games well, but for $120, it's not bad. I would definitely suggest an i3 and a budget video card if you're wanting to play more recent games.
 

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The sweetspot is the A8-7670K IMO. Close enough performance to the A10's and cheaper. One of them and motherboard is a bit more than €150 here, which is excellent if you want a decent alrounder with some light gaming capabilites.
 

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I use my A10-7850K to play almost every game, in fact that hasn't been a game yet it couldn't play.

The i3-6100 is not just as fast, it is slower. Stock vs. Stock, the CPUs are clost but the 7870K still has the GPU advantage. Add to that the fact that you can overclock the 7870K both the CPU and GPU and the 7870K is still the better option if gaming on integrated is your only concern. My 7850K with the GPU overclocked to 1028MHz plays games way better than a i3-6100.
 

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I have an Asus K55N with an A8 APU that does a ton of gaming at 1366x768... mostly strategy and racing games. Doesn't skip a beat. For a 3 year-old laptop it's been a champ! :toast:
 

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I use my A10-7850K to play almost every game, in fact that hasn't been a game yet it couldn't play.

The i3-6100 is not just as fast, it is slower. Stock vs. Stock, the CPUs are clost but the 7870K still has the GPU advantage. Add to that the fact that you can overclock the 7870K both the CPU and GPU and the 7870K is still the better option if gaming on integrated is your only concern. My 7850K with the GPU overclocked to 1028MHz plays games way better than a i3-6100.
I'll bet the AMD driver control panel 3D options are a lot better too, which is pretty important for optimising your game's performance and rendering quality.
 
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I use my A10-7850K to play almost every game, in fact that hasn't been a game yet it couldn't play.

The i3-6100 is not just as fast, it is slower. Stock vs. Stock, the CPUs are clost but the 7870K still has the GPU advantage. Add to that the fact that you can overclock the 7870K both the CPU and GPU and the 7870K is still the better option if gaming on integrated is your only concern. My 7850K with the GPU overclocked to 1028MHz plays games way better than a i3-6100.

Could you please give me some framerates from some games and at what resolution? It would be good to compare, since I may have configured something wrong. I haven't tried overclocking yet, but my 7870k throttles back down to 3 GHz anytime there is significant load on the GPU.
 

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That comparison website isn't really accurate. Afaik the 7870K has a lot more graphics power, also don't forget the drivers are way better and you can crossfire it with a discrete GPU. Maybe the i3 has a upgrade path to i5/i7, but almost nobody upgrades the CPU on the same system, most switch to another computer or MB/CPU/Ram.
 
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A friend of mine uses an A8-7600 to play Metal Gear Solid V, Project Cars, League of Legends, some CODs, and some other online games with no problems in high or medium-high settings. It's paired with 2x 1866MHz RAM sticks, that helps a lot.

The thing is, if you are a serious gamer and you just can't play below Ultra quality, then an APU/InteLgrated is just not for you.
I'm pretty excited about the Zen APUs, a Polaris GPU with a DDR3/DDR4 hybrid board (so I don't have to change RAM :p) is a good incentive to stop buying dedicated GPUs and high TDP CPUs. I just hope AMD stills maintains the same socket/cooler compatibility.

That comparison website isn't really accurate. Afaik the 7870K has a lot more graphics power, also don't forget the drivers are way better and you can crossfire it with a discrete GPU. Maybe the i3 has a upgrade path to i5/i7, but almost nobody upgrades the CPU on the same system, most switch to another computer or MB/CPU/Ram.

That and you don't buy an expensive overclocking capable motherboard for an i3.
 

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A friend of mine uses an A8-7600 to play Metal Gear Solid V, Project Cars, League of Legends, some CODs, and some other online games with no problems in high or medium-high settings. It's paired with 2x 1866MHz RAM sticks, that helps a lot.

