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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boozed - Tuesday, January 14, 2014 - link
You must be a hoot at parties.boozed - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
And I hit reply on the wrong bloody comment. My apologies...monsieurrigsby - Wednesday, January 29, 2014 - link
I'm a bit slow to the party, but talk of discrete GPUs leads me to the main question I still have that I don't see explained (possibly because the authors assume deeper understanding of CPU/GPU programming), and haven't seen discussed elsewhere. (I've not looked *that* hard...)If you have a Kaveri APU and a mid/high-end discrete GPU that won't work with Dual Graphics (if it arrives), what processing can and can't use the on-APU GPU? If we're talking games (the main scenario), what can developers offload onto the onboard GPU and what can't they? What depends on the nature of the discrete card (e.g., are modern AMD ones 'HSA enabled' in some way?)? If you *do* have a Dual Graphics capable discrete GPU, does this still limit what you can *explicitly* farm off to the onboard GPU?
My layman's guess is that GPU compute stuff can still be done but, without dual graphics, stuff to do with actual frame rendering can't. (I don't know enough about GPU programming to know how well-defined that latter bit is...)
It's just that that seems the obvious question for the gaming consumer: if I have a discrete card, in what contexts is the on-APU GPU 'wasted' and when could it be used (and how much depends on what the discrete card is)? And I guess the related point is how much effort is the latter, and so how likely are we to see elements of it?
Am I missing something that's clear?
monsieurrigsby - Wednesday, January 29, 2014 - link
Plus detail on Mantle seems to suggest that this might provide more control in this area? But are there certain types of things which would be *dependent* on Mantle?http://hothardware.com/News/How-AMDs-Mantle-Will-R...
nissangtr786 - Tuesday, January 14, 2014 - link
I told amd fanboys the fpu on intel and the raw mflops mips ofintel cpu destroy current a10 apus, its no real suprise all those improvement show very little in benchmarks with kaveri steamroller cores. amd fanboys said it will reach i5 2500k performance, I said i3 4130 but overall i3 4130 will be faster in raw performance and I am right. I personally have an i5 4430 and it looks like i5's still destroy these a10 apu in raw performance.http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/326781
browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/321256
a10-7850k Sharpen Filter Multi-core 5846 4.33 Gflops
browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/321256
i5 4430 Sharpen Filter Multi-core 11421 8.46 Gflops
gngl - Tuesday, January 14, 2014 - link
"I personally have an i5 4430 and it looks like i5's still destroy these a10 apu in raw performance."You seem to have a very peculiar notion of what "raw performance" means, if you're measuring it in terms of what one specific benchmark does with one specific part of the chip. There's nothing raw about a particular piece of code executing a specific real-world benchmark using a particular sequence of instructions.
chrnochime - Tuesday, January 14, 2014 - link
Who cares what CPU you have anyway. If you want to show off, tell us you have at least a 4670k and not a 4430. LOLkeveazy - Tuesday, January 14, 2014 - link
It's relevant that he used the i5 4430 in his comment. Compare the price range and you'll see. These AMD apu's are useless unless your just looking to build a PC that's not meant to handle heavily threaded tasks.tcube - Thursday, January 16, 2014 - link
Ok... heavily threaded tasks ok... examples! Give me one example of one software 90% of pc users use 90% of the time that this apu can't handle... then and ONLY then is the cpu relevant! Other then that it's just bragging rights and microseconds nobody cares about on a PC!Instead we do care to have a chip that plays anything from hd video to AAA 3d games and also is fast enough for anything else and don't need a gpu for extra cost, power usage heat and noise! And that ain't any intel that fits on a budget!
keveazy - Saturday, January 18, 2014 - link
I'll give you 1 example. Battlefield 4.