AMD A10 "Kaveri" APU Pictured, Battlefield 4 Bundles Planned

[btarunr]

What better way to market the graphics processing prowess of your processor than bundling one of the most GPU-intensive games of the season with it? AMD is reportedly planning "Battlefield 4 Edition" packages of its A10 "Kaveri" APUs, which at slightly higher premiums than normal PIB packages, would give you Origin keys to Battlefield 4, much like a similar scheme with AMD's Radeon R9 290 series.

Such Battlefield 4 SKUs could involve at least two APU models, the A10-7850K, and A10-7700K. The two may meet the minimum system requirements of the game at resolutions of up to HD+ (1600 x 900 pixels). Speaking of A10-7850K, Japanese publication "Hermitage Akihabara" snapped a handful pictures and screenshots of the the chip. The first one below reveals the APU package, the following reveal the CPU-Z and GPU-Z screenshots, trailed by a quick run of Cinebench R15. AMD is expected to launch its "Kaveri" line of socket FM2+ APUs on January 13-14 globally.




View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Solaris17]

Im a little out of the loop can A10 series chips really handle demanding games?

 

[Esse]

Im a little out of the loop can A10 series chips really handle demanding games?

They're using the newest Steamroller CPU and Radeon GCN cores from the R7 series and are capable of running BF4 at a usable rate of 25-35FPS.

Why they'd supply BF4 with this I don't know.

 

[mastrdrver]

Im a little out of the loop can A10 series chips really handle demanding games?

Granted it's only the single player, but still good none the less.

 

[happita]

Not a great move IMO. If AMD was trying to tout it's new APU as being able to run BF4, people who don't know any better will expect it to run "good". AMD should've put a little more umph into it's graphics portion of the APU in order to make it more appealing at a smaller price bump which I'm sure some people wouldn't mind paying.

 

[NC37]

Not a great move IMO. If AMD was trying to tout it's new APU as being able to run BF4, people who don't know any better will expect it to run "good". AMD should've put a little more umph into it's graphics portion of the APU in order to make it more appealing at a smaller price bump which I'm sure some people wouldn't mind paying.

Oh they did, head on down to your local games retailer and pick on up a PS4. Thats where you'll find an APU with umph.

Course remember those run with pretty weak CPU cores.

 

[happita]

Oh they did, head on down to your local games retailer and pick on up a PS4. Thats where you'll find an APU with umph.

Course remember those run with pretty weak CPU cores.

It doesn't matter, the APUs in consoles have more umph because the entire system is "fixed", so developers make games based around those system specs alone. That makes a big difference on how games are coded to run. PCs on the other hand are entirely expandable, so the variance of having to make a game for such a system like that is hard to judge, seeing as companies want their games to run on as many different configurations as possible. They don't have to worry about that with the console's innards.

I'm not saying that the new Kaveri APUs that are going to come out aren't sufficient for the majority of people, I'm just saying that it isn't sufficient for the enthusiast (for heavy dx11-based games like BF4).

 

[Big_Vulture]

Not a great move IMO. If AMD was trying to tout it's new APU as being able to run BF4, people who don't know any better will expect it to run "good". AMD should've put a little more umph into it's graphics portion of the APU in order to make it more appealing at a smaller price bump which I'm sure some people wouldn't mind paying.

Haven't you heard Kaveri APU support Mantle and by than BF4 is also patched with Mantle? It will run BF4 around 60FPS 1600X everything on High.

 

[happita]

Haven't you heard Kaveri APU support Mantle and by than BF4 is also patched with Mantle? It will run BF4 around 60FPS 1600X everything on High.

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/t...e-amd-summit-2013.194485/page-11#post-3040527

Read the last few posts here. AMD continuously delays these big announcements with good reason, either they haven't gotten Mantle up to snuff yet, or they have ran into more problems than they can solve. In either case, I'm not holding my breath and I suggest no one else does either. If Mantle delivers what is promised, then I would think it would hurt AMD graphics sales just a little on the high-end segments. Think about it, if Mantle can give me a 300-400% increase in FPS, then why pay AMD $500+ to get a R9 290 when I can just get a simple 270 or 270X and save myself a good chunk?
Don't get me wrong, I like AMD's products, it's just that they suck on deliverance.

Bottom line: I'll believe it when I see it.

 

[bencrutz]

I'm just saying that it isn't sufficient for the enthusiast (for heavy dx11-based games like BF4).

well, that's what R9s are for

 

[slate_dk]

if Mantle can give me a 300-400% increase in FPS...

Regarding the 300-400% increase; that is a micro benchmark of a specific function. When it come to FPS everybody talks about 15% increase.

And what Dice and Oxide tried to tell you is that Mantle gives them the level of access to the hardware as they have on console.

 

[NeoXF]

Yeah, the screenshots are bullshit. Enough with the fake crap already!

 

[WhiteLotus]

APUs aren't made for the enthusiasts. I can easily see APUs being put into small HTPC computers in every office and school computer in the world. You don't need enthusiast chips to use MS Office and Facebook. AMD have seen that and are adjusting their plan accordingly. If they make these small enough, cool enough, and quiet enough then perfect.

 

[NeoXF]

APUs aren't made for the enthusiasts

Okay, I'm gonna stop your right there and call for bullshit, on the grounds that you don't know what you're talking about.

AMD doesn't have many reasons or resources to invest in high-end APUs at the moment, but other than that, APUs, the concept itself, means a paradigm shift in CPU computing, hence one on any consumer level. I guess people find it hard to understand the concept of booting up their OS on the GPU... or calculating their spreedsheets... or layers of images... or movie rendering...

