AMD Launches Mobile Kaveri APUs
by Jarred Walton on June 4, 2014 12:01 AM ESTAMD Kaveri FX-7600P GPU Performance Preview
Given the 3DMark results we just showed as well as the increase in CPU performance, I was very interested to see what Kaveri could do in terms of gaming performance. Here I have to temper my comments somewhat by simply noting that the graphics drivers on the prototype laptops did not appear to be fully optimized. One game in particular that I tested (Batman: Arkham Origins) seemed to struggle more than I expected, and there are other games (Metro: Last Light and Company of Heroes 2) that will bring anything short of a mainstream dGPU to its knees. I've posted the Kaveri Mainstream and Enthusiast scores in Mobile Bench, but they're not particularly useful as most of the scores are below 30 FPS. Here, I'll focus on our "Value" settings, which are actually still quite nice looking (Medium detail in most games).
As expected, in most of the tests the Kaveri APU is able to surpass the gaming performance of every other iGPU, and in some cases it even comes moderately close to a discrete mainstream dGPU. There's a sizeable gap between the Trinity/Richland APUs and Kaveri in most of the games I tested, which is great news for those looking for a laptop that won't break the bank but can still run most modern games.
Getting into the particulars, Skyrim seems to be hitting some bottleneck (possibly CPU, though even then I'd expect Kaveri to be faster than Richland), but the vast majority of games should run at more than 30 FPS. There was one system with a pre-release Mantle driver installed that was running Battlefield 4 reasonably well at low/medium details, and with shipping laptops and drivers (and perhaps DDR3-2133 RAM) I suspect even Metro might get close to 30 FPS. Of course, we're only looking at the top performance FX-7600P here, so we'll have to see what the various 19W APUs are able to manage in similar tests.
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Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, June 4, 2014 - link
i7-4550u has a tray price of $426. It would be interesting to see that comparison, but what is the point ultimately? Also, they probably couldnt get their hands on one.TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, June 4, 2014 - link
While Kaveri seems like a good chip, it has two problems. It's cpu performance is still very poor compared to intel, and it is coming to mobile WAY too close to broadwell, which will probably be slightly faster, if intel bragging of 40% graphic improvement is correct. on top of that, anandtech, please compare the kaveri to 37 watt i5s. that's the real competition for this chip. leave the 19 watt to duke it out with the 15 watt chips.WorldMadness - Wednesday, June 4, 2014 - link
You can look at tomshardware They reviewed FX7600 vs i7-4702 except the cpu performance everything else is not to shabby, decent enough but still not to my expectation as we know except MSI every single vendor would come out with shitty specsilverblue - Thursday, June 5, 2014 - link
Yet there's still the unexplained matter as to why the last two generations of GX70s performed so badly...mga318 - Wednesday, June 4, 2014 - link
Considering that the Kaveri FX has a 35W TDP part while the i7U+GT750M has 67W TDP, I'm quite impressed. This could have a lot of promise if OEMs would stop ruining everythingHappyHubris - Wednesday, June 4, 2014 - link
"For people that truly need compute performance, I suspect they're looking at much higher performance parts than an API"API=APU?
Tikcus9666 - Wednesday, June 4, 2014 - link
What i want is an AMD FX-7600P, in a 14/15" thin and light enclosure with Full HD screen8GB DDR 3 @ 2133 MHZ, 128GB/256GB SSD, i'd buy straight away, unfortunately what we will see is, a bulkier 15.6 " screen at 1366*768, 4GB of DDr 3 @ 13333MHz, and a 5400 rpm hard drive, and a GPU added in crossfire or on it's own which is only slightly more powerful than the APU
Tikcus9666 - Wednesday, June 4, 2014 - link
1333 Mhz (not being able to alter comments)Roland00Address - Wednesday, June 4, 2014 - link
I hate dsylexia, my first time I read the first page I read AMD MOBILE KAVERI SKUS, as AMD MOBILE KAVERI SUCKS.kyuu - Wednesday, June 4, 2014 - link
I did the same thing, and I don't even have dyslexia. I had to do a double-take and look at it carefully before realizing it was SKUS and not SUCKS.