AMD's Kaveri APU Debuts With GCN-based Radeon Graphics

crookedvulture writes "AMD's next-generation Kaveri APU is now available, and the first reviews have hit the web. The chip combines updated Steamroller CPU cores with integrated graphics based on the latest Radeon graphics cards. It's also infused with a dedicated TrueAudio DSP, a faster memory interface, and several features that fall under AMD's Heterogeneous System Architecture for mixed-mode computing. As expected, the APU's graphics performance is excellent; even the entry level, $119 A8-6700 is capable of playing Battlefield 4 at 1080p with medium detail settings. But the powerful GPU doesn't always translate to superior performance in OpenCL-accelerated applications, where comparable Intel chips are very competitive. Intel still has an advantage in power efficiency and raw CPU performance, too. Kaveri's CPU cores are certainly an improvement over the previous generation of Richland chips, but they can't match the per-thread throughput of Intel's rival Haswell CPU. In the end, Kaveri's appeal largely rests on whether the integrated graphics are fast enough for your needs. Serious gamers are better off with discrete GPUs, but more casual players can benefit from the extra Radeon horsepower. Eventually, HSA-enabled applications may benefit, as well."

Comments

Looked into it for a friend's build

[gman003]

I'm helping a friend with a custom, low-cost gaming machine. We'd looked into using an APU, and I looked into it again today when I saw this. The gaming performance just isn't there yet. They're fine for regular desktop use, but even the top-of-the-line one can't handle gaming.

The two things that could still be useful are GPGPU, and dual graphics. Having an on-chip GPU just for compute purposes, especially with all the enhancements they've added, would be very useful if more things used GPU compute, but it just wasn't worth it for this build and this user. And they have spoken a bit of using both the integrated GPU and a discrete graphics card in tandem, similar to using two GPUs in Crossfire, but they haven't released the drivers for it, nor listed which cards will work, and the card they chose to demo it with was their bottom-end graphics card. Given all that, and that a similar CPU without the integrated graphics was about half the price, I couldn't justify getting one.

I am pretty impressed with how tightly they've integrated them, though. Much better than Intel's offerings. If they made one that had the graphics horsepower for gaming, I'd have used one.

Re:How about competition on price?

[hairyfeet]

Oh it wasn't just TFA, look above and below you and see how every single post that said anything positive about AMD was downmodded. Not just one, or two, EVERY SINGLE ONE. If that doesn't prove that the mod system is completely broken here? Then honestly I don't know what does.

But watch how quick they burn this...AMD has the "bang for the buck" sown up, nowhere can you get a quad CPU with a graphics chip capable of BF4 in the Intel camp for less than triple that, nowhere at all.

Oh and before the fanboys trot out any benchmarks? might help you to know they are as rigged as "quack.exe" was back in the day as Intel's compilers put out crippled code that it is 100% IMPOSSIBLE to disable, and guess what compiler is used by most if not all the major benchmark suites? You guessed it. Try running a real world test with programs compiled with GCC or even AMD's compiler (as AMD doesn't "return the favor" and rig their compiler, in fact they hand out the code so you can see what it does for yourself) and you'll find nearly all the tests come within less than 20% of each other and the only ones they manage to pull away to a whole 30%? The top o' the line i7. 300% price increase for less than 30% real world performance difference...sorry but the bang for the buck is still with big red.

But also fully unlocked

[Anonymous Coward]

With the amd chips you also get full virtualization, encryption, ecc ram and overclocking.