Onboard Performance
For onboard GPU testing I only tested the two APUs as the 880K doesn’t have an onboard Gpu. Here I remove the dedicated Gpu from our test bench and run through our onboard tests. With the exception of the Unigine Valley benchmark all of the benchmarks are tamed down a little from the similar tests on the CPU. My first test was using Cinebench R15’s OpenGL benchmark. The test runs through encoding a video and the score at the end is the average FPS it had. Here we can see how the higher GPU clock speed of the 7890K helps set it apart from both the 7860K and the 7870K. It scores just under 2 FPS faster but this is still far from the two Intel CPUs that we have tested. Those are of course much more expensive CPUs but with the 7890K being AMDs top end APU I would like to see it put up a little better fight.
Our next test is running the two APUs through the newest 3DMark using the Fire Strike benchmark on the performance setting. This tests for performance at 1080p and is a good fit for onboard GPUs. Here we can see that the AMD APUs are performing better than the latest 6700K from intel as well as past Intel CPUs like the 4790k. The i7-5775C is still the fastest with the exception of when you add a dedicated card to the APUs to run in crossfire.
Next was the Unigine Valley Benchmark. As I mentioned before this is the one test that I don’t tune down for onboard GPU testing so the results aren’t exactly the most promising with even the best pulling 7FPS. The test is run on its highest setting and even the dedicated video cards struggle with it. That said the 7890K and the 7860K didn’t really perform all that well here with the older 7870K out performing even after several retests to confirm. There isn’t any real reason for the gap as the 7890K does still have a faster GPU clock speed.
Then the rest of my tests focused on what is really important, actual in game performance. Here with the exception of GRID Autosport all of the tests are run at 1080p with the settings on medium. In GRID I ran both medium and ultra to get a peek at how they performed with things turned up as well. Here the AMD APUs look a lot more realistic. In almost every game the 7890K was up near the top of the charts just below the 5775C and sometimes the 6700k. In a few all of the APUs out performed Intels latest 6700k. What the test really show us though is at medium settings in 5 out of the 6 games the average FPS was above or very close to 30FPS, what we typically consider playable but not perfect. This tells us that If you only need basic game performance you don’t have to throw down for a dedicated GPU. That said even with the much more expensive Intel 5775C I don’t see anyone running onboard video for a dedicated gaming PC. You most likely will be able to play games that are known for being very forgiving like League of Legends, but once you start to get into other games you are going to notice some slowdowns. In most of the games the clock speed differences between the A10-7890k and the A10-7860k aren’t going to make a noticeable difference, with the exception of GRID Autosport where the 7890K had a large performance gap.
