Intro

The Athlon X4 845 is one of the most recent value CPUs launched by AMD for socket FM2+, with four cores, 3.5 GHz base clock and 3.8 GHz turbo clock, no integrated video, based on the new “Carrizo” core. Let’s test it!

The Athlon X4 845 is, just like the Athlon X4 880K, which we already tested, a quad-core CPU that uses socket FM2+, but offers no integrated video. However, while the X4 880K uses the Godavari core (Steamroller architecture), the Athlon X4 845 uses the new Carrizo core, that is part of the Excavator architecture. This new architecture uses a 28 nm manufacturing process, but has only half of the L2 cache (1 MiB for each two cores).

Besides that, the Athlon X4 845 offers a smaller amount of PCI Express 3.0 lanes: just eight lanes, instead of the 16 lanes present on the Athlon X4 880K and other CPUs that use this socket. This, however, should not be a real-world performance limitator, as we proved in this article. Besides that, being a low-cost CPU, it will hardly be paired with a high-end video card, and surely not with an SLI or CrossFire array. Another important difference in this new architecture is the improved energetic efficiency: the Athlon X4 845 has a TDP of 65 W. This is because the Carrizo core is derivated from mobile models.

In terms of price, the direct competitor of the Athlon X4 845 is the Pentium G4400 from Intel, but it also is close of the FX-4300, which has no integrated GPU too. Unfortunately we had no Pentium G4400 available for this test, so we will compare the Athlon X4 845 to the FX-4300. We also included in the comparison the A10-7870K (to see if is there any performance difference between both architectures) and a Core i3-6100. Keep in mind, however, that these two last CPUs are not competitors to the Athlon X4 845, since they are in a higher price level.

As the Athlon X4 845 has no integrated video, we ran the tests using an independent video card. As it is a mainstream processor, it would make no sense using a high-end video card; so we used a GeForce GTX 950 from Gigabyte (read this video card review here.) On the other CPUs, we disabled the integrated video and used the same video card.

Figure 1 unveils the box of the Athlon X4 845 we used in our tests.

Figure 1: box of the Athlon X4 845

Figure 2 shows the box contents: a manual, the CPU itself, a case sticker and a simple full-aluminum cooler called “95 W thermal solution”.

Figure 2: box contents

Figure 3 unveils the Athlon X4 845 CPU.

Figure 3: the Athlon X4 845 CPU

Figure 4 shows the bottom of the CPU.

Figure 4: underside of the FX-4300

Let’s compare the main specs of the reviewed CPUs in the next page.