Kaveri Strikes - AMD's Latest APU
AMD has been at the APU game for 4 generations now. Ceding to Intel in the general computing arena, deciding that performance is 'good enough', AMD has focused it's efforts on pure gaming performance from a single chip. Each generation has always shown promise but has always ended with the same conclusion: wait for the next generation, for now buy a regular CPU and a separate GPU. The APU's have really had the best use in a HTPC, enabling decent media encoding/decoding, great gaming performance, and 'good enough' general processing, all in a relatively low power envelope at a decent price. I don't do marketing research so I couldn't really say this is where the majority of the sales go, but it's the best market for these.
Most of the advancements come in the technology. Kaveri finally allows
the GPU and CPU to share memory resources, similar to the way the new
consoles do. The GPU itself features AMD's new GCN architecture, exactly
the same as on the new Hawaii GPU's (R9 290 and 290X) albeit on a much
smaller scale. This new generation makes the same promises as before, great gaming performance, decent general compute performance, all on one chip. Well the results are in and this time around, it's pretty much still the same thing. General performance is up a tad bit. Gaming performance has made a decent increase especially at lower power levels.
This is exactly why the APU is a misunderstood creature. Looking at it from a pure benchmark perspective it's easy to dismiss. It's not a powerhouse on any front really, not even graphically when compared to discrete GPUs. However to look at it solely from the point of view of pushing benchmarks forward is to dismiss what the APU really accomplishes. Sure the benchmarks for general performance aren't great when put next to Intel's latest offerings, but for the intended audience the performance truly is 'good enough'. Chances are most people buying this aren't going to care that an iTunes encode finishes 20-30 seconds faster on an Intel chip. If this hits the intended audience the focus is going to be on getting the best gaming performance out of the lowest power draw, at the best price, all in one chip.
This is where the APU excels, the gaming. It's already pretty much a given that a discrete card even a lower end card, will best any integrated solution and that's not really what AMD is going after any ways. However when compared to other integrated solutions Kaveri comes out on top. As benchmarks show The 7850K is consistently towards the top, followed closely by the previous generation 6800K and the lesser 7600K. Now at first glance it may look like Intel with the Iris Pro is actually the performance winner. In some cases it actually is especially at lower settings and lower resolutions, however the Iris Pro is not really a desktop part, not really a consumer part, and hard to find builds utilizing it. Not to mention the price puts it well out of even the A10-7850K's field. The lowest price processor using the Iris Pro costs $380, over twice the price. Priced lower and more widely available and it may have been a threat, but currently they're in two different markets.
Another improvement for Kaveri is in the power usage. The A10-7850K has a TDP of 95W and generally uses less than 80W, pretty decent when you consider it's two computer components on one chip. The lower end A8-7600 even features a configurable TDP of either 65W or just 45W. That's impressive since even at 45W it offers roughly the same performance as the A10-6800K a 100W part. Hopefully AMD can continue to shrink the APU's power usage.
So is the new A10 and A8 7000 series worth picking up? Not exactly, just like previous generations the conclusion is the same. Just wait for the next generation or at least a refresh. Kaveri's biggest downfall is the price. The previous generations saw a small price increase for each, but the A10-7850K is about $50 more than the A10-6800K, when targeting this segment that's a pretty huge increase. That money could easily be spent on other parts. Hopefully the next bout will feature more GPU cores (896-1024 would be a decent amount) and a faster CPU core or at least hopefully a lower price. That said it still stands alone in it's price range. There's really no other option when looking to build a HTPC that can still game. No other CPU offers what it does in one package.
