Gadgetory

and these done more than refreshed their latest APU the a10 78-60 K has a reduced TDP down to 65 watts an impressive 30 watt reduction over other current AMD APU switch sit around 95 watts and this seems to be a trend with AMD lately there Fiji cards for instance and the 300 series cards both made moves to change the thermal package of the die to reduce its TDP reduce its overall heat output and this is a response from AMD to criticism from reviewers and users alike with regard to power and thermal output of their devices so the a10 78-60 k is what we are reviewing today this is the new apu it's $120 units and we're going to be looking at that the new a10 78-60 ka pu launch is accompanied by the 7890 k a high-end apu at 160 ish dollars that we'll be reviewing separately and in the near future the 78 60 k runs a 65 watt thermal package while retaining a 2 module 4 core architecture and all the specs are in the chart on the screen now but the short of it is that the new $120 78-60 ka pu runs 8gb you cores with 512 streaming processors the very same as the 78 70 K that we previously reviewed and the new 78 90k that just came out the 78 60 k operates base at 3.6 gigahertz but turbos to 4.0 gigahertz and we've observed some thermal throttling issues though Andy does believe that the lower thermal package should allow for longer turbo periods the GPU clock is noticeably slower than the 78 70 K which is now priced at $140 by the way Anna Sony at 60 K runs at 754 megahertz the Sony 870 K at 866 megahertz and the 79 TK s also at 8 66 megahertz so then to the astute viewer it would sound like the 7/8 60 K is pretty comparable to the previous 78 70 K and other AMD APU s and that would be a correct assumption or viewpoint because the architecture is actually the same it's just another refresh where they've done a few reductions to thermals and they've done reductions in clock speed to help with those thermals and to lower the price it is $118 MSRP 7/8 how many K is now 140 and 7 8 9 TK is around 1 - definitely a pretty steep price for an APU but we'll look at that separately we previously said that the 7870 K would actually be a pretty good buy at around 120 dollars is what the 78 60 K is priced at now and that statement was based on the fact that in our tests we found that cheap CPUs with cheap D GPUs actually performed much better than a 70 at 70 K at maybe around 10 dollars more than its 140 $150 ish price range so today Louis the seventy at 60 K at the $120 price point we asked for for the 70 at 70 K it's time to look at the clock rates and the thermal changes here and see if it impacts FPS to a point that it's not actually worth the buy or is it actually a feasible solution for cheap computers now let's look at the gaming benchmarks and see if this thing is actually worthwhile as always check the article in the description below for full testing methodology and more depth will first look at thermals briefly and then we'll talk about gaming fps our thermal testing methods were recently validated with the thermal chamber and we found them to be nearly perfectly accurate so for today's test we decided to change things up a little bit we used a stock cooler with each of the two ApS on bench rather than using an identical cooler for them and so we're looking at the performance as boxed meaning when you get the product with the cooler that is in the Box how does it actually perform comparatively between the 7/8 1707 e at 60 K with their smaller cooler master cooler versus the 70 at 70 K with the Wraiths cooler equilibrium results show the rates to be a significantly more efficient cooler no big surprise there and even with the hotter TDP of the 70 at 70 K and the higher operating clock we logged the 70 at 60 K with its stock cooler and thermal paste @ 29.5 C delta T over ambient the Wraiths cooled so need 70 K ran at twenty five point eight six six C delta T over ambient and both are fairly and actually fully acceptable CPU temperatures for AMD especially and these are impressive steps in the right direction to be fair though these ApS are quite a bit cooler than I am these FX counterparts and do note as well this is very important that we had to use T case for CPU thermal measurements due to software issues with locating T Junction on AP use time for gaming benchmarks the first up is GTA 5 on normal setting using only the IGP so we've got no DGP you hear the two configurations which use a DGP you are running an el cheapo card the r7 250x which plants those total configuration costs close to the high-end AP use the 810 78-60 Kalin's only barely above 20 FPS here making it effectively unplayable without support from discrete GPUs to its credit the new apu does outperform the i3 4160 marginally and it's HD series IGP but neither lands anywhere remotely close to the realm of playability GTA v isn't playable until adding a d GPU to the mix even a cheap relatively poor performing to 50x boost FPS by more than 2x over these apu so definitely a statement there to the performance levels moving on to grid Autosport at medium settings with zero tap AAA we see the cheap d GPU plus cheap cpu accommodations performing best with the 7870 k at taking a strong first amount i gps and AP use and the new sony at 60 k performs