AMD launches the A10-7870K, a new high-end desktop APU

Scorpus

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AMD is today launching the A10-7870K, a new, high-end desktop APU that provides minor spec bumps over the company's previous desktop APU flagship at a similarly competitive price point.

The A10-7870K is a 95W Kaveri APU compatible with AMD's Socket FM2+ platform. Like the A10-7850K, AMD's previous flagship Kaveri offering, the A10-7870K comes with four 'Steamroller' CPU cores, 4 MB of L2 cache, DDR3-2133 support, and eight Radeon GPU 'cores' based on AMD's GCN architecture.

Compared to the A10-7850K, the A10-7870K sees clock speeds raised across the board. The CPU is now clocked at 3.9 GHz with a turbo frequency of 4.1 GHz, up from 3.7 and 4.0 GHz respectively on the 7850K. The GPU also gets a healthy 20 percent clock speed boost, jumping to 866 MHz (from 720 MHz) across 512 shader processors, 32 TMUs and 8 ROPs.

AMD was quick to compare the A10-7870K against a similarly-priced Intel CPU, the Core i3-4370. As always you should take results like this with a grain of salt, but in AMD's data they show the A10-7870K slightly outperforming the i3-4370 in CPU-heavy workloads such as PCMark 8, and completely dominating in compute workloads like 3DMark thanks to far superior GPU performance.

Even when the i3-4370 is paired with an $80 graphics card (Nvidia's GeForce GT 740), the A10-7870K performs better in popular games such as Dota 2, League of Legends and StarCraft II. AMD's APU also supports features such as FreeSync and DirectX 12, and comes fully unlocked out of the box.

The A10-7870K goes on sale today for $137, which is less than Intel's $150 Core i3-4370. AMD says that the APU delivers "Core i5 performance at Core i3 pricing", making it a compelling option for those looking to build an entry-level gaming rig.

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The pricing is what kicks Intel in the nuts, which is great if you going for a low budget computer and don't mind not having a dedicated video card.
 
The best thing out of these APUs is that the same CPU architecture powering Athlons makes them great low-end CPUs for the money.

The 870K will be a best buy for sure.
 
The difference in power consumption between Core-i3 and this A10 is such, by end of the first year your Core-i3 will save you more in electricity than the difference in price between A10 and Core-i5.

It is baffling, how this A10 is in any way an economic choice?

Seriously? Sure, I'll be able to buy one apple because of my 12 months savings by going with an i3 instead of APU.
 
The difference in power consumption between Core-i3 and this A10 is such, by end of the first year your Core-i3 will save you more in electricity than the difference in price between A10 and Core-i5.

It is baffling, how this A10 is in any way an economic choice?
Ummm, highly doubtful even if you were stressing the two CPU's consistently the savings would be minimal at best even in a high cost electricity area.

This chip is just a slightly better binned A10-7850k with boosted clock speeds. Not that bad in all but I have overclocked some of those chips much further as is with ease. So my only question would be if it overclocks further than before.
 
Pretty good actually, I applaud AMD for actually trying to get decent graphics in one neat package. However, a bit of this article hurts me a little bit:

"Core i5 performance at Core i3 pricing"

It does NOT offer Core i5 performance, sure graphically it's probably better, but as a CPU and doing anything else (besides gaming of course) the Core i5 blows it out the water and then some.
 
The difference in power consumption between Core-i3 and this A10 is such, by end of the first year your Core-i3 will save you more in electricity than the difference in price between A10 and Core-i5.
It is baffling, how this A10 is in any way an economic choice?
What? Do you actually think a mere 40W difference in TDP (which does not not translate into power consumption, mind you) will save enough in electricity to cover the $60+ difference to a Core i5?
Also, the comparison isn't even valid to begin with. This is an APU, which means it has MUCH higher graphics capabilities than Intel chips. Neither the i3 nor the i5 will get close to this chip in GPU performance. So unless graphics don't matter to you (in which case APUs are irrelevant, you might as well look intothe cheaper 860K), you'd need a discrete GPU to compete with this chip, and to get the same or higher performance you're looking into GTX 750 territory. That adds $110 to the cost of the setup, making the Core i3 about $125 more expensive and the Core i5 $170+ more expensive.
So yes, it's very much an economic choice.
 
The difference in power consumption between Core-i3 and this A10 is such, by end of the first year your Core-i3 will save you more in electricity than the difference in price between A10 and Core-i5.

