AMD Confirms Kaveri APU Is a 512-GPU Core Integrated Processor 130
MojoKid writes "At APU13 today, AMD announced a full suite of new products and development tools as part of its push to improve HSA development. One of the most significant announcements to come out the sessions today-- albeit in a tacit, indirect fashion, is that Kaveri is going to pack a full 512 GPU cores. There's not much new to see on the CPU side of things — like Richland/Trinity, Steamroller is a pair of CPU modules with two cores per module. AMD also isn't talking about clock speeds yet, but the estimated 862 GFLOPS that the company is claiming for Kaveri points to GPU clock speeds between 700 — 800MHz. With 512 cores, Kaveri picks up a 33% boost over its predecessors, but memory bandwidth will be essential for the GPU to reach peak performance. For performance, AMD showed Kaveri up against the Intel 4770K running a low-end GeForce GT 630. In the intro scene to BF4's single-player campaign (1920x1080, Medium Details), the AMD Kaveri system (with no discrete GPU) consistently pushed frame rates in the 28-40 FPS range. The Intel system, in contrast, couldn't manage 15 FPS. Performance on that system was solidly in the 12-14 FPS range — meaning AMD is pulling 2x the frame rate, if not more."
Re:catch me up now someone? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. One part with a middle of the road CPU and a middle of the road GPU.
The one advantage I see technically to this approach is you can get data from the CPU to the GPU without having to touch a trace on the motherboard. The over all complexity of the system goes down and the CPU to GPU performance goes up.
The disadvantages are many. More heat/power dissipation on the one part means it will run hotter (not that AMD doesn't do that anyway). Makes you pay for the GPU, even if you don't use/want it. Higher latency between the memory and the GPU which is KEY to a GPU performance. I'm sure there's more..
All this aside. Bully for AMD. These are great devices for low cost systems with reasonable performance.
Full Disclosure: I have a current low end AMD/GPU based system that I really like. It was CHEAP, and performs well enough for what I do.
3.7GHz CPU + 720MHz GPU (Score:4, Informative)
Actually the clock speed for the 862GFLOPS figure is in the footnotes, see here: http://images.anandtech.com/doci/7507/amd_kaveri_specs-100068009-orig.png [anandtech.com]
So, even unintentionally, they are talking about clock speeds...
Re:Which GT630? (Score:5, Informative)
The 4770K has an Intel HD 4600, not an Iris Pro 5200. The nVidia GPU is faster than the 4600 in the CPU tested.
The only 4770 series chip to feature Iris Pro is the 4770R.
Reference: http://ark.intel.com/products/family/75023 [intel.com]
Re:catch me up now someone? (Score:5, Informative)
It also probably costs as much for the CPU and GPU as it would for the entire AMD-based system.
The highest end AMD APU you can currently build includes an A10-6800K, which is a whopping $140 for the CPU+GPU. Include the cost of RAM for the GPU so that it can be comparable with a discrete GPU setup...$22 to compensate for dedicating 2GB of DDR3 1866 to the GPU...
$140 + $22 = $166.
His GTX 660 is $190. His i7 is no less than $290 based on todays newegg prices.
$190 + $290 = $480
So he is $314 in the hole. Clearly he doesnt want to talk about semantics such as cost.
Re:catch me up now someone? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually this is a bigger deal than you think. I remember when you had to pay extra to get a floating point processor. Most software worked really hard to use integers when ever they could since they could not depend on an FPU being in most systems.
By having a GPU as part of the CPU more software will start to use GPU computing to speed up things like transcoding and even spreadsheets http://slashdot.org/story/13/07/03/165252/libreoffice-calc-set-to-get-gpu-powered-boost-from-amd [slashdot.org].
We all know that GPUs can speed up a lot of operations but developers don't want to put in the work because not everyone has them.