AMD Godavari A10-7870K APU Review

[section_title title=”Conclusion”]

Conclusion

Well, the time has come once again. I’ve got my grubby hands all over a nice clean piece of hardware and put it to the test. There is no denying that APU’s definitely have their certain place amongst PC gamers but are they really worth it when considering all the other options out there? Well, I would say they can be a great stepping stone into PC gaming, or, if you are looking for a good all around rig and are not quite sure you will need a proper dedicated GPU, they may also  come in handy then.

Performance

Overall performance is great when considering the price of the APU, which we will cover in a bit. Looking back at the benchmark results and the 7870K fares well in most tasks. One thing that was really nice to see was the additional performance when the 7870K was overclocked to 4.5GHz which was done with ease. This will allow users to gain even more performance from the APU and it will also make a nice difference in graphical tasks which is great.

The major place I see for improvement with the 7870K is the memory controller, unfortunately, this is something related to most AMD CPU’s and APU’s.  For some reason, AMD has not yet allowed their CPU’s to make the most of faster RAM and they don’t really like anything over 2133MHz which is a bit of a shame in 2015. While it is arguable whether you need more MHz or better timings when it comes to RAM, it is still a shame to see AMD is not taking full advantage of what is out there.

Looking at the 7870K from a graphical point of view and it fares pretty well. The 7870K on its own will allow users to play a host of games on medium settings, which when considering you do not need a dedicated graphics card to do so is pretty impressive. However, if the graphics are not quite as good as you like, you can go buy a dedicated R7 GPU and Crossfire it with the 7870K APU, essentially giving you twice the graphics power you had without breaking the bank.

Design

The Design aspect for any CPU/APU is, of course, going to be more on the technical side of things, rather than aesthetics. The 7870K comes with a 3.9GHz base clock and turbo clock of 4.1GHz, while not a major jump, the turbo will still add a bit better performance when needed. The 7870K also has an L2 cache of 4MB, can make use of DirectX12 (which is supposed to be huge), Mantle and HSA, will be compatible with AMD’s FreeSync Technology and comes “unlocked”, making it seamlessly easy for users to overclock it and get that bit of extra performance when needed. AS mentioned the higher end APU’s make use of 4 computer cores and 8 graphic cores which is quite a design feat in itself if you ask me, they definitely pack a nice all-around punch and are worthy of their place in the market.

Value

As the A10-7870K is rather new, there is quite a bit of fluctuation in its pricing. However, looking around it is easy enough to find it one for around £113 here in the UK (At the time of review) which makes it an exceptionally good value for the money chip. The big thing with most APU’s is the fact that they have some rather impressive onboard GPU’s integrated into them, making them great for mid-range gaming PC’s. Graphics not up to your standards? Well, worry not, as mentioned the 7870K is easily Crossfired with a dedicated R7 GPU giving it even more graphics power and also making it even better value for the money.

Final Thoughts

When it comes down to it, I feel the A10-7870K and all APU’s with the integrated R7 graphics are a bit of a niche product. They offer users on a budget a great and affordable way to get the most from their graphics while still remaining decent at compute tasks as well. While I did not have one on hand for my testing this time around, I have seen the added benefits of Crossfiring an APU with a dedicated R7 GPU in the past and must say, the benefits are quite amazing. Even with today’s games, you would be able to play most games on Medium-High settings with a decent framerate.

If you are in the market for a new PC but not quite sure what you need, especially when it comes to the graphics side of things, the 7870K will be a great stepping stone. It will allow you to instantly gain decent graphics performance and will also allow you to cheaply upgrade the graphics when Crossfiring a dedicated R7 GPU. However, if you find you need more graphical power than you think you will get from Crossfiring, the 7870K is more than capable of being paired up with the likes of an R9 290X and while you would not be able to Crossfire, you wouldn’t really need to as you would be able to make full use of the graphics of the 290X.

Gold Award – Today I am awarding AMD’s Godavari A10-7870K with our prestigious Gold Award. The 7870K can more than handle itself with compute related tasks and when it comes to the graphical, the 7870K is quite impressive on its own. It will make a great entry platform for users looking to get into PC gaming but just are not quite sure how much power they actually need and when considering it can be Crossfired with a dedicated R7 GPU, or, take full advantage of an R9 290X, the possibilities are endless.

I would like to thank AMD for sending in a sample of their A10-7870K and am really looking forward to see what they will announce in the coming days!