AMD's Richland vs. Intel's Haswell GPU on the Desktop: Radeon HD 8670D vs. Intel HD 4600
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 6, 2013 12:00 PM ESTThe run up to Computex has been insane. Kabini, Haswell and Iris hit us back to back to back, not to mention all of the travel before receiving those products to get briefed on everything. Needless to say, we're in major catchup mode. There's a lot more that I wanted to do with Haswell desktop that got cut out due to Iris, and much more I wanted to do with Iris that I had to scrap in order to fly out to Computex. I will be picking up where I left off later this month, but with WWDC, Samsung and a couple of NDA'd events later this month, it's not going to be as quick as I'd like.
One part that arrived while I was in the middle of launch central was AMD's Richland for desktop. Effectively a refresh of Trinity with slightly higher clocks, a software bundle and more sophisticated/aggressive turbo. Richland maintains socket compatibility with Trinity (FM2), so all you should need is a BIOS update to enable support for the chip. AMD sent over two Richland parts just before I left for Computex: the 100W flagship A10-6800K and the 65W A10-6700. I didn't have time to do Richland justice before I left, however I did make sure to test the 6800K in tandem with Haswell's GPU just so I had an idea of how things would stack up going forward as I was writing my Iris Pro conclusion.
For all intents and purposes, Iris Pro doesn't exist in the desktop space, making Haswell GT2 (HD 4600) the fastest socketed part with discrete graphics that Intel ships today. In our Haswell desktop review I didn't get a chance to really analyze HD 4600 performance, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to refresh the current state of desktop integrated processor graphics. Unlike the staggered CPU/GPU launch of Trinity on the desktop, the situation with Richland is purely a time limitation on my end. This was all I could put together before I left for Computex.
Although Richland comes with a generational increase in model numbers, the underlying architecture is the same as Trinity. We're still talking about Piledriver modules and a Cayman derived GPU. It won't be until Kaveri that we see GCN based processor graphics from AMD at this price segment (Kabini is already there).
As Jarred outlined in his launch post on Richland, the 6800K features 4 - 8% higher CPU clocks and a 5% increase in GPU clocks compared to its predecessor. With improved Turbo Core management, AMD expects longer residency at max turbo frequencies but you shouldn't expect substantial differences in performance on the GPU side. The A10-6800K also includes official support for DDR3-2133. AMD is proud of its valiation on the A10-6800K, any parts that won't pass at DDR3-2133 are demoted to lower end SKUs. I never spent a ton of time testing memory overclocking with Trinity, but my A10-5800K sample had no issues running at DDR3-2133 either. I couldn't get DDR3-2400 working reliably however.
AMD Elite A-Series Desktop APUs, aka Richland | ||||||
Model | A10-6800K | A10-6700 | A8-6600K | A8-6500 | A6-6400K | A4-4000 |
Modules/Cores | 2/4 | 2/4 | 2/4 | 2/4 | 1/2 | 1/2 |
CPU Base Freq | 4.1 | 3.7 | 3.9 | 3.5 | 3.9 | 3.0 |
Max Turbo | 4.4 | 4.3 | 4.2 | 4.1 | 4.1 | 3.2 |
TDP | 100W | 65W | 100W | 65W | 65W | 65W |
Graphics | HD 8670D | HD 8670D | HD 8570D | HD 8570D | HD 8470D | ? |
GPU Cores | 384 | 384 | 256 | 256 | 192 | 128 |
GPU Clock | 844 | 844 | 844 | 800 | 800 | 724 |
L2 Cache | 2x2MB | 2x2MB | 2x2MB | 2x2MB | 1MB | 1MB |
Max DDR3 | 2133 | 1866 | 1866 | 1866 | ||
Price (MSRP) | $150 ($142) | $149 ($142) | $120 ($112) | $119 ($112) | $80 | $46 |
Just to put things in perspective, here are the previous generation Trinity desktop APUs:
AMD Trinity Desktop APUs | ||||||
Model | A10-5800K | A10-5700 | A8-5600K | A8-5500 | A6-5400K | A4-5300 |
Modules/Cores | 2/4 | 2/4 | 2/4 | 2/4 | 1/2 | 1/2 |
CPU Base Freq | 3.8 | 3.4 | 3.6 | 3.2 | 3.6 | 3.4 |
Max Turbo | 4.2 | 4.0 | 3.9 | 3.7 | 3.8 | 3.6 |
TDP | 100W | 65W | 100W | 65W | 65W | 65W |
Graphics | HD 7660D | HD 7660D | HD 7560D | HD 7560D | HD 7540D | HD 7480D |
GPU Cores | 384 | 384 | 256 | 256 | 192 | 128 |
GPU Clock | 800 | 760 | 760 | 760 | 760 | 723 |
L2 Cache | 2x2MB | 2x2MB | 2x2MB | 2x2MB | 1MB | 1MB |
Max DDR3 | 2133 | 1866 | 1866 | 1866 | ||
Current Price | $130 | $129 | $110 | $105 | $70 | $55 |
For my Richland test platform I used the same Gigabyte UD4 Socket-FM2 motherboard I used for our desktop Trinity review, simply updated to the latest firmware release. I ran both AMD platforms using the same Catalyst 13.6 driver with the same DDR3-2133 memory frequency. AMD was quick to point out that only the A10-6800K ships with official DDR3-2133 support, so the gap in performance between it and Trinity may be even larger if the latter tops out at DDR3-1866. The HD 4000/4600 numbers are borrowed from my Iris Pro review using DDR3-2400, however I didn't notice scaling on Haswell GT2 beyond DDR3-1866.
