What I learned when exchanging my old Kaveri for a Zen+ Here is the overdue write-up for my CPU upgrade from Kaveri A10-7850K (2M/4T) to Zen+ R7 2700 (8C/16T) . Original plan was to get a Zen2, but what can you do if AMD doesn't feel like releasing B550 boards? The R7 2700 is rated for 3.2GHz base and 4.1GHz turbo. I poked around and found that 3.4GHz base -25mV is achievable. If I skip undervolting, 3.6GHz tested successfully and I wouldn't be surprised if the CPU also pulls off 3.8-4.0GHz... Problem 1: When am I gonna need 16 Threads? Problem 2: Once you play around with the multiplicator, you lose the Turbo. So I decided to stick with Stock settings (hue hue) and slapped a -100mV undervolt on it. Bring on ze benches. Brace for _slight_ differences

Games [7850K -> R7 2700] Metro Last Light Redux: 65 -> 75 Rise of the Tomb Raider: 44.2 -> 55.5 @DX11 | 55.7 @DX12 Shadow of the Tomb Raider 39 -> 68 @DX11 | 92 @DX12 Far Cry 5: 43 -> 41 Company of Heroes 2: 40.65 -> 54.46 DÖÖM: 130-140 -> 200 GTA V: 61.6 -> 115.8 Strange Brigade: 104 -> 132 (Vulkan just works) Natural Selection 2: 96 -> 117

Annotations for Games RotTR: Eidos completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up on their DX12 implementation. You get graphical artifacts. No cigar. FarCry5: I detected an anomaly here. The 2nd run is somehow much faster at 66 fps. Got no clue how well the 7850K would do on its 2nd run... Dööm: 200 seem to be a hard limit, it doesn't go any faster. Vulkan FTW! GTA5: As the Pr0B3nch0r that I am, I tested GTA5 with vsync on for years NS2: I learned that there was a major engine update in September, in order to actually compare results, you need to set Atmospherics to Low, as it previously could only be turned on or off)

Artificial Benchmarks [7850K -> R7 2700] Unigine Heaven: 76 -> 80.3 Unigine Valley: 64.7 -> 77.9 CPU-Z single/multi: 255 / 848 -> 400 / 4167 Winrar: 4049 kB/s -> 13783 kB/s 7zip (32MB dictionary): 17654 MiPS -> 61398 MiPS IntelBurnTest (standard): 40.4 sec / 22.08 GFlops -> 11.8 sec / 74.96 GFlops

Power Draw Idle: 71 W -> 77 W VLC@1080p HEVC: 82 W -> 91 W Shadow of ze TR: 293 W -> 321 W(-25mV) | 331 W@DX12(-25mV) | 315 W@DX12(-100mV) Frames per Second: 39 fps -> 68 fps(-25mV) | 92 fps@DX12(-25mV) | 93 fps@DX12(-100mV) Full Power Hog For fun I went full power hog by removing all UV from CPU and GPU. This is worst case: Shadow of ze TR: 341 W, 86 fps Yep, it's hard to believe. Without UV, the system draws 26W more while producing 7 frames less . Morale: A 450W PSU is plenty enough to power 2700 + Vega56.