AMD A Series APU Poor Performance

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Gawd
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Not very often i post in the other areas at [h] but here goes. o_O

I was gifted an HP Elitedesk 705 G3 with an AMD A10 Pro. Figured i would give this to my mother as a browsing PC as she was still on a first-gen intel Core PC. I'm having some major performance issues with browsers and doing basic things like watching youtube videos on this machine. Firefox and Chrome both struggle on any kind of media. I installed a new SSD with a clean install of Win10 21H1. I've tried both the stock driver on HP's website and the last supported driver on AMD's website. A fellow forum member sent me a spare R5 240 that he had. Unfortunately it doesn't fare much better in this setup.

pulling what little hair i have left here trying to figure out this issue. It's as if this machine struggles do do just about anything.

Specs
AMD PRO A10-9700E R7 AM4
12GB DDR4
256GB SSD
Win10 21H1
 
That CPU uses old Excavator cores. It was kind of weird to see AMD do that when Zen had already launched, but their APUs have been one gen behind and those APUs were released during Zen1. Unfortunately it does not look like that prebuilt will even accept a Zen1 with a dedicated GPU, which is what I would have recommended. Personally I think it is not worth fooling with, anything either Zen1 and up from AMD or Haswell and up from Intel will be much faster than that boat anchor, imo.

I guess one thing to try would be a dGPU but if that is the SFF version I don't even know if that'd be possible.
 
That CPU uses old Excavator cores. It was kind of weird to see AMD do that when Zen had already launched, but their APUs have been one gen behind and those APUs were released during Zen1. Unfortunately it does not look like that prebuilt will even accept a Zen1 with a dedicated GPU, which is what I would have recommended. Personally I think it is not worth fooling with, anything either Zen1 and up from AMD or Haswell and up from Intel will be much faster than that boat anchor, imo.

I guess one thing to try would be a dGPU but if that is the SFF version I don't even know if that'd be possible.

This model doesn't support Zen. That would be the G4 towers. I already tested a dedicated R5 240 on this but it only fares nominally better. Barely noticeable. I see lots of people having various performance issues online but virtually zero solutions.
 
There isn't a solution. The saving grace of Excavator was that it could be run at high speed, but that's not possible in your situation. If it could be run at 4+ GHz, you might have something. Maybe that would be possible with a different mobo and the use of that dGPU, but that is a lot of work for nominal gain.
 
There isn't a solution. The saving grace of Excavator was that it could be run at high speed, but that's not possible in your situation. If it could be run at 4+ GHz, you might have something. Maybe that would be possible with a different mobo and the use of that dGPU, but that is a lot of work for nominal gain.

4ghz to watch YouTube and Facebook videos? LOL.

This seems to stem from a number of Windows 10 updates. The bug has been introduced, fixed and reintroduced a number of times over the last 2 years or so. Most recently with the Zen performance bug.

A number of people have reported that removing certain hot fixes will resolve the issue in the short term but that will work in my situation as in running a clean install using the latest win10 build. It seems both Microsoft and AMD kind of wash their hands of this and instead focused solely on win11 zen2 issues
 
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try disabling hardware accel in the web browser. and what "bug" are you saying was "introduced"?
 
First of all, I'm pretty sure I know what the issue here is.

Your laptop has a CPU that sucks. It was a CPU that was terrible even when it was brand new, and it hasn't exactly improved with age.

Figured i would give this to my mother as a browsing PC as she was still on a first-gen intel Core PC.

Are you sure that it was even an upgrade? What CPU was her old computer running exactly?. Here is an example compared against a first generation Intel Core CPU: https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-870-vs-AMD-A10-9700E-APU-2016-DBR/m961vsm348934

I have a difficult time believing that this is simply some built-in Windows 10 issue. I've installed Windows 10 and 11 on many AMD CPUs both newer and older than the A10 in that laptop and have not experienced the issues you are describing.

There are a number of things that I would try.

The first would be to check for throttling. There are a number of reasons that a laptop will throttle, and it's disturbingly common. One reason is power consumption, either your power brick is not supplying enough power, your laptop is using too much power, or a combo of both. For example, with Lenovo and Dell laptops they often use standardized power connectors and sell power adapters in multiple different sizes. You could have a laptop that would give full performance with a 95w adapter, but if you used a 65w adapter, the CPU would automatically throttle in order to reduce power consumption. I've seen performance increases better than upgrading from a mechanical hard drive to an SSD just from upgrading the power brick in some cases. With an APU this is less likely, but those old pre-Zen cores weren't exactly known for their energy efficiency. The other reason it might throttle would be for thermal reasons. Could be an inadequate cooler in general, or a clogged cooling fan, or bad airflow (using a laptop on a soft surface like a bed or couch that blocks intake fans, etc).

