AMD A10-7890K Review: Fantastic Performance For Entry Level Gaming
Introduction
A few months ago AMD launched several new processor bundled with the company’s new range of silent stock air coolers. The processors included the A10-7890K and A10-7870K Kaveri APUs and the Athlon X4 880K CPU on the FM2+ socket. AMD launched the A10-7870K last year but now it comes bundled with a new stock CPU cooler. The new stock cooler is being called the Near-Silent 125W thermal solution. The main difference between the Wraith and the Near-Silent cooler is that the Wraith shroud illuminates.
In this review, we will focus on the A10-7890K which is an unlocked quad-core Kaveri APU with 512 stream processors, 4MB of L2 cache and a 95W thermal design power. The A10-7890K is aimed at budget users who play a lot of entry level games and don't really need discrete graphics. The base frequency of the A10-7890K is 4.1Ghz and boosts up to 4.3Ghz which makes it AMD's fastest APU to date. Also, AMD is bundling the A10-7890K APU with the Wraith cooler which is designed to handle TDPs of up to 125 watts.
The A10-7890K is basically an A10-7870K but with a higher CPU frequency and the graphics performance is still the same. The A10-7870K sells for about $140 while the A10-7890K sells for $150 on Amazon. Since these two chips are 99.9% identical, you are basically paying $10 more for a 200 Mhz increase in CPU frequency. AMD's A10-7890K APU has four Steamroller CPU cores, eight GCN computer units, and support DDR3-2133 memory.
Comparison
| AMD APU Processors Lineup | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Model: | AMD A10-7890K | AMD A10-7870K | AMD A10-7860K | AMD A8-7670K | AMD A8-7650K | Graphics: | Radeon R7 Series | Radeon R7 Series | Radeon R7 Series | Radeon R7 Series | Radeon R7 Series | GPU Clock Speed: | 866 MHz | 866 MHz | 757 MHz | 757 MHz | 720 MHz |
| CPU Codename: | Godavari | Kaveri | Godavari | Kaveri | Kaveri | ||
| Cores / Threads: | 4/4 | 4/4 | 4/4 | 4/4 | 4/4 | ||
| Core Clock: | 4.1 GHz | 3.9 GHz | 3.6 GHz | 3.6 GHz | 3.3 GHz | ||
| Boost Clock: | 4.3 Ghz | 4.1 GHz | 4.0 Ghz | 3.9 GHz | 3.8 GHz | ||
| L2 Cache: | 4MB | 4MB | 4MB | 4MB | 4MB | ||
| L3 Cache: | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | ||
| TDP: | 95W | 95W | 65W | 95W | 95W | ||
| Socket Support: | FM2+ | FM2+ | FM2+ | FM2+ | FM2+ | ||
AMD wants to sell the A10-7890K APU to gamers who are on a budget and can save money by relying on the iGPU instead of buying a discreet GPU. With that being said, the FM2+ socket is nearing the end of its life and the A10-7890K is most likely the last processor for this socket.
Packaging & Accessories
The A10-7890K comes packaged in an attractive black and red color scheme box. On the front of the box, you will see that it says that it is bundled with the Wraith cooler. The rear of the packaging has some marketing information and a label that lists the things that you will find inside the box.
Moving on, there's a label on top of the box that lists the specifications of the APU. It lists the 4.3Ghz base frequency, 4MB of cache and R7 graphics.
The Wraith is easily the best stock cooler that you will see. AMD has done a great job designing the Wraith and it offers great cooling and noise performance. I found the Wraith to be a game changer for stock cooling and you can read my review of the Wraith cooler here.
I will be using the ASRock A88M-G/3.1 motherboard to test the A10-7890K. This is probably the best FM2+ board to build a low cost gaming machine and offers a ton of features.
Test Setup & Power Consumption
| Test Setup | |
|---|---|
| Processor: | AMD Athlon X4 845 AMD A10-7890K Intel Pentium G4400 Intel Core i3-6100 |
| Motherboard: | ASRock A88M-G/3.1 MSI H110M Pro-VD |
| RAM: | Kingston HyperX 8GB DDR3 2133Mhz G.SKILL Ripjaws 8GB DDR4 2133Mhz |
| Graphics Card: | Integrated GPU Stock |
| Storage: | Samsung 840 Pro 256GB |
| Power Supply: | Antec HCP 850W |
| Case: | Corsair 750D |
| OS: | Windows 8.1 64Bit |
| Thermal Compound: | Noctua NT-H1 |
| Heatsinks: | AMD Stock Cooler Intel Stock Cooler |
I have prepared a number of different synthetic benchmarks and game benchmarks for the A10-7890K APU. Testing will be conducted by comparing the A10-7890K APU against the Core i3-6100. I'm comparing the A10-7890K against the i3-6100 because they both retail for around the same amount of money. Although, the A10-7890K is about $20 more expensive but nevertheless, both of these processors are popular among users who are on a tight budget for a gaming computer.
