AMD A10-7800 Review

Performance Analysis

In 65W mode, the A10-7800 fared well against the A10-7850K, which sports a higher clock speed. There was less than 50 points difference in the video encoding test and it was actually slightly faster in the multi-tasking test. The overall score in the Media Benchmark suite was again just behind the A10-7850K, although there was very little difference here even moving up from the cheaper A8-7600 also in its 65W mode. However, the Intel Core i3-4330 still holds a huge lead overall thanks to much faster results in every test - even in the CPU-heavy video editing benchmark.


AMD's performance in OpenCL and OpenGL benchmarks, though, is pretty convincing compared to the likes of Intel's Core i3-4330, where the extra GPU horsepower of the Radeon under the hood really comes into play, although there are plenty of instances where the CPU is loaded heavily too. Again, where the tests relied heavily on the GPU, the AMD APU is way ahead of the Core i3, although if you're keen to really get the most out of your APU system an overclocked K-series model such as the A10-7850K can extend this lead significantly.

It was a similar story in our game benchmarks too. The A10-7800 sat between the A10-7700K and A10-7850K in nearly all the tests with very little between them. Overclocking did allow for a noticeable lead for the K-series CPUs but there was rarely more than 10 per cent improvement.

Dropping down to 45W did result in a pretty tangible dip in performance too, plus it comes close to matching the cheaper A8-7600 in 45W mode in most tests rather than beating it convincingly. The overall score in the Media Benchmark suite dropped from 1,378 to 1,258 for example, and the 45W A8-7600 managed a respectable 1,244. On the other hand, with 2,133MHz memory, the performance drop in games was kept to a minimum, with low single-figure falls in all our tests. The lower TDP mode unsurprisingly resulted in some tidy power numbers too, dropping from 107W under load to 86W for the system overall.

Meanwhile, if you're interested in seeing how AMD's Mantle improves gaming performance for Kaveri, check out our performance testing here.

Conclusion

The A10-7800 offers similar performance to a stock speed A10-7850K but has the advantage of offering optimised TDP modes that are useful for low power systems. In fact, at 65W, it practically matched the A10-7850K in many tests despite sporting a slightly lower clock speed. Price-wise, there's very little between the two APU's, though, and even the cheaper A10-7700K is much faster once overclocked.

However, there's something of a conundrum surrounding the A10-7800. Yes, it can offer low power consumption by utilising its optimised configurable TDP modes, but you can do this with the much cheaper A8-7600 too. In fact, if power consumption is really that important, just opt for an A8-6500T or even just reduce the TDP on an A10-7700K - at least you'd have an overclockable CPU should you ever fancy cranking up the multiplier, and it's cheaper too.

There is one scenario that does make sense, though, and that's if you'll be opting for the cheapest FM2+ motherboard possible, have no intention of overclocking but want good stock speed performance. Here the A10-7800 delivers both in 2D and 3D tasks and the powerful GPU gives it the edge over comparable Intel CPUs in the GPGPU arena too. The only downsides are that it becomes quite a niche product as a result, but the other issue is price. The cost of AMD's high-end APUs has been steadily increasing.

We have yet to confirm UK pricing but at time of writing, the approximate price of around £120 means that things are getting dangerously close to the cost of a Hyper-threaded Core i3 plus an R7 250X - a combination that would be just as potent GPU-wise and would offer much better performance in many benchmarks. Overall, though, the A10-7800 adds another option for budget and low power system builders, which can only be a good thing.