Another thing you could try, especially if you are convinced it's a Windows 10 issue, is to simply try other versions of the OS. Do a fresh install of 8.1 and fully update it, since it's still supported for one more year. See what you think in comparison. On the flip side, you could bypass the requirements and upgrade to Windows 11, try that instead. I have an old Turion x2 that is very slow, even compared to that A10, and it runs Windows 11 just fine.

I've tried both the stock driver on HP's website and the last supported driver on AMD's website.

Have you tried installing drivers from the optional updates section in Windows Update?
 
The -E versions of these APUs are limited to 35W, which is going to be a big part of your problem. A regular 65W A10 9700 non-E or a 65W A12 9800 non-E wouldn't be night-and-day faster, but it would be faster.
 
try disabling hardware accel in the web browser. and what "bug" are you saying was "introduced"?

Did that. It barely helped. Especially when 1080p youtube videos hit.
 

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First of all, I'm pretty sure I know what the issue here is.

Your laptop has a CPU that sucks. It was a CPU that was terrible even when it was brand new, and it hasn't exactly improved with age.



Are you sure that it was even an upgrade? What CPU was her old computer running exactly?. Here is an example compared against a first generation Intel Core CPU: https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-870-vs-AMD-A10-9700E-APU-2016-DBR/m961vsm348934

I have a difficult time believing that this is simply some built-in Windows 10 issue. I've installed Windows 10 and 11 on many AMD CPUs both newer and older than the A10 in that laptop and have not experienced the issues you are describing.

There are a number of things that I would try.

The first would be to check for throttling. There are a number of reasons that a laptop will throttle, and it's disturbingly common. One reason is power consumption, either your power brick is not supplying enough power, your laptop is using too much power, or a combo of both. For example, with Lenovo and Dell laptops they often use standardized power connectors and sell power adapters in multiple different sizes. You could have a laptop that would give full performance with a 95w adapter, but if you used a 65w adapter, the CPU would automatically throttle in order to reduce power consumption. I've seen performance increases better than upgrading from a mechanical hard drive to an SSD just from upgrading the power brick in some cases. With an APU this is less likely, but those old pre-Zen cores weren't exactly known for their energy efficiency. The other reason it might throttle would be for thermal reasons. Could be an inadequate cooler in general, or a clogged cooling fan, or bad airflow (using a laptop on a soft surface like a bed or couch that blocks intake fans, etc).

Another thing you could try, especially if you are convinced it's a Windows 10 issue, is to simply try other versions of the OS. Do a fresh install of 8.1 and fully update it, since it's still supported for one more year. See what you think in comparison. On the flip side, you could bypass the requirements and upgrade to Windows 11, try that instead. I have an old Turion x2 that is very slow, even compared to that A10, and it runs Windows 11 just fine.



Have you tried installing drivers from the optional updates section in Windows Update?

I'm stumped on the issue here. Googling i found some people that seem to have pinpointed the issue to some updates released. I can't uninstall those because of the build of win10 that i used. I had a few E series APUs that never ran into any issue like this either. It's one of the reasons why i decided to ask around, hoping someone might have had a similar issue and resolved it.

As for the throttling, this is a full sized desktop.
 
i still use some A series and even AM3 rigs for certain things. they can perform quite well if set up correctly. i notice you said 12gb ram, you should check CPUZ and see if it reports that you are in single channel, and what speed it detects. Like all AMD builds, RAM is a huge issue, and more does not equal faster.
 
iirc, the graphics engine in those APUs doesn't support hardware decode of the encoding used on youtube now. Combined with the low TDP and just two excavator modules (technically "four cores"), you're gonna have a bad time.
 
iirc, the graphics engine in those APUs doesn't support hardware decode of the encoding used on youtube now. Combined with the low TDP and just two excavator modules (technically "four cores"), you're gonna have a bad time.
That said, different video resolutions sometimes use different encodings, so you might get better performance increasing the resolution, and almost definitely will if you decrease the resolution, if only because of the lower resource requirement.

right click the video and select "stats for geeks" to see what encoding was used for the video.
 
i literally have the lenovo version of that pc, my kids use it for youtube, schoolwork, and have some older PC games on it.
RAM, and the CORRECT chipset and GPU drivers are probably the issue.
 
i still use some A series and even AM3 rigs for certain things. they can perform quite well if set up correctly. i notice you said 12gb ram, you should check CPUZ and see if it reports that you are in single channel, and what speed it detects. Like all AMD builds, RAM is a huge issue, and more does not equal faster.