The thing is, if you are a serious gamer and you just can't play below Ultra quality, then an APU/InteLgrated is just not for you.
I'm pretty excited about the Zen APUs, a Polaris GPU with a DDR3/DDR4 hybrid board (so I don't have to change RAM :p) is a good incentive to stop buying dedicated GPUs and high TDP CPUs. I just hope AMD stills maintains the same socket/cooler compatibility.



That and you don't buy an expensive overclocking capable motherboard for an i3.
Yes. Also don't forget the highend APUs are bandwidth limited always nowadays. The 7850K needs 2133 or better 2400 MHz DDR3 for maximum perf. It would run even faster with more bandwidth (compare with a discrete Radeon with 512 GCN shaders and GDDR5 ram, the difference is somewhat high).

For Zen my hopes are, they use HBM to build the APUs. That way, the bandwidth limits and speed problems are gone forever. DDR4 won't help much, the only solution is L4 Cache (like with IrisPro GPU in Broadwell from Intel) or HBM(2). In a worst case scenario with Zen APUs you have otherwise a very bw-limited Polaris GPU that is hardly faster than the GPUs in 7850-7890K now.
 

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i tried on my last laptops APU, but its CPU (2.2GHz) was just too weak to handle it. OCing it made games run OK, but had various issues (system hangs when power cord removed or added)

they're ok for older games, but that gets complicated because the APU systems require a modern OS to work - and the modern OS has the most issues with the older games.
 

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Yes. Also don't forget the highend APUs are bandwidth limited always nowadays. The 7850K needs 2133 or better 2400 MHz DDR3 for maximum perf. It would run even faster with more bandwidth (compare with a discrete Radeon with 512 GCN shaders and GDDR5 ram, the difference is somewhat high).

For Zen my hopes are, they use HBM to build the APUs. That way, the bandwidth limits and speed problems are gone forever. DDR4 won't help much, the only solution is L4 Cache (like with IrisPro GPU in Broadwell from Intel) or HBM(2). In a worst case scenario with Zen APUs you have otherwise a very bw-limited Polaris GPU that is hardly faster than the GPUs in 7850-7890K now.

My 7850K doesn't benefit at all noticeably from RAM over 1866, even with the GPU overclocked. There is a big difference going from 1600 to 1866, but that relieves the bottleneck, after 1866 the benefits aren't noticeable. The difference is 1-3FPS going from 1866 to 2400.

And Zen doesn't need HBM. Even if the iGPU is way more powerful, the rumors are Zen will be multi-channel, so Quad-Channel DDR4 will be more than fast enough.
 

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My 7850K doesn't benefit at all noticeably from RAM over 1866, even with the GPU overclocked. There is a big difference going from 1600 to 1866, but that relieves the bottleneck, after 1866 the benefits aren't noticeable. The difference is 1-3FPS going from 1866 to 2400.

And Zen doesn't need HBM. Even if the iGPU is way more powerful, the rumors are Zen will be multi-channel, so Quad-Channel DDR4 will be more than fast enough.
Nah, there are reviews on the net, that 2400 is needed for maximum performance like I said. Your opinion doesn't change anything about that. Your opinion is strange though, "doesn't benefit at all" and closing "the difference is 1-3 fps". 1-3 fps != anything at all. Plus the reviews on the net are worth more than your simple opinion. Plus, there is no reason to go 1866 Ram on the 7850K/7870/7890K because 2400 Ram is as cheap as 1866 Ram.

Zen needs HBM or L4, yes it does. Quad Channel is only for the highend users, not every 0815 average PC will have quad channel and/or 4 ram slots and/or 4 Rams installed. Somewhat silly you didn't think of that fact yourself. And as long as this fact holds true, it does need HBM or L4 Cache. See Intel processors. Your thinking route is somewhat arrogant and contrary to what Intel did.
 
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Zen needs HBM or L4, yes it does. Quad Channel is only for the highend users, not every 0815 average PC will have quad channel and/or 4 ram slots and/or 4 Rams installed. Somewhat silly you didn't think of that fact yourself. And as long as this fact holds true, it does need HBM or L4 Cache. See Intel processors. Your thinking route is somewhat arrogant and contrary to what Intel did.

