Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
It's 1:2 AMD:Intel, at the kindest level.
It's 2:3 with radeons:nvidia.
Most people, when they say "capable of playing", mean that it can actually be played on those settings, i.e. that the frame rate is high enough for the game to be considered playable. Generally, this means an average frame rate of ~30 and minimums of 20 or more (although that depends a bit on the reviewer, some people consider a frame rate of 30 totally unplayable, personally anything above 20 can still be played).
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Most of the people who decide they still need a full-sized desktop computer will be completely covered with one of the AMD A-series APUs, at a bargain price. Only the remaining 1 out of 5 users are power-users who need the highest CPU and/or GPU performance, and have to resort to expensive Intel CPUs and discrete graphics boards.
Ohh yes. Lets solder memory right on, increasing board complexity and gaining almost no advantage. The APU is meant to be a mixture of a "good enough" GPU, and a higher performance compute-unit for low memory problems, which there are a lot of. As for open source, AMD is actively committing work to the Linux kernel in both the mantle framework and better driver support. They are also working with Steam, because the SteamOS is Linux which means AMD needs decent Linux drivers if they plan to be used.
Yes, it is not a very good GPU when it comes to high end graphics because it has about 1/3rd the flops of a discreet GPU and it is memory bandwidth starved for those work loads, but for non graphics related work loads, it's perfect. It is the first of something new. How many people piss and moaned about FPUs when they came out? "derp, there's no software that uses them, so they must be useless". You need to have the platform before you can have the developers. Once the next gen consoles start taking off, expect games to be nearly directly ported and taking advantage of this new GPU paradigm.
The summary also spends a lot of time talking about how great Intel is. It makes sense that prices are not discussed because the submitter appears to be heavily biased, and price always favors AMD.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
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.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
As a long time AMD fan (if we whitebox build, it's always an AMD chip), I have to say "it depends".
For a lot of applications, per-core performance is what matters. And for the last few years, Intel beats AMD hands-down on per-core performance. As in 30-50% faster. That i3 for $200 is going to run rings around the AMD for $200. For a lot of single-threaded programs (many games are CPU-bound by a single thread), that 30-50% faster speed matters.
However, if your application is multi-threaded and the problem you are trying to solve (media transcoding) is easily done in parallel, then the AMD chips are a better fit.
The "Bulldozer" architecture was a dud. Lots of cores for cheap, but low performance per core under a lot of workloads. The Piledriver architecture is better and AMD is at least somewhat competitive again.
I'm very curious to see how well the new Steamroller (Kaveri) series chips perform.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?