Yeah I've never quite seen anything like this. I've pretty much confirmed in my mind that i won't be bringing this home to mom but the issue is still nagging at me to no end. The PC does have 12 gigs of ram. These were being given out at work after they sent most of the purchasing crew home with new computers to work from home for the forseeable future. They originally came with just 8 gigs. I found an extra stick in the IT room. All the memory tests fine and the issue persists even if i take out the additional stick of ram. All sticks are matching - same make and model samsung sticks.

Just got back home and fired her up. Here are some CPU-Z Screens.

cpu-z.jpg
 
i literally have the lenovo version of that pc, my kids use it for youtube, schoolwork, and have some older PC games on it.
RAM, and the CORRECT chipset and GPU drivers are probably the issue.

Is there any way you can confirm which version of the radeon software your kids PC is using? I'm currently on the latest. I also tried the one on the HP website (older) and it didn't help.
Radeon Software Version.jpg
 
That said, different video resolutions sometimes use different encodings, so you might get better performance increasing the resolution, and almost definitely will if you decrease the resolution, if only because of the lower resource requirement.

right click the video and select "stats for geeks" to see what encoding was used for the video.

Here's the stats for the same video i posted earlier with the task manager showing the CPU max'd out

Youtube Stats.jpg
 
i will tonight when i get home.
what do you have for a hd/ssd in that box?
link the video and i will play it too.
 
lenovo.PNGlenovo1.PNGlenovo2.PNGlenovo3.PNG

i tried a VP9 video on youtube and it seemed to play fine.
my CPUZ are the top 3
 
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i tried a VP9 video on youtube and it seemed to play fine.
my CPUZ are the top 3
Your memory is clocked a good bit higher, with good timings. iirc, that made a big difference with bulldozer (although I'm not sure about vp9 specifically).

Other than that, it's exactly the same (where it matters), so has to be either OS/mem configuration or drivers. I'd try setting the power mode "performance" (or whatever it's called) to high first, since that might be easier than overclocking RAM.
 
View attachment 429511View attachment 429512View attachment 429513View attachment 429515

i tried a VP9 video on youtube and it seemed to play fine.
my CPUZ are the top 3
I had a different chipset version. Ran the latest and unfortunately I don't see any major difference.

Your memory is clocked a good bit higher, with good timings. iirc, that made a big difference with bulldozer (although I'm not sure about vp9 specifically).

Other than that, it's exactly the same (where it matters), so has to be either OS/mem configuration or drivers. I'd try setting the power mode "performance" (or whatever it's called) to high first, since that might be easier than overclocking RAM.

Tried setting it to performance and gave it a restart. Unfortunately I still have the same issues.
 
eww, and is that 4 excavator cores?

Epically slow chip man. The graphics clock is 315mhz!?

You might get better speed by removing a stick of ram, and running an even 2x 4gb instead of 3.

This is an old ultra low end chip unfortunately.

Install linux on it would be my suggestion. I have a couple old machines like this that are running it and for the old stuff it works better than windows.
 
I had a different chipset version. Ran the latest and unfortunately I don't see any major difference.



Tried setting it to performance and gave it a restart. Unfortunately I still have the same issues.


You would have to change the RAM. RAM has been and always will be the single most important part of an AMD rig.
 
eww, and is that 4 excavator cores?

Epically slow chip man. The graphics clock is 315mhz!?

You might get better speed by removing a stick of ram, and running an even 2x 4gb instead of 3.

This is an old ultra low end chip unfortunately.

Install linux on it would be my suggestion. I have a couple old machines like this that are running it and for the old stuff it works better than windows.

You would have to change the RAM. RAM has been and always will be the single most important part of an AMD rig.

I'm not going to put a ton more effort into this rig but I really don't see how this thing can barely surf the web. Fundamentally, something is wrong here and i fail to see how it's a hardware issue.
 
