AMD Kaveri Review: A8-7600 and A10-7850K Tested
by Ian Cutress & Rahul Garg on January 14, 2014 8:00 AM ESTSocket: FM2+
The new Kaveri processors are built to use the sort-of new FM2+ socket based motherboards. These motherboards fit both FM2+ and FM2 APUs, and thus have been on the market for a good number of months already. However the boards currently on the market may require a BIOS update, and e-tailers shipping motherboards out today may still have the older not-updated revisions in stock, so it is worth confirming that the motherboard you order is updated.
AMD’s generational split on Kaveri is indicative of market pressure and AMD’s history – users like either the processor or the motherboard to be forwards or backwards compatible in terms of compliance. In this case the following table applies:
| Socket Compatibility Chart | ||
| Will Work in FM2 | Will Work in FM2+ | |
| Richland | Yes | Yes |
| Kaveri | No | Yes |
As Kaveri comes with two extra pins that are blocked off with older FM2 motherboards, they are not compatible.
For our testing today, we had sourced the ASRock FM2A88X Extreme6+ and FM2A88X-ITX+ motherboards, both of which will be the focus for review in due course.
Chipset/FCH: A55, A78, A88X
To add some confusion into the mix, AMD is using a mixture of old and new chipsets on FM2+. Kaveri will support the A55, A78 and A88X chipset based motherboards, but not the A75 chipset that was used for Llano/FM1 motherboards. Perhaps more confusing is that while the old Richland APUs will be able to be used on FM2+ with A88X, the older FM2 motherboards will not come with A88X. How about a table to make it clearer:
| Chipset Compatibility Chart | |||
|
Will Work with Llano APUs |
Will Work with Trinity & Richland APUs |
Will Work with Kaveri APUs |
|
| A55 + FM1 | Yes | No | No |
| A55 + FM2 | No | Yes | No |
| A55 + FM2+ | No | Yes | Yes |
| A75 + FM1 | Yes | No | No |
| A75 + FM2 | No | Yes | No |
| A78 + FM2+ | No | Yes | Yes |
| A85X + FM2 | No | Yes | No |
| A88X + FM2+ | No | Yes | Yes |
Though even a table doesn't make the compatibility matrix crystal-clear, it does help to make sense of what users can expect for chipset and sock compatibility. Basically, any A88X motherboard you buy will fit the Kaveri APU. For A78, we are currently under the impression that these will be FM2+ only as well, just do not get confused with older ‘AMD 780L’ Northbridge chipsets that were advertised with A78 in the motherboard name that used the AM3 socket. A55 is almost a free-for-all, with FM1 and FM2 motherboards using it.
As for the differences between the older A85X and A88X chipsets, there are only a few to speak of. Support for PCIe 3.0 is the big one, with any FM2+ and A88X motherboard and Kaveri APU taking full advantage of PCIe 3.0 in all its glory, either as an x16 slot or an x8/x8. A88X still has eight 6 Gbps ports and four USB 3.0 ports native, as well as supporting RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10. The other only upgrade to note is the move to XHCI 1.0.
| Chipset Comparison | |||||
| A55 | A75 | A78 | A85X | A88X | |
| Chipsets |
FM1 FM2 FM2+ |
FM1 FM2 |
FM2+ | FM2 | FM2+ |
| PCIe Generation | 2.0 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 3.0 |
| PCIe Lane Allocation | 1x16 | 1x16 or 2x8 | 1x16 | 1x16 or 2x8 | 1x16 or 2x8 |
| SATA 6/3 Gbps | 0 + 6 | 6 + 0 | 6 + 0 (?) | 8 + 0 | 8 + 0 |
| USB Ports (3/2/1.1) | 0 + 14 + 2 | 4 + 10 + 2 | 4 + 10 + 2 (?) | 4 + 10 + 2 | 4 + 10 + 2 |
| RAID | 0, 1, 10 | 0. 1, 5, 10 | 0. 1, 5, 10 | 0. 1, 5, 10 | 0. 1, 5, 10 |
| TDP | 7.6 W | 7.8 W | 7.8 W ? | 7.8 W | 7.8 W ? |
Unusually for AMD, little information about chipset evolution was provided through the normal channels.