I'll be following up with a more thorough look at Richland once I'm back from my current bout of traveling.
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taltamir - Thursday, June 6, 2013 - link
"Richland maintains a 17 - 50% GPU performance advantage (~30% on average) over Intel's HD 4600 (Haswell GT2)"And yet consumes more then 2x the power according to your own charts.
And what about the CPU performance? These are desktop parts not laptop parts, their iGPU performance is meaningless
silverblue - Thursday, June 6, 2013 - link
Did you skip just to the conclusion? The reason as to a lack of CPU benchmarks is on the first page.How much power would a 4770K with a GT640 use, incidentally? And at the other end of the scale, what about that 4600M which is rated at 35W yet in a couple of tests beat even the 4770K with its HD 4600? You're asking for results that Anand hasn't managed to grab just yet for reasons as stated on the first page.
There's some strange results in here. In the 3DMark: Fire Strike Extreme test, all three APUs have the same result, but in 3DMark06, the 6800K significantly beats everything else. However, regardless of one or two oddities, the 6800K isn't a real progression over the 5800K... but it was never really made out nor expected to be.
FriendlyUser - Thursday, June 6, 2013 - link
Who cares about power on the desktop? What are you running, a server farm? We're not talking about a 200W part here. The Richland is easy enough to cool as it is. Just because intel based its strategy around a mobile part doesn't mean we have to run behind absolute power/performance ratios. Price/performance makes more sense for the average user.Also, iGPU is very important at that price point. If a $150 CPU saves you a $80 GPU, it's quite attractive. USA readers probably can afford to spend $200 for a dGPU, but struggling european economies and the developing world are a big part of the international market.
ChoadNamath - Thursday, June 6, 2013 - link
"iGPU performance is meaningless" ...except in an APU, where it's pretty much the whole point.shing3232 - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
it would not be meaningless for low end desktop. and it is not 2x power consumption in real world. they also have A10-6700 65W TDPwhyso - Thursday, June 6, 2013 - link
Well I think this also shows how close mobile will be. Gt2 at slightly lower speeds than the 4770k (say 1200 mhz 3MB cache for an i5/i3 vs 1300 mhz 8MB cache for 4770k) will be about 10-15% slower. Mobile trinity is going to be approximately equal to haswell mobile gt2 and richland may be slightly ahead but the gap is largely gone.FriendlyUser - Thursday, June 6, 2013 - link
I have always wondered why would anyone paying $330 for a high-end CPU care for a barely adequate iGPU. It's much more reasonable to expect that people looking at the $150 price point will appreciate an iGPU, especially one that is quite decent. The cheapest GT640 I could find was ~$85 (local price), which is no small change. And don't think that the GT640 will get the same scores if paired with the i3...whyso - Thursday, June 6, 2013 - link
yes it will, 640 is way to weak to be bottlenecked by an i3.Spunjji - Friday, June 7, 2013 - link
Indeed. It'll still cost more, though!BSMonitor - Thursday, June 6, 2013 - link
The vast majority of these CPUs do not go to gamers... Their performance is more than acceptable for a large number of use cases if an OEM doesn't want to include a dGPU. However for $330 you get CPU performance that AMD cannot touch at ANY price point or performance/watt..