14 DAY TRIAL // When Intel or AMD launches a new processor, people kind of expect it to be better than all the ones that came before. AMD has lived up to that expectation with the Kaveri, and then some.
In fact, Advanced Micro Devices was quite insistent on this point: the Kaveri is the best APU they ever made, and the true realization of the so-called “Fusion project” they began when they bought GPU expert ATI back in 2006 (thus taking on the rivalry with NVIDIA as well, on the video front).
All previous generations of APUs, including Llano, Trinity and Richland, have been leading up to this, the 12-core Kaveri.
First off, let us make it clear that Kaveri isn't a 12-core processor, and AMD has no intention of ever marketing it as such.
Instead, it has four x86 CPU cores and eight GCN (Graphics Core Next) graphics modules. In fact, the GPU cores take up around 45-47% of the entire die.
Well, that goes for the A10-7850K anyway. There are two others: the A10-7700K and A8-7600, both of which have “only” six GPU cores, making the total 10.
The rest of the die is divided between the two Steamroller CPU core modules, the PCI Express 3.0 controller and the DDR3 memory controller.
We will take a look at the technical specifications of the chips for now, and explore the other HSA assets separately, namely hUMA benefits (Heterogeneous Uniform Memory Access), dual graphics (APU + add-in board collaboration), configurable TDP, Fluid Motion Video technology, and test performance results.
The 12-core (12 (4 CPU + 8 GPU) A10-7850K has 4 MB l2 cache, a base CPU clock of 3.7 GHz, a Turbo Core maximum of 4 GHz, and a GPU frequency of 720 MHz (Radeon R7).
The 10-core (4 CPU + 6 GPU) A10-7700K is similar to the one above, but works at 3.4 / 3.8 GHz.
Finally, the other 10-core chip, A8-7600, is a 3.3 / 3.8 GHz unit otherwise identical to the A10-7700K, but with optimized configurable TDP technology (as we said, more on that later).
The Kaveri accelerated processing units are supported by A88X, A78, and A55 FM2+ motherboards. Stay tuned as we explore all the other new perks that AMD has to offer.