I can promise you implementing HBM on Zen will cost more than any Quad Channel implementation.
 

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Nah, there are reviews on the net, that 2400 is needed for maximum performance like I said. Your opinion doesn't change anything about that. Your opinion is strange though, "doesn't benefit at all" and closing "the difference is 1-3 fps". 1-3 fps != anything at all. Plus the reviews on the net are worth more than your simple opinion.

Read my post again, very carefully, I said "no noticeable difference". I thought I was pretty clear that I was talking about a noticeable difference, not absolutely no difference at all. I even repeated noticeable twice... You will never notice 1-3FPS.

If you want to talk about reviews online, here is a good one. What do you know, it shows that in most of the games the biggest jump is from 1600 to 1866, after that it is less than 5FPS difference going from 1866 to 2400. You won't notice that.

Plus, there is no reason to go 1866 Ram on the 7850K/7870/7890K because 2400 Ram is as cheap as 1866 Ram.

That isn't the point. The point is the faster RAM doesn't make a noticeable difference.

I can promise you implementing HBM on Zen will cost more than any Quad Channel implementation.

Exactly. The price increase on the processor will be way more than the extra cost of 4 memory sticks over 2. In fact, 2x8GB DDR4-2400 is $62 and 4x4GB DDR4-2400 is $70. HBM would increase the cost way more than that. Yeah, the motherboard might cost a little more too, but it still won't be that much. The difference between a 2-slot board and a 4-slot is about $25. Implementing HBM is going to cost way more than the $35 difference in cost to go Quad-channel. And it is going to raise the price on a CPU that needs to be cheap to sell.
 
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I think HBM will be used mostly on Opterons, and maybe the most expensive non-APU user models.
My doubt is how will Intel respond on a new arch from AMD, both CPU and GPU, will we see Iris GPU in normal models, unlocked i3, cheaper (normal, not trying to steal us) prices and not deliberately limited chipsets? I really hope so.
 

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1. The FPS is noticable enough at least for me. Also this discussion is pointless, again, because 1866 isn't cheaper than 2400 DDR3. Seems to be rather a personal point, because someone here is using the wrong ram and is searching for excuses to do so. Well if it makes you happy, pretend that 2400 Ram is "as fast as 1866 Ram and the difference is not noticable". Sounds like Kindergarten and it pretty much is.

2. This is the point, where it gets so theoretical, that I would rather wait and see what AMD is doing, then to theorize what will cost more and what will be implemented and how much the final cost will be.

3. My point holds true, that doing APU this way (with quad channel + 4 Rams / 4 Ram slots), will limit its use. Not everybody will be buying or has the money to buy 4 Rams and a suitable board for it. Those users will have the same problems with bandwidth limitation as now. Those users would rather want a HBM/L4 implementation to go the cheap route and have the performance still available. Maybe HBM will be cheap enough soon? Maybe not. You don't know. Also system memory doesn't replace discrete GPU Ram. There are some differences that are not to be ignored. A APU with HBM would surely be better, more ram, more bandwidth. Less hassle with Rams and mainboards.
 
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Here 2400 is a 50% more expensive than 1600/1866, so a 3-5fps increase isn't worth it. Not all markets are the same.
 

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Here 2400 is a 50% more expensive than 1600/1866, so a 3-5fps increase isn't worth it. Not all markets are the same.
Yeah, I'm not talking about the world and never said I do.
 
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Check that out; it's comparing the i3-6100 with the A10-7870K, which are very similar in terms of price. They are also very similar in terms of both overall CPU performance and overall GPU performance

You can't go by Passmark. I only use them for single core numbers, they are awful on multicore and GPUs. Use Futuremark, or even Userbench is decent. i3-6100 is ~50% faster than a A10-7870K overall, but AMD has a better iGPU.
 

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My laptop is an APU, and it runs some older stuff decently.
 
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They are also very similar in terms of both overall CPU performance and overall GPU performance
Are you sure about that? I'd be very surprised if Intel's iGPU could match AMDs.

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