What about FX CPUs, or Server CPUs?
Leaked roadmaps have not been kind to AMD’s FX range. The ‘king’ of the Vishera family of FX CPUs, the quad-module eight-thread FX-9590, looks like it will be the king of the FX line for a little while longer, as shown in this roadmap:
As you might imagine, there is no public comment from AMD about the lack of new FX CPUs with Steamroller cores coming soon.
Depending on which roadmap you look at, AMD’s server offerings are mixed. Some report that During 2014 we will see the launch of “Warsaw” CPUs featuring 12-16 Piledriver cores, and there is no current mention of high-end Steamroller based Opterons at all. The official roadmap from AMD from June shows this, including their ARM server discussion, but a recently leaked roadmap shows that Steamroller will appear in their 1P compute clusters, followed by Excavator in 2015, but Piledriver based 12-16 thread machines will stay at the top of the pile.
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Fox5 - Tuesday, January 14, 2014 - link
Where are the Iris Pro results in CLBenchmark? Where are the CPU results of CLBenchmark; is the GPU faster than Haswell's AVX2? Where's the rest of the compute benchmarks, the area that Kaveri is supposed to shine in?JDG1980 - Tuesday, January 14, 2014 - link
Incidentally, will HTPC be covered in a different review? MadVR could be a good use case for Kaveri, as it requires quite a bit of shader power but isn't that memory bandwidth intensive.beomagi - Tuesday, January 14, 2014 - link
Per charts, Why are 100W APUs slower in 1280x1024 than at higher resolutions??beomagi - Tuesday, January 14, 2014 - link
Also, 45W APUs are faster? Are the benchmarks different? The charts only mention resolution.beomagi - Tuesday, January 14, 2014 - link
Nevermind - I now see this is as a percent difference compared to the slower chip - the title said FPS and that threw me off.Ignore! :D
Dribble - Tuesday, January 14, 2014 - link
Call me cynical but it's just the same as the previous gen. If you want a small form factor extreme budget gaming box these will be pretty good. For the rest of the world if you don't care about games you'd do better going Intel, and if you do intel + a proper graphics card.As with previous gen it comes with a load of marketing slide advantages, which if previous gen are anything to go by will come to nothing - I don't see the current range of AMD machines blowing away intel machines with opencl/stream/fusion/whatever - and that was what was on the previous set of marketing slides.
I always thought their best bet was mobile - but these days that markets getting really tough now for AMD as Intel have just spent the last few years optimising power usage.
UtilityMax - Tuesday, January 14, 2014 - link
The biggest elephant in the room is that very few average people (those who don't visit this web site) care for playing games on laptops (or even desktops, considering the consoles). Once you ignore the gaming performance, the A10 APU effectively has the performance of Core i3, but at a high price. A Fry's or Best Buy "special" laptop with Core i3 can cost as low as $400 or less. But the A10 laptops cost around $500. Intel's pricing is pretty aggressive on the low end IMHO.jimjamjamie - Thursday, January 16, 2014 - link
Not just in laptops, the price/performance ratio of the dual-core Pentiums is extremely good - the Haswell-based Pentium G3220 (3GHz dual core, 3.5MB cache) is available in the UK for just over £40, which is excellent value.Nagorak - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
Yes, the issue is that the hybridization of CPU/GPU really provides no advantages. For someone actually playing games the GPU is still too weak and they'd be better off with a discrete card. For someone not playing games the quality of the integrated GPU doesn't matter.Maybe I'm wrong and there are tons of people out there playing games at ~30 FPS with low settings. I just don't see why someone who wants to play games wouldn't try to cough up an extra $100 for a discrete GPU, and if you don't play games then even Intel's older HD GPUs are fine.
mikato - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
*For someone actually playing [newer 3D intensive] games the GPU is still too weak and they'd be better off with a discrete card. Yep*For someone actually playing [older or lighter] games the GPU is good enough and you end up with a cheaper overall package without needing a discrete card.
*For someone not playing games, they will benefit big time from HSA eventually. Not there yet and depends on the software.
There are probably more people in the last two categories if you think about it. AMD isn't for us gamers right now unfortunately. And it's going to take a while for adoption for HSA to bring in the third category of people.