Conclusion
It is good that AMD is getting out there with a refresh of their Kaveri lineup. It is good that they are concentrating on getting the most performance out of these parts at the lower 65W and 45W TDPs. It is good that AMD continues to push for graphics performance, OpenCL performance, and HSA support. It is disappointing that they are still pretty far behind in pure CPU performance. It is good that AMD is finally offering lower end variants of Kaveri parts at lower prices.
There are some real positives for these products, but they are not the high-end products that most enthusiasts really look forward to. These parts fit into different markets and price ranges to address a broader range of consumers than they were able to support previously. It allows AMD to cut back on ordering 32 nm Richland parts and start replacing those with the 65/45 watt 28 nm units based on Kaveri. This should allow AMD to further seed the marketplace with HSA compliant parts, and hopefully drum up more software support for this particular feature.
The 7800 is a much needed part to complement the 7850K. It offers nearly as fast performance as the 7850K, but is only rated at 65 watts TDP. It loses performance when set to 45 watts TDP, but the drop is not nearly as extreme as one would expect. In fact, the performance drop is not all that noticeable in daily work and productivity apps. There obviously has been a lot of fine tuning to allow these APUs to burst as hard as they do, yet back off quickly enough as to not exceed its TDP limits. The $155 US price point is not bad for this part at all. It is not unlocked, so overclocking is not much of an option. I think overall it strikes a very nice balance of price, performance, and capabilities.
The 7600 as Ryan has covered it may have been the more impressive part at the initial Kaveri launch back in January. We did not test one today, but what is available today is identical to what Ryan had back then. At $101 it is a bargain. It is cut down in terms of graphics performance, but overall a still solid part with the same overall featureset as we have come to expect from Kaveri.
Finally the 7400K is one of the more enigmatic members of the group. At $77 US it is the cheapest, but still has all of the goodies such as decode/encode engines and TrueAudio. It also is unlocked so it can be overclocked by intrepid users looking for a cheap thrill. Its weakness is certainly that of only having one module active, and that module only having ½ the L2 cache enabled. Still, with these things in mind, the design could potentially be pushed quite a bit higher than people expect when overclocking. We will be testing this a little later.
AMD is still in the fight. Even though AMD and Intel hardly view each other as their primary target, they still exist in the same space together fighting for marketshare. AMD brings a lot of features to the table while Intel brings excellent power consumption and IPC. Users need to have a very good idea where they want to spend their hard earned dollars, as each competitor has advantages over the other. AMD does have an advantage in overall cost, typically because the motherboards for the FM2+ socket infrastructure are significantly cheaper than the competing Intel boards based on features.
This is a much needed release for AMD. They have addressed the massive gap in their product lineup in the sub-$155 range with newer, and HSA enabled, Kaveri parts. These products provide some real value for the money and can be a very solid product as just a standalone APU or when combined with a higher end GPU. As mentioned in my post from several weeks ago, a fully enabled AMD APU can provide some very significant advantages over the competition when run with an AMD or NVIDIA standalone GPU. The work done on these chips to address power efficiency while maintaining comparable performance should reap benefits for AMD down the line. Now we just wait until these are available as well as what AMD plans to do with the Kaveri family in the future. We only wish that we had a higher end variant that could help address the performance needs of the midrange and top end enthusiasts.
How about 24 compute cores,
How about 24 compute cores, at least 10 of those “compute cores” CPU cores, yes based or your new x86 microarchitecture, the one your top CPU boffins are cooking up, and don’t skimp on the stacked on die RAM, stack um up high like the mondo-pancake stack at Ned’s house of sweet butter & lard! Those CPU cores need to be Full, no shared execution units, or instruction decoders, with lots of IPCs.
Yup, just pop in that new x86
Yup, just pop in that new x86 architecture. (That’s not expected to be ready for another couple years.)
Let’s add more than double the CPU compute cores. (Despite the transistor count already being nearly 2.5 billion, more than doubling bringing it close to 5+ billion, which would dramatically reduce yield and in turn dramatically increase manufacturing costs.) Their new CPU uArch will be twice as space efficient, after all. (Even though they can only do 4 jaguar cores in the same space of a single Steamroller module, SURELY their new big-core x86 chips will be able to double the core count without dramatically increasing transistor count.)
To seal the deal, add in ‘on-die stacked RAM’ (which is apparently very expensive, potentially causing even more yield issues, and therefore driving costs even higher.)
Chip design is just so easy!
