Amd athlon x4 845 review

AMD's FM2 + platform offers us Athlon processors with very tight prices and very appropriate performance to build a low-cost gaming equipment that allows us to play all our favorite games. One of the most attractive processors of this platform is the Athlon x4 845 that offers us four cores with great energy efficiency and a TDP of only 65W.

We thank the AMD Spain team for the loan of this graphics card for analysis:

AMD Athlon x4 845 features

AMD Athlon x4 845 Unboxing and Design

The AMD Athlon x4 845 comes in a box accompanied by an AMD heatsink with the new design to be quieter and capable of handling a TDP of up to 65W.

The processor arrives protected inside a plastic blister and is accompanied by the warranty card and a sticker.

AMD Athlon processors are APUs with the graphics processor (GPU) disabled. These are chips whose GPU has not passed AMD's quality tests and therefore cannot be sold as APUs, what is done is to deactivate the GPU and are sold as processors without integrated graphics. All of them are compatible with AMD's FM2 + platform and offer a maximum of four cores.

The AMD Athlon x4 845 marks the debut of the Excavator microarchitecture on AMD desktop processors. This new processor is manufactured by Global Foundries in the 28nm Bulk process and consists of two modules with Excavator microarchitecture. These two modules add four cores at frequencies of 3.5 GHz in base mode and 3.8 GHz in shift mode. Accompanying the four cores we find cache s L1 and L2 of L1 128 Kb and 2048 KB respectively. As for memory, it features an integrated controller (IMC) with support for DDR3 memory at a maximum frequency of 2, 133 MHz, higher frequencies can be achieved by overclocking to improve its performance, especially from the integrated GPU.

It has a die size of 228 mm2 and supports the most advanced AMD instructions such as MMX, 3DNow !, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4A, AMD64, NX bit and AMD-V to offer superior performance than its predecessors. The entire package features a TDP of just 65W demonstrating the high level of energy efficiency that AMD has been able to achieve with Excavator despite maintaining 28nm.

Testing equipment and performance tests

TESTING BENCH
Processor:	AMD Athlon x4 845
Base plate:	MSI A88XI AC V2
RAM:	Kingston DDR3 2 x 4GB 1333 MHz
Heatsink	Stock
HDD	Samsumg 850 EVO 500GB.
Graphic card	R9 380
Power supply	Corsair AX860i.

To check the stability of the processor we have used a motherboard that is very efficient in consumption / cooling and that is already optimized as standard with the new Broadwell-E processors.

Benchmarks (Synthetic tests)

You can see the great difference in synthetic tests and that when rendering, video layout and design in general it is not as powerful as other processors but for its price it offers good performance.

Cinebench R15 (CPU Score).Unigine Heaven 4.0.3dMARK Fire Strike.

Game testing

After seeing all the FPS compared to other mainstream processors, the difference between them is minimal. Because this CPU is intended for exhaustive use of work and thanks to the fact that we can overclock it, we can play all the titles without any bottle.

Temperature and consumption

We have prepared the following two tables that collect the consumption at rest (idle) and at full load. The same with temperatures, remember that we have opted for the cooling that comes from stock, although better results can be achieved with higher quality heatsinks.

As we can see we find some really interesting temperatures with a stock sink, the Athlon 845 offers us 30ºC at rest and 50ºC at maximum performance at 3.8 GHz (Turbo activated). It could have been overclocked but the memories we have are at 1333 MHz and are insufficient.

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For now, in the table it is the processor that consumes the least by far but also one of the most consuming. Unlike the rest of the equipment, it has an R9 380 instead of a GTX 980 Ti. But the most obvious tests were to do it with a graphics card that came to the workshop for its occasion. Also expected temperatures and consumption.

Final words and conclusion about the AMD Athlon x4 845

The AMD Athlon X4 845 is an FM2 + socket processor, with 2MB of cache, a 3.5 GHz frequency (3.8 with turbo), 65W of TDP, locked multiplier and 2MB of cache.

As we have seen in our tests, its performance for domestic use and the gaming line is great. Since we can equip you with a high-end graphics card such as the R9 380 or R9 380X. Does it allow us to overclock? Although we do not have the multiplier unlocked if we can pull BLCK, but of course it will not be such an aggressive overclock.

It is not currently listed in online stores but will be expected to arrive for a price of 60 to 80 euros. What we are sure is one of the best processors to equip with a dedicated mid-range graphics card at a very affordable price.

ADVANTAGE	DISADVANTAGES
+ GOOD PERFORMANCE.	- COULD BRING UNLOCKED MULTIPLIER.
+ IDEAL TO EQUIP WITH A MEDIUM RANGE GRAPHICS CARD.
+ CONSUMPTION IN PERFECT REST.
+ POSSIBILITY TO MAKE OVERCLOCK BY BLCK.
+ WITH PRETTY EFFECTIVE STOCK HEATSINK.
+ PRICE