It is baffling, how this A10 is in any way an economic choice?
#citationneeded
 
How much cheaper is it than an i5? $50?
$50 dollars of the cost of a whole computer is not compelling enough to get an inferior processor.
 
"" AMD says that the APU delivers "Core i5 performance at Core i3 pricing" ""...
Big words... hard to believe... I need proof... smells like BS
 
The difference in power consumption between Core-i3 and this A10 is such, by end of the first year your Core-i3 will save you more in electricity than the difference in price between A10 and Core-i5.

It is baffling, how this A10 is in any way an economic choice?

Yeah but this uses less energy than an i3+ R7 250, and it matches its performance for about $60 less price.
 
What? Do you actually think a mere 40W difference in TDP (which does not not translate into power consumption, mind you) will save enough in electricity to cover the $60+ difference to a Core i5?
I would think anyone purchasing an i5 over an i3 would get their moneys worth elsewhere. The power and heat savings over purchasing AMD is only a positive bonus. Lets toast to hoping this changes with AMD's release of the Zen architecture.
 
The difference in power consumption between Core-i3 and this A10 is such, by end of the first year your Core-i3 will save you more in electricity than the difference in price between A10 and Core-i5.

It is baffling, how this A10 is in any way an economic choice?

That's complete nonsense: for most people around the globe the price difference assuming 100% usage non stop would be like 5 dollars per year, but almost nobody continuously pushes a CPU and GPU to max usage and henceforth wattage constantly. The only real concern it's heat dissipation, electricity bills are a non-issue.
 
You can get Core-i3 for with TDP of just 15W. How does that match the A10's 95W profile?
A 15W U-series Core i3 is nowhere near as fast as either the A10-7870K or the (55W) i3-4370 mentioned in the article, and have even worse graphics performance.
On top of that, if you're looking at mobile chips, you can also get 25W Kaveri APUs that will also confortably outperform the 15W Core i3 chips in graphics performance.
 
The difference in power consumption between Core-i3 and this A10 is such, by end of the first year your Core-i3 will save you more in electricity than the difference in price between A10 and Core-i5.

It is baffling, how this A10 is in any way an economic choice?

This is some funny stuff. I know most people aren't very good with numbers or can even tell when they are comparing apples to apples but damn. Stay in school kids. Or don't and let my kids rule.
 
Sure this is a great choice for those who do not have enough budget to buy a dedicated GPU. But if it can be crossfired with Other AMD GPU's, It will provide far more superior performance (obviously Gaming performance I'm not talking about CPU only tasks) then Same GPU-Intel i5 combination.
 
"" AMD says that the APU delivers "Core i5 performance at Core i3 pricing" ""...
Big words... hard to believe... I need proof... smells like BS

Quite easy actually. AMD like to compare CPU AND iGPU to Intel parts. Because their iGPU is much faster, an APU in games is faster than an i5 alone.

Intel's HD4600 can't hold a candle to the R7 iGPU in the 7870K.
 
Of course its faster.. but you demanded to buy 2111 Mhz ram, thats too expensive....
You're not demanded to buy DDR3-2133, that just means the memro controler supports up to DDR3-2133. You can still use DDR3-1600, which will give you the same bandwidth as Intel CPUs (although ROP and stream processor performance on the GPU is still significatly higher), or use DDR3-1866/DDR3-2133 for increased bandwidth.
Just like Intel processors support DDR3-1600, but still work with DDR3-1333 if that's what you have.
 
Quite easy actually. AMD like to compare CPU AND iGPU to Intel parts. Because their iGPU is much faster, an APU in games is faster than an i5 alone.

Intel's HD4600 can't hold a candle to the R7 iGPU in the 7870K.

That's true, AMD's quote is a little tricky statement. I just don't want anyone misunderstand that and expect this APU to deliver you the same CPU performance as an i5 while gaming with a discrete GPU in HD.
However, I wouldn't even consider such an APU as an essential part of an entry level gaming rig. In my opinion a gaming rig starts with a discrete GPU. Well we have to define entry level here to come to a common understanding but still. Comparing this APU with an i3+GT740... just doesn't make sense. These are not entry level gaming rig specifications in my opinion, but I admit opinions can vary.

UPDATE:
I just saw this today...
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i7-5775c-i5-5675c-broadwell,4169-6.html


Peace
 
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Let's just calculate what 40W of difference in power consumption will result in a year of 24/7 work:

40 W difference × 24 hours × 365 days = 350,4 kWh × 0,15 $/kWh = $52,56
 
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