AMD's A10-7800 Shoots For The Sweet Spot

It'd be easy to dismiss AMD's A10-7800 as just another APU after a quick look at the Kaveri-based chip's spec sheet. After all, the flagship A10-7850K, which sports an unlocked clock multiplier, has already been out for a while. And there are also several models at the lower end of the performance spectrum. So, why review the A10-7800? It sounds like an A10-7850K-light, and isn't even that much cheaper than the company's highest-end offering.

But the newest model emphasizes performance per watt, rather than trying to push just benchmark results, which put it on our radar. After setting aside all of AMD's marketing material associated with the -7800, we drilled down on the APU's main selling point, rather than writing the 1001st story filled with benchmarks about it. Is this the sweet spot of AMD's Kaveri design, making it the most efficient APU ever?

Our purpose is assessing the gaming and compute performance of the A10-7800, flanked by sophisticated power measurements.

This isn't going to be just another APU review. We'll underclock an A10-7850K and overclock the A10-7700K to -7800 levels. The experiments will be accompanied by detailed readings from expensive lab equipment and, in the end, we'll determine whether AMD’s A10-7800 deserves to assume that sweet-spot position.

But first, let’s look at a table of the four fastest Kaveri-based models:

While the A8-7600 isn't going to be benchmarked today, it's included in the table for the sake of completeness.