I'm not going to put a ton more effort into this rig but I really don't see how this thing can barely surf the web. Fundamentally, something is wrong here and i fail to see how it's a hardware issue.
The hardware issue is the age of the platform. If you want it to work like it used to, you would have to install win 7, or an older version of win 10 I would suppose.
 
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I'm not going to put a ton more effort into this rig but I really don't see how this thing can barely surf the web. Fundamentally, something is wrong here and i fail to see how it's a hardware issue.
Well, first of all, bulldozer wasn't optimized for until end of XP, maybe around vista/7, around the end of the bulldozer lifecycle, and it needed them sorely. Second, I'm not sure they kept those optimizations after 8, because zen was a completely different animal. Finally, even with optimizations, memory configuration played a huge role in perf for certain workloads.

Keep in mind that for 8xxx series desktop processors, the memory bandwidth was largely a non-issue, because people with those processors usually paired with good ram and video cards, and ran at high gaming resolutions where that wasn't as apparent. But when you are bandwidth and core restrained, it is VERY apparent.
 
All i am saying is mine is on windows 10, and does everything you think yours should. They only difference is RAM.
 
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I just looked at this thread but I would have too say it has too be a bias or ram issue. I am still running an A10-7860K FM2+ in my htpc as it will stream movies over the internet, watch Bluray movies, or stream Steam games from my gaming computer with no problem.
 
I have a backup laptop with an i5-5200, 8 gig of RAM and a 512 gig SSD and it runs Win 10 just fine. In most use cases it's not much different from a current laptop with an NVME in it, apart from boot times. It's not the hardware unless the hardware is configured incorrectly, bad drivers, that sort of thing. i5-5200 is 2 cores, 4 threads, 2.2 GHz/2.7GHz boost.

If anything, OP's rig should run it as well if not better, with more true cores, more ram, and triple-channel memory, than a lot of cheaper hardware from the same era.

404, have you tried stress-testing it? Maybe you've got some bad RAM or something.
 
i5-5200 is 2 cores, 4 threads, 2.2 GHz/2.7GHz boost.

If anything, OP's rig should run it as well if not better, with more true cores, more ram, and triple-channel memory, than a lot of cheaper hardware from the same era.
They're bulldozer cores, two cores share an FPU, so anything which uses the FPUs will act like it's on a duel core processor. If multiple threads are running, and the FPUs are busy, then even with a free core it will have to wait on the FPU if it needs it. Also, there's no such thing as triple channel on amd fm2 platform. it's duel channel (maybe) with an extra dimm on one of the channels.

For other tasks, sure.
 
https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/7th-gen-a10-9700e-apu

Three memory channels for 12 gigs of RAM. That's what I thought, too, but I looked it up, assuming he was running asymmetrical memory. It's not FM2, it's AM4. I can't find much about the motherboard in that unit, though.

Apart from that, sharing the FPU is similar to the I5-5200, which is dual-core with SMT. So it really shouldn't be a bottleneck, not for browsing and watching videos.
 
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https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/7th-gen-a10-9700e-apu

Three memory channels for 12 gigs of RAM. That's what I thought, too, but I looked it up, assuming he was running asymmetrical memory. It's not FM2, it's AM4. I can't find much about the motherboard in that unit, though.

Apart from that, sharing the FPU is similar to the I5-5200, which is dual-core with SMT. So it really shouldn't be a bottleneck, not for browsing and watching videos.
Ah, my bad, thought for sure it was an fm2 chip. Forgot they had some am4 bulldozer apus.
 
looking back at his cpuz, he is running in duel channel mode (unless its reporting wrong), so he has a dimm hanging of the side somehow. looks like it's got a 3x (3:28) divisor on the fsb, too? dunno, not really familiar with old school OC terms.
 
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It's likely slow generic memory. You could spend more on a couple of good sticks than the machine was worth, and then the OE BIOS might not even let you change the settings properly.

OP claimed the perf was the same regardless of the extra stick, btw, but I would leave it out unless a mate could be found for it.
 
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Nice catch. I've never had an A-series AM4 setup, but 3:28 sounds wonky. I think his memory is all kinds of not configured right.
thats not it, mines at 3:54. it's just the ratio between the front side bus speed and RAM speed. i think...
 
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I have never seen an apu in tripple channel, most dont even have slots to support that. My lenovo only has 2 slots. Mine does run in dual rank dual channel ddr2666.
 
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