Review of the AMD Athlon 760K

[David89]

Hi,

 

as some of you may remember (or probably not ), last year i did a Userreview of the 750K wich was (and still is) overclocked to 4,4 GHz.

 

I'm a Journalist for a small german Online-Magazine and we thought for the PS4 and XBox One releases, we could do a PC with similar/better specs ourselfs and write about it. Well, the Testing has taken a little longer then anticipated because of some mechanical Problems (The first time the Thermalright Macho HR-02 was to big for the case, after that was sorted with the smaller Thermalright Macho 120, the Mainboard died because of a very bad misshap and so on...), it was published only a few weeks ago

What did we choose:

 

• AMD Athlon 760K
• ASRock FM2A88X Extreme4+ (wich was changed to the Extreme6+ by our supplier, after the unfortunate death of the 4+ and no 4+ was available)
• Gigabyte Radeon R9 270X Windforce 3x OC
• 400 Watt BeQuiet StraightPower 80+ Gold (over 90% efficiency, BQT E9-400W)
• 8 GB DDR3-1600 RAM
• Kingston V300 60 GB
• Cooltek Antiphone

So in retrospec to Linus('? es? s? not sure what would be gramatically correct...) Value APU-Computer buildquide, i thought i could share some of the Benchmarks we did on our System.

 

 

 

 

There are Still a few Diagrams missing, i don't have access to all of them at the moment (don't ask why...*sigh*), but i'm going to put them on here as soon as i have them^^

 

So without further ado:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[HK_Rage]

How is it overclocked compared to a stock 6300?

[David89]

How is it overclocked compared to a stock 6300?

 

As i don't have a 6300 to Benchmark it myself, i have to rely on the different online databse entrys.

 

And if i do that, the 760K @ 4,6 GHz is ALOT faster then the Stock 6300. It is also a huge improvement in Power Consumption. You can have C6-State and CnQ turned on while overclocked, so Idle Consumption is down to 36 Watt with that System (wich is IMHO because of the PSU. I tested the same System with a 500 Watt Bronze PSU and it was stuck at 68 Watt Idle).

 

Naturally, if you use 6-Threads all the Time, the 6300 will be a little faster.

 

The Benchmarks for BF4 and Crysis 3 are done, and TBH i was blown away by the results. Both probably would run a bit faster on a 6300@4,6 GHz, but not by much.

 

BF4 runs in F-HD and basically maximum Settings (a few things are turned off, like Motion Blur, Weapon DOF and Post Processing is turned down a little - apart from that everything is on High) with about 45-50 FPS in Single Player and 30-40 FPS in Multiplayer.

 

Crysis 3 is pretty much the same, although it "spikes" sometimes up to 70 FPS.

 

GPU Load is allways at 98-100% in both Games.

 

Metro 2033 has some glitches in the build in Benchmark. While Playing the Game it drops sometimes down to 35 FPS, but most of the time it's solid 55-60 FPS.

[<boss2939>]

i got some money laying around and thinking about the 760k i already have a8 5600k with a 660 (I upgraded after 2 months) but, the weak point of my a8 is i can oc only to 4.1 messed up with voltages a while back and degrade my cpu, I feel like its seriously bottlenecking my 660 especially in bf3 64 man server which from what i heard requires a lot of cpu horsepower and i can tell that i am being bottlenecked due to there being a 6 fps difference between ultra at 1080 and low in 720, if i do order the 760k I will do a lot of cherry picking(I got prime so I can return things and get my money back)I might buy 5-10 and see which one ocs, by the way I have a pretty high end mobo (asus a85x f2a85-v pro) with a tx 850 (I know overkill but it was a 20$ difference between the 600 watt so ya) oh and i will be reusing the a8 for another build still a nice chip. BTW nice review

[Luke]

I thought that was a Antec P280 lol, Nice build bud.

[420istoday]

Could you post some of your OC tweaks? I can't get my 760k over 4.3Ghz without instability, stock voltages of course, I'm a little hesistant to play around with them myself, not having the money to replace it and all.

[David89]

Well, the Jump from 4,3 GHz to 4,6 GHz needs a bump to 1,475 VCore. At least in my case. I can't get my 750K over 4,4 GHz either. Even with 1,55 VCore it won't run stable, so i just run it at 4,4 GHz - and to be completely honest? I don't really care I can play nearly everything in F-HD and max Quality - yes, the GPU is sometimes probably bottlenecked, but i have the MSI Afterburner with OSD running and most of the Time, the GPU is over 90% load.

 

If you are not comfortable with bumping the VCore up a notch, then just don't do it^^ 4,3 GHz is a HUGE jump from the stock 3,8 GHz (because the Turbo of 4 GHz is not on all cores equally - and sometimes just doesn't work at all). Also i noticed, that with stock VCore and 4,2 Ghz the 760K runs pretty cool. At least with a Thermalright Macho 120 it doesn't get over 55°C. While gaming, it hovers around 45-50°C. And i don't hear anything - even with open case.