 

[happita]

Okay, I'm gonna stop your right there and call for bullshit, on the grounds that you don't know what you're talking about.

AMD doesn't have many reasons or resources to invest in high-end APUs at the moment, but other than that, APUs, the concept itself, means a paradigm shift in CPU computing, hence one on any consumer level. I guess people find it hard to understand the concept of booting up their OS on the GPU... or calculating their spreedsheets... or layers of images... or movie rendering...

What are you talking about bullshit? APUs are NOT for enthusiasts, period. You don't see All-In-One (monitor+pc in one) setups being touted as enthusiast platforms; stock cars are not enthusiast until you modify just about everything under the hood to make it top-notch ready for racing or for whatever reason; I can go on all day w/ examples, but I won't.

The point is that APUs are designed with simplicity in mind. Simplicity mixed with a bit of power, enough to do most tasks and then some (light gaming). Yes it addresses the paradigm shift in CPU computing, but it doesn't mean that there's going to be a high-end APU capable of playing BF4 w/ all settings maxed and high resolution, at least not anytime soon. Every product has it's place. If you convince yourself otherwise, then your just lying to yourself.

 

[Lionheart]

Okay, I'm gonna stop your right there and call for bullshit, on the grounds that you don't know what you're talking about.

WhiteLotus comment made perfect sense to me... Wtf are you talking about?

 

[WhiteLotus]

Okay, I'm gonna stop your right there and call for bullshit, on the grounds that you don't know what you're talking about.

AMD doesn't have many reasons or resources to invest in high-end APUs at the moment, but other than that, APUs, the concept itself, means a paradigm shift in CPU computing, hence one on any consumer level. I guess people find it hard to understand the concept of booting up their OS on the GPU... or calculating their spreedsheets... or layers of images... or movie rendering...

So you're telling me that enthusiast high end PC users can over clock an APU to out perform the current record holder at calculating Super Pi, or get it to run all games maxed out at super high resolution?!

Why didn't anybody tell me!?!

APUs are not for high end PCs. Low and mid range, and they are doing a good job of it too.

 

[Crap Daddy]

APUs are great to play DOTA. For every AAA game out there including BF4 there are other far better options. Seems odd to associate BF4 with a high end gpu and also with a budget CPU/iGPU

 

[sergionography]

So you mean to tell me kaveri gets beat by a 1.7ghz ivy bridge I3 in single thread? That's not right, even Richland did better than that

 

[iKhan]

I was impressed...until I realized the i5-3317U is an Ivy Bridge processor for notebooks.

 

[JDG1980]

I think that screenshot is BS. No improvement at all in single-thread performance? No improvement in multi-thread scaling, despite the independent decoders for each core?

There's no way AMD could have dropped the ball this badly. Sure, Bulldozer was a disappointment, but that was a completely new architecture with growing pains. This is a third-generation part; if it can't even keep up with the previous generation then why would they even bother?

 

[newtekie1]

Not a great move IMO. If AMD was trying to tout it's new APU as being able to run BF4, people who don't know any better will expect it to run "good". AMD should've put a little more umph into it's graphics portion of the APU in order to make it more appealing at a smaller price bump which I'm sure some people wouldn't mind paying.

They've upped the shader count from 384 to 512, I'd say that is a pretty decent bump in umph.

That being said, even my 6800K can play BF4 at 720p, which is damn good for integrated graphics.

I think that screenshot is BS. No improvement at all in single-thread performance? No improvement in multi-thread scaling, despite the independent decoders for each core?

There's no way AMD could have dropped the ball this badly. Sure, Bulldozer was a disappointment, but that was a completely new architecture with growing pains. This is a third-generation part; if it can't even keep up with the previous generation then why would they even bother?

Look closely, he has the benchmark set to show single core performance. The fact that a single Kaveri core at 3.7GHz is scoring right about half of a single Haswell core at 4.4GHz is a pretty decent improvement.

So you mean to tell me kaveri gets beat by a 1.7ghz ivy bridge I3 in single thread? That's not right, even Richland did better than that

Not really, Richland in single threaded performance was way behind IvyBridge. Intel's single threaded performance is huge compared to AMD's, which makes since considering Intel designs one core to do the work of two. So when that core is one core is only challenged with one work load it is super fast.

 

[Popocatepetl]

Judging by the screenshot I understand that this chip is limited to 20x max. multiplier for some reason (which means 2 GHz CPU speed) ... how comes ? This seems awfully low for the flagship desktop APU whose predecessors ran closer to (or above) 4 GHz than 3 GHz.

 

[newtekie1]

Judging by the screenshot I understand that this chip is limited to 20x max. multiplier for some reason (which means 2 GHz CPU speed) ... how comes ? This seems awfully low for the flagship desktop APU whose predecessors ran closer to (or above) 4 GHz than 3 GHz.

I think CPU-Z is reading it wrong. The 7850K is supposed to run at 3.7GHz base/4.0GHz Boost. Cinebench seems to have picked up the proper clock speed.

 

[msx68k]

They've upped the shader count from 384 to 512, I'd say that is a pretty decent bump in umph.

That being said, even my 6800K can play BF4 at 720p, which is damn good for integrated graphics.



Look closely, he has the benchmark set to show single core performance. The fact that a single Kaveri core at 3.6GHz is scoring right about half of a single Haswell core at 4.4GHz is a pretty decent improvement.

Look at the 2nd image. The APU was running @848 MHZ.