The integrated GPU will be used on both processors so we will be comparing Intel's HD 530 graphics against AMD's R7 graphics in different games to see who offers the best gaming performance.
Idle power consumption of the entire computer will be measured after leaving the computer idle for 20 minutes.
Load power consumption of the entire computer will be measured after playing Counter-Strike GO on max settings at 1080P for 20 minutes.
I want to make it clear that the power consumption measurements will differ per computer and components from my measurements if you add optical drives, HDDs etc.
All of the testing is done with an ambient temperature of ~19C.
CPU-Z will be used to verify the CPU speed and the voltage being used in Windows 8.1.
Also, the CPUs are tested with the default settings (Turbo, C1E etc) enabled in the BIOS.
The Intel Core i3-6100 is a 65W TDP processor built on a 14nm fabrication node so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it uses less more power.
The A10-7890K on the other hand is a 95W TDP processor built on a 28nm fabrication node.
CPU Performance Results
Cinebench R15 is the perfect benchmarking tool for comparing CPU performance across various systems and platforms.
Looking at the chart above, we can see that the i3-6100 offers great single and multi core performance.
The Core i3-6100 was able to finish this test under 10 minutes with the A10-7890K coming in at 12 minutes.
Geekbench 3 shows a similar result as Cinebench. The i3-6100 wins in both single and multi-core performance.
Once again, we see the core i3-6100 coming in on top with 6391 points and the A10-7890K with 4979 points.
AMD A10-7890K In Gaming
Now here is where the A10-7890K truly shines.
World of Tanks is a game that I play a lot in my spare time and the A10-7890K was able to deliver a great gaming experience with its iGPU.
The game was unplayable with the i3-6100 at 720P with medium settings. The only way to get it to play at constant 30FPS was to lower all the settings to low.
Counter-Strike GO is another game that I enjoy playing from time to time.
Both processors delivered more than acceptable frame rates but the A10-7890K was able to provide a smoother gaming experience.
I recorded an average of 75FPS with the A10-7890K while the i3-6100 offered an average of 49FPS which isn't enough for a game such as Counter-Strike GO.
Moving on to F1 2015, the A10-7890K offered acceptable frame rates at low settings while the i3-6100 struggled to maintain 24fps.
Some settings were turned to low in DOTA 2.
Once again, the A10-7890K had no trouble maintaining above 60fps in DOTA 2 at 1080P medium settings.
I recorded about a 6FPS difference in average FPS between the A10-7890K and i3-6100 in WoW.
Overall, the A10-7890K did exceptionally well in all games that I tested.
Value & Conclusion
The AMD A10-7890K APU retails for $150 on Amazon and not needing to purchase a discrete video card to play entry level games at playable fps is what sets the A10-7890K apart from the i3-6100. As you saw on the previous page, the A10-7890K basically destroyed Intel's HD 530 in all the games that I tested. The A10-7890K's iGPU can handle most games at med settings just fine.
It also comes with the Wraith cooler which keeps it nice and cool at all times.
The Wraith provides plenty of headroom for overclocking. I never saw the temperature go above 50 Celsius at stock settings
so you can very easily push this thing to 4.5Ghz+.
Also, the A10-7890K supports dual graphics so you can pair it with the R7 250 for the best gaming experience.
What you have to keep in mind when running dual graphics is that both video cards have to be running at the same speed otherwise it won't work properly.
Pros:
+ Dual Graphics Support
+ Low Power Consumption
+ Affordable Platform Price
+ Fantastic Gaming Performance
+ Silent Stock Cooler
Cons:
- Weak CPU Performance
Overall, AMD's A10-7890K APU is the perfect product for those who play entry level games such as DOTA2, CS:GO or WoW. I am very impressed with how well it performed in all the games that I tested. The FM2+ platform is affordable and is great for users who are on a tight budget that just want to build a nice cheap gaming machine. Intel is still behind AMD in the graphics department so if gaming is your priority then get the A10-7890K.
The performance of the A10-7890K is as advertised and it is impressive for the price point. The CPU performance is good, and graphics is in fact the fastest integrated solution currently on the market.
Final Score 9.5
