AMD Athlon X4 870K review – a budget offer for budget gaming machines
Advanced Micro Devices, also known as AMD, is an American company that focuses chiefly on the production of GPUs and CPUs. Their products are characterized by low price in comparison to their opponents (Intel and NVIDIA), and very good (even superior on occasion) quality, despite the low product prices.
Today we shall have a look at a budget product, which is also a good start for those of you who want to enjoy virtual reality, but don’t have much to spend. Announced in 2014, the CPU is now on the market, and we’ve finally managed to lay our hands on it. Its name is AMD Athlon X4 870K – you are about to find out how it performs and how it compares to its predecessor – the Athlon X4 860K.
If you are interested in purchasing one, you can visit the following link: http://amzn.to/1XWJMUK
Contents
What’s in the box?
Apart from the chip and the box cooler, you will also find the user manual and an AMD Athlon sticker, which you can put on your case.
Design and construction
As usual, you will first see the AMD logo, information about the socket, and the country of origin. On the back you get the typical great multitude of pins, needed for the proper operation of the entire system.
The AMD Athlon X4 870K is a CPU with base frequency of 3.9 GHz (4.1 GHz Turbo frequency). As you may guess, the letter “K” means that you can reach this Turbo frequency by overclocking (thanks to the unlocked multiplier). Because our chip was a testing unit, we did not attempt overclocking. However, if you want to do this, be sure that you have a high-end motherboard and adequate cooling, because the box cooler will not be enough to manage the additional heat. The dimensions of the chip are 4 x 4 cm, and the fan has a diagonal of 5 cm.
The AMD Athlon X4 870K has been manufactured through a 28 nm process and supports FM2+ sockets (also compatible with FM2). It boasts 4 physical and 4 logical cores consuming up to 95 watts. Additionally, the CPU supports DDR3 RAM with a max frequency of 2133 MHz, and second level 4 MB cache – quite similar to its predecessor, the Athlon X4 860K, which boasted almost the same features with the exception of the base frequency (200 MHz higher for the new model).
Specs sheet
| Series | AMD Athlon X4 |
|---|---|
| Model | 870K |
| Base frequency | 3.9 GHz – 4.1 GHz |
| Socket | FM2+ (FM2 compatible, too) |
| Architecture | Steamroller |
| Number of cores | 4 physical and 4 logical |
| Cache | 4MB (2nd level) |
| Size | 4 cm х 4 cm |
| Manufacturing process | 28 nm |
| Consumption | 95 Watts |
Technologies supported by the Athlon X4 870K
- MMX instructions
- Extensions to MMX
- SSE / Streaming SIMD Extensions
- SSE2 / Streaming SIMD Extensions 2
- SSE3 / Streaming SIMD Extensions 3
- SSSE3 / Supplemental Streaming SIMD Extensions 3
- SSE4 / SSE4.1 + SSE4.2 / Streaming SIMD Extensions 4 / SSE4a
- AES / Advanced Encryption Standard instructions
- AVX / Advanced Vector Extensions
- BMI1 / Bit Manipulation instructions 1
- F16C / 16-bit Floating-Point conversion instructions
- FMA3 / 3-operand Fused Multiply-Add instructions
- FMA4 / 4-operand Fused Multiply-Add instructions
- TBM / Trailing Bit Manipulation instructions
- XOP / eXtended Operations instructions
- AMD64 / AMD 64-bit technology
- AMD-V / AMD Virtualization technology
- EVP / Enhanced Virus Protection
- Turbo Core 3.0 technology
CPU tests
The tests we conduct put a load on the CPU alone, so that we may observe its performance and handling of temperatures. We used the box cooler, as the key point of using this chip is affordability (for those of you who are on a budget).
Cinebench 11
Cinebench 11 is a benchmark which helps us determine the CPU performance with software such as 3D Studio MAX or Cinema 4D.
Cinebench R15
Cinebench’s latest version. Again, it helps us determine the CPU performance thanks to the rendered image.
Fritz
Fritz is a benchmark that measures performance in terms of chess moves. AMD Athlon X4 870K got 7.641 million moves per second. One of the most powerful computers in the world, Deep(er) Blue, was capable of 200 million moves per second in 1997 when is beat the world champion Garry Kasparov with 3.5 to 2.5.
