AMD Radeon HD 7340 vs AMD Radeon R5 (Bristol Ridge)

AMD Radeon HD 7340

The AMD Radeon HD 7340 (or perhaps also called ATI Mobility Radeon HD 7340) is an integrated graphics card in the 2nd generation Zacate netbook processor. It is based on the same graphics core as the Radeon HD 6320, but the base clock and the turbo boost is somewhat higher. Furthermore, it features the UVD3 video processor.

The 3D performance of the HD 7340 is about 10 percent faster than the HD 6320. Gaming performance are therefore similar to a Nvidia ION or Intel HD Graphics graphics card. In our tests the HD 6320 was only able to run low end games like Fifa 11, Sims 3 and Star Craft 2 single player in lowest detail settings fluently. More demanding games like Risen or Call of Duty series were not playable.

The UVD3 video decoder allows the decoding of HD videos using the graphics card. It allows the parallel decoding of two MPEG2, H.264 and VC-1 streams and therefore compatible to BD-Live. Furthermore, the new UVD3 also supports DivX, Xvid and MPEG4 Part 2 decoding. Blu-Ray 3D via MCV (Multiview Video Coding) is theoretically supported by the UVD3 but wasn't available in the first laptops and platforms (no hardware accelleration and no HDMI 1.4 output).

AMD Radeon R5 (Bristol Ridge)

The AMD Radeon R5 (Bristol Ridge) is an integrated graphics card for a number of mid-range mobile Bristol-Ridge-based APUs, such as those from the A10 series. It features 384 shader cores clocked at 720 MHz (15 Watt APUs) or 800 MHz (35 Watt APUs). Depending on the configurable TDP (set per laptop model) and the used main memory, the performance can also differ.

Architecture and Features

The Radeon R5 utilizes the third generation GCN architecture (sometimes referred to as GCN 1.2) similar to the desktop Tonga chip. As a result, it supports DirectX 12 (FL 12_0) with advanced color compression that leads to a 5-7% improvement in games. Furthermore, its shaders can be used with Mantle, OpenGL and OpenCL. HSA 1.0 is supported for running code on both CPU and GPU cores simultaneously. The improved video decoder UVD 6 (Unified Video Decoder) is now able to decode HVEC / H.265 up to 4K in hardware. Furthermore, the VCE (Video Codec Engine) has been improved for faster transcoding of H.264. More information on architecture and features of the Bristol Ridge architecture can be found in our launch article.

Performance

Gaming performance of the integrated R5 GPU depends on the configured TDP, model and main memory of the system. A typical ULV version with a TDP of 15 Watt paired with fast dual channel main memory is nearly on a level with the dedicated GeForce 920M or Radeon R7 M260 (see gaming benchmarks below). Therefore, demanding games of 2015 and 2016 may only run in the lowest detail settings fluently (and some not at all).

Power Consumption

Depending on the configured TDP, the still in 28 nm produced chip may be used in thin-and-light (12 - 20 Watt range) to standard-sized laptops (35 Watt TDP).