slightly slower than the 70 at 70 k actually a good amount slower not just slightly it is actually a 27.8% difference and both are more or less able to handle the racing title with some more tuning but the AP use and even some intel iGPS need to be generally tuned slightly below medium settings for best playability at 1080p without a d GPU in grid Autosport at medium settings dota 2 isn't particularly compelling either which is real shame because this is sort of the flagship mark for AP use and iGPS with an FPS that's hardly any better than an i3 41 60 to 70 at 60 K it leaves us generally unimpressed and actually the difference between the i3 and the 760 is imperceptible to a real-world user the 78 60 K really struggles here and the gap between the 70 at 60 km 70 at 70 K corresponds with clock rate throttling that seems resultant of the hard 65 watt TDP constraint on the new apu next up a few cpu heavy charts that run a gtx 980ti at DDP you to eliminate the GPU bottleneck as much as possible so here we're looking more at CPU performance individually shadow of mordor clearly throttles at around 97 FPS on this particular GPU so hitting 80 FPS with a 78 60 k is Miraval but does show a clear bottleneck that is inferior to even an i3 4160 in this instance if you're planning on pairing a DGP with your cheap CPU we'd actually strongly recommend an i3 over a comparable priced apu looking at Metro last light the trend somewhat persists though the i3 CPU does throttle the GPU pretty heavily here by around 30% the 78 60 K is even worse nearly a 50% throttle over the 100 FPS matched with the 4790k note that the point 1 percent low frame times in the chart these abysmal low results actually our resultant of the thread count and really is a one-off instance with Metro last light the game is very sensitive to thread count and not every game reacts this way as you saw with Mordor which is much more forgiving with these metrics here's a look at grid Autosport on the screen now on ultra with 4 tap MSAA as we mentioned in the article we've seen a heavy favour toward Intel in grid so keep that in mind and the 810 78 60 K nearly achieves parity with the Sony at 70 K in this instance but clearly throttles the GPU massively so is it worth it is the Sony at 60 K actually good for $120 where we said the 7870 case should have been priced well here's the thin for $300 computers or ultra cheap systems it is actually worth a look because you're basically at that kind of budget you're sort of throwing gaming out the window it's something that you'd like to maybe do at lowest settings or medium settings if you can push it but the system's purpose would be more for everyday use browsing just to kind of keep things going with a very slight gaming ability in the mix and that's really about where the usability of the APU stops after that point it becomes a much better value to buy a cheap CPU like the one of the athlon x4 is they're actually really good CPUs and pair it with a cheap GPU normally we don't really recommend the cheap D GPUs things less than $100 but if you're really on a restrictive budget I would strongly recommend one of those with a cheap CPU over an APU at 120 especially $160 because once you add it 160 you're basically at the price of something like an 8 60 K which is a pretty strong performer matched with something like an R 7 250 X or one of the more modern r7 three 40 X cards or something like that so that's sort of where I stand on those now there's one critical thing to note here and that is the dark horse in the race and these at new athlon x4 80k was just announced and that is a CPU only solution there is no IGP and because it's got no IGP that means that the cpu performance is actually pretty strong comparatively so the AP use and it's got no actual IGP per bar it's got no graphics ability so you do need a D GPU with the solution the AAT K is going to be $95 the 860 K is already out there has been out there and basically succeed in the 760 K which we had in our charts here today so if you're looking for a sort of cheap and the CPU less than $100 I would recommend waiting on these ApS right now wait for the 80k to start shipping three viewers take a look at its results and ask yourself once you see these is it worth buying a $95 CPU plus maybe I don't know an $80 to $100 GPU and seeing how that goes you're still at under $200 total for the CPU and GPU so a pretty good cost see how that goes versus these APs you might end up throwing X or 20 or $40 at the solution but for gamers for the type of people I imagine are following this channel I would generally suggest that approach with even a cheap CPU plus d GPU approach rather than the apu all in one type of thing except in the instance of something like a $300 super cheap build where you are ok with accepting the life of low graphics settings medium graphics settings and just sort of dealing with it as a way to offset you or your low cost over on the build so those are the thoughts on the AMD a10 78-60 k AP you can check the link the description below for the full article we've got the charts and everything there if you like this kind of content as always subscribe hit the patreon link to helps out directly thank you for watching and I'll see you all next time