A few months back, we looked at the Berlin APU which is the same APU as Kaveri built for the server market. From the Berlin
APU specifications, we came to know that the next generation APUs may
feature upto 512 Stream processors which is the same number we get on
the discrete Radeon HD 7750. A recent founding by Planet3DNow
reveals that the top Kaveri APU parts won’t be restricted to only 512
Stream processors and can feature upto 832 Stream processors.
The memory bandwidth is much lower compared to the discrete solutions
since the GPU makes use of 128-bit DDR3 memory while the discrete GPUs
use 128-bit GDDR5. This means that higher frequency DDR3 memory just
might come in handy with Kaveri APUs to unleash the full potential of
the graphics core. The memory itself used with the Kaveri APU was
DDR3-1600 MHz while consumers have access to upto 3000 MHz DDR3 ram from
lots of manufacturer’s. Following are a few results of Kaveri APU’s
graphics die compared with Trinity and Richland though the configuration
for each APU varies due to use of different memory modules. Also, i
forgot to point out earlier that the Kaveri APU graphics core is clocked
at 600 MHz, we don’t know whether or not the GPU features boost clock:
GP Processing:
- AMD Kaveri APU R5 M200 @600 MHz (DDR3-1600) – 709.6 MPix/s
- AMD Richland APU HD 8670D @844 MHz (DDR3-2133) – 239.3 MPix/s
Memory Bandwidth:
- AMD Kaveri APU R5 M200 @600 MHz (DDR3-1600) – 15.0 GB/s
- AMD Richland APU HD 8670D @844 MHz (DDR3-2133) – 12.4 GB/s
GP Cryptography:
- AMD Kaveri APU R5 M200 @600 MHz (DDR3-1600) – 9.4 GB/s
- AMD Richland APU HD 8670D @844 MHz (DDR3-2133) – 3.8 GB/s
If Kaveri APU for desktop do come with a high stream processor count,
than that would mean that consumers would be able to easily rejoice
superior gaming performance on a low price platform such as the FM2+
itself. Expect AMD’s Kaveri launch by the end of this year, FM2+ socket based motherboard for the new APUs including older Richland and Trinity based APUs can already be found on a few large retailers.
