14 DAY TRIAL // AMD may have launched the desktop Kaveri accelerated processing units months ago, but the versions of the chips meant for laptops were kept in reserve. Now, those, too, have been unleashed, at Computex 2014.
Computex is the trade show currently taking place in Taipei, Taiwan. It will last until June 7, making it a four-day event since it began on June 3.
Most of the big names in the IT industry are there, showing off their newest stuff, while those that aren't have made an announcement, however minor, from their headquarters.
Intel and Advanced Micro Devices are, naturally, in the former category, having both revealed a new, high-profile product collection.
Intel launched the unlocked, overclockable Devil's Canyon central processing units, the best in the Haswell refresh series.
Now, AMD is watching the waves made by the mobile Kaveri lineup of Accelerated Processing Units, both A-Series and FX-branded.
The reason the chips are described as having 12 Compute Cores is because, in addition to the four CPU x86-60x cores, they have eight GPU compute modules.
It's the latest and most refined version of HSA, you see (Heterogeneous System Architecture), and quickly divides the right tasks between the CPU and GPU.
Speaking of the GPUs, they are based on AMD's now well-known Graphics Core Next Architecture, so that games designed on the Mantle API may run better than DirectX ever could (not that there aren't people who contest this).
Mantle isn't some sort of miracle, exactly, but it does simplify programming optimizations and allows for marked increases in game performance (up to 45% in Battlefield 4, depending on your driver).
Then, there's the Dual Graphics technology, which allows the integrated GPU and, if present, a discrete AMD Radeon GPU to merge their resources. It's most useful on weaker discrete cards, where performance can go up by 49% to 108%.
AMD Quick Stream, AMD Steady Video and AMD TrueAudio technologies round up the feature set quite nicely, we'd say.
Finally, there can never be a product release on the part of AMD without some sort of comparison to Intel products, just like there can't be an Intel chip release without the opposite.
According to AMD, the A10-Series APU has up to 50% better graphics and 1.2x better compute performance compared to Intel i5-4200U ("Haswell"). Not really the newest chip it could have pitted against it, but needs must.
FX APUs, meanwhile, are up to 58% better at graphics and 1.13 times better than i7-4500U ("Haswell").
As for AMD's own older chips, the FX ones have 40% more graphics performance-per-watt and 30% more system computer-per-watt versus previous-generation mobile APUs. You can see a table of specifications in the chart below.