[ciprian97pop]

Well, the Jump from 4,3 GHz to 4,6 GHz needs a bump to 1,475 VCore. At least in my case. I can't get my 750K over 4,4 GHz either. Even with 1,55 VCore it won't run stable, so i just run it at 4,4 GHz - and to be completely honest? I don't really care I can play nearly everything in F-HD and max Quality - yes, the GPU is sometimes probably bottlenecked, but i have the MSI Afterburner with OSD running and most of the Time, the GPU is over 90% load.

 

If you are not comfortable with bumping the VCore up a notch, then just don't do it^^ 4,3 GHz is a HUGE jump from the stock 3,8 GHz (because the Turbo of 4 GHz is not on all cores equally - and sometimes just doesn't work at all). Also i noticed, that with stock VCore and 4,2 Ghz the 760K runs pretty cool. At least with a Thermalright Macho 120 it doesn't get over 55°C. While gaming, it hovers around 45-50°C. And i don't hear anything - even with open case.

well, I bought a few weeks ago an athlon 750k to upgrade my system. I saw the 760k but I didn't thought that it's a big difference

what does the 760k have over the 750k? only that is higher clocked or something else?

[420istoday]

Well, the Jump from 4,3 GHz to 4,6 GHz needs a bump to 1,475 VCore. At least in my case. I can't get my 750K over 4,4 GHz either. Even with 1,55 VCore it won't run stable, so i just run it at 4,4 GHz - and to be completely honest? I don't really care I can play nearly everything in F-HD and max Quality - yes, the GPU is sometimes probably bottlenecked, but i have the MSI Afterburner with OSD running and most of the Time, the GPU is over 90% load.

 

If you are not comfortable with bumping the VCore up a notch, then just don't do it^^ 4,3 GHz is a HUGE jump from the stock 3,8 GHz (because the Turbo of 4 GHz is not on all cores equally - and sometimes just doesn't work at all). Also i noticed, that with stock VCore and 4,2 Ghz the 760K runs pretty cool. At least with a Thermalright Macho 120 it doesn't get over 55°C. While gaming, it hovers around 45-50°C. And i don't hear anything - even with open case.

I'm running the 2 copper heat pipe version of the stock cooler, don't know how they choose which to box with which, my brothers FX-4130 came with a 4 heat pipe one, and the 760k comes with the small aluminum only one, and to be even more confusing so do the 4300 and 6300.....

 

My temps are pretty great though, I may bump my voltage just a tad, but I think it may just be my motherboard, it's an MSI-A75MA-P33 matx, got it for $35 on black friday. I was actually planning at the time just to get that and upgrade later to the Extreme 6+ (best layout for a FM2+ board as far as I can tell) and am still going to, it'll be a few weeks though.

 

But thank you for your response to my question, I will definitely try to push it just a tad further, to maybe 4.5 at most, or just try to get 4.4GHz stable. I definitely tell the difference in 4.3 and stock though, it was a good 4-5 fps in BF4, not sure why it was that extreme but it did definitely help.

[David89]

well, I bought a few weeks ago an athlon 750k to upgrade my system. I saw the 760k but I didn't thought that it's a big difference

what does the 760k have over the 750k? only that is higher clocked or something else?

 

It does have the Piledriver-Cores, wich means it's about 10-15% faster, then the 750K - wich it is. I've got a 750K and compared it to the 760K. But it doesn't make that much of a difference.

 

I'm running the 2 copper heat pipe version of the stock cooler, don't know how they choose which to box with which, my brothers FX-4130 came with a 4 heat pipe one, and the 760k comes with the small aluminum only one, and to be even more confusing so do the 4300 and 6300.....

 

My temps are pretty great though, I may bump my voltage just a tad, but I think it may just be my motherboard, it's an MSI-A75MA-P33 matx, got it for $35 on black friday. I was actually planning at the time just to get that and upgrade later to the Extreme 6+ (best layout for a FM2+ board as far as I can tell) and am still going to, it'll be a few weeks though.

 

But thank you for your response to my question, I will definitely try to push it just a tad further, to maybe 4.5 at most, or just try to get 4.4GHz stable. I definitely tell the difference in 4.3 and stock though, it was a good 4-5 fps in BF4, not sure why it was that extreme but it did definitely help.

 

Well, yeah, i would change that Board. The Extreme 6+ is pretty good, but if the 4+ is cheaper - get that one. Same Layout, same chipset and the Soundchip on the 6+ isn't very good - don't know why, but it produces very bad distortions...

 

The difference between Stock and 4,3 is very noticable, but i bet you won't notice the difference between 4,4 and 4,6 without looking at the numbers. If you are doing a lot of Videoediting or Rendering, then yes. You notice it also a bit in Lightroom or Photoshop - but not in Games. At least, i don't^^

[Rekx]

Would this be a good option if im building a HTPC? or should i go with something that have the onboard graphics

[Le Lion de Barreras]

Would this be a good option if im building a HTPC? or should i go with something that have the onboard graphics

Going with onboard graphics (APU) will save you some money since it elminates the need for a discrete GPU.