NovaBench
A cross-platform benchmark test that loads the processor with MD5 cashing. It also issues floating point and integer calculation to the processor. AMD Athlon X4 870K scored 407 points.
Photoshop
Apart from the synthetic benchmarks, we put the CPU through real-life tests with a number of real actions in Photoshop. We have thus adjusted the settings, so as to fully reduce the RAM and GPU assistance. The AMD Athlon X4 870K clung on for 24.9 seconds.
Results and comparison table
| Test | Intel Pentium 3258 | AMD Athlon X4 860K | AMD Athlon X4 870K | Intel Core i3-6100T | Intel Core i5-4670T |
| Cinebench 11 | 2.71 (-26%) | 3.53 (-3%) | 3.64 | 4.16 (+14%) | 4.58 (+26%) |
| Cinebench R15 | 242 (-21%) | 295 (-4%) | 307 | 339 (+10%) | 404 (+32%) |
Graphics tests
The configuration we used for this review includes a discrete GPU. We have added it because we want to see if a combination between a budget CPU and a high-end GPU (which will lead to a significant rise in temperature) will be hard on the processor and reduce its frequency in order for the cooling to cope, or whether the box cooler is good enough to manage the CPU heat.
The Athlon X4 870K does not come with an integrated graphics accelerator, so at the time of your purchase you will have to buy a discrete graphics chip (if you don’t have one). In our case, the GPU is one of the most powerful currently on the market – MSI GeForce GTX 980. Further below you can see how this combination performs in games, but let’s have a look at the graphics tests…
Unigine Heaven 3.0
One of the most commonly used benchmark programs that tests video stability, going through the different “levels”.
We expected lower results, because we have a high-end NVIDIA GPU and a budget CPU, working at its base frequency (neither CPU nor GPU have been overclocked). We were happy to find that our configuration did great in both tests.
Unigine Heaven 4.0
An improved version of the software above. The purpose of the benchmark and the 26 scenes (testing GPU stability) remains the same.
Gaming tests
The most important test for a computer purchased for the sole purpose of gaming is, of course, games – made available to us by various companies. To fully enjoy them, we depend on the GPU. We wouldn’t say that the Athlon X4 870K and GeForce GTX 980 combination did badly – on the contrary, the results are more than respectable in two of the games we tested.
| Tomb Raider (1080p, Low) | Tomb Raider (1080p, Medium) | Tomb Raider (1080p, Max) |
|---|---|---|
| 232 fps | 202 fps | 109 fps |
| F1 2015 (1080p, Low) | F1 2015 (1080p, Medium) | F1 2015 (1080p, Max) |
|---|---|---|
| 95 fps | 90 fps | 84 fps |
Verdict
The AMD Athlon X4 870K is yet another very good solution by the California-based company. It is slightly faster than its predecessor, the Athlon X4 860K, and after a potential overclock – the results may be even better for those of you who are after a budget CPU, so that they may save money for a more powerful GPU (which is of most significance in gaming). Not only is its price low, but its performance is absolutely sufficient for newer games (in combination with more powerful GPUs).
Despite the good price, the CPU itself has not been changed much in terms of its architecture and consumption – 28 nm manufacturing process and 95 Watts. We expected lower consumption (and a reduction in heat coming from the chip), but for the time being the Athlon line has high consumption. The cooling is a tad better, but when you push the CPU to the limits, you can clearly tell that it’s a box cooler. As we mentioned earlier, we recommend getting a quality cooler which can cope with the Athlon X4 870K in case you decide to overclock it (check for various options here).
If you are interested in purchasing one, you can visit the following link: http://amzn.to/1XWJMUK
Pros
- Low price
- Sufficiently powerful for contemporary gaming standards
- FM2 and FM2+ socket compatibility
- An unlocked multiplier providing options for overclocking
- Increased base frequency (in comparison to its predecessor – X4 860K)
Cons
- High consumption
- Relatively noisy box cooler in extreme conditions
Author: Dimitar Karamitev
Author: Ivan Chervenkov
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