Just go package on package,
Just go package on package, or put the GPU die, and the CPU die on a Mezzanine module, those CPUs, and GPUs were designed with scalability in mind years ago, just bump up the core count an enable some of the resources that were fused off. Yes a big fat module, with a 1024 bit bus, to some on mezzanine module stacked Ram, All on one big fat coherent interconnect fabric. There, if the CPU is bad, well it does not have to be, throw the GPU out with the bath water, same for the GPU. Hay it cold be 10 ARMv8 ISA based custom cores, as long as the SIMD instructions were there, hell some ARMv8 custom cores like the Apple A7/A8, or the Nvidia Denver cores, wide order superscalar designs, for rendering workloads(ray Tracing) to go along with the AMD graphics, and HSA goodness. It does not have to be x86, I’m Sure AMD has some good custom ARM designs ready to go to compete with Apple, and Nvidia. Or some Power8 based product, just license a reference design from openpower/IBM and integrate it with AMD graphics, no big x86 redesign worries there, Just some on die/on module interconnect work, AMD has some IP of its own there, or just get CAPI, tweak it and rebrand it, like Nvidia did for its NvLink, lots of IP out there besides just CPU IP/ISA that can be licensed to get to market quicker. The HPC world is going to be a big user of GPU accelerators on Mezzanine Modules, to go along with the CPUs, for speeds/bandwidth that even PCI can not handle. That HPC goodness will work its way down to the consumer market, But I need more cores, at least 10(CPU cores) to go along with the GPU, that is unless hardware ray tracing circuitry comes the market in a big way, Though I have not heard any new news concerning the PowerVR wizard GPU with the hardware ray tracing, but them Rays Need tracing, and tracing Needs CPU cores, lots of cores/threads. Chip design worries, Just look at the latest Intel E chips, Just some server SKUs that did not make the top bin, just fused of and gimped down, under a layer of really sticky thermal epoxy, just fuse and use. More cores, more cores, CPU cores that is, AMD!
This is what opteron boards /
This is what opteron boards / chips are for. You can get all this stuff today, in fact, you could get a dual socket AMD board for about the same price as a mid-range i7.
I’ll take a custom ARMv8 ISA
I’ll take a custom ARMv8 ISA chip with 24 cores, and some AMD graphics, in a portable workstation form factor, 7 or more IPC custom wide order superscalar cores, and plenty of SIMD/Neon goodness, to go along with the Firepro! Now AMD get some Dedicated Ray Tracing going on your Pro Graphics SKUs, and all those cores will not be necessary! Do they have Opteron based portable workstation SKUs, at rock bottom prices, hell AMD I am waiting for your Custom ARMv8 designs, Apple has got its Cyclone, soon to be replaced with a newer chip, and Nvidia has its Denver custom cores. I do not need any reference design ARM 3 IPC cores, give me 7 IPCs and some SIMD extended instructions. Hell make a Xeon Pi competitor(pricewise at least) with 96 custom ARM cores, and wider SIMD, and other Ops for Tracing them Rays, and keep your eyes open to what Imagination is doing with the PowerVR wizard, and get some Hardware Ray Tracing going on your Pro GPUs. And for sure look into getting your GPUs intimate with some Power8, on a Mezzanine module with stacked Ram for pillows, and an 1024 bit bus tying it all together, don’t let the green team get ahead, with a Power8 hammer drop, its only a license away, just like ARM stuff.
P.S. AMD get your gaming console APUs with some beefed up GPU cores on a discrete PCI card, and start the whole home gaming/computing cluster market going, and Fill those slots with complete gaming platform/s for some real low latency gaming, and tell the motherboard CPU to kiss off and take care of some house keeping chores, screw the consoles get the Clusters! Now that’s some HSA goodness on a PCI card, and Nvidia is heading that direction too!
I was expecting to see a
I was expecting to see a Pentium or a Celeron to compare with 7400K. I think this processor is in fact the most interesting between these two. 7800 we already know more or less what it can or it can’t do.
Thanks for the review.
On its own, the current and
On its own, the current and previous gen AMD APUs are ok. Unless these perform to at least the level of a GTX650, HD 7770/90, or its R7s, you’re still better off getting a discrete graphics card for a proper, budget gaming PC.
The 7600 seems like an
The 7600 seems like an absolute, super cheap gaming powerhouse for people who play on their TV`s @ 720p or dont bother with new 3xA games @ 1080p.
Happy with the Core i7 4790K
Happy with the Core i7 4790K drawing 88 watts.
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Looks weak…my 4 year old
Looks weak…my 4 year old GPU is still better.