News AMD opens Kaveri A10-7850K pre-orders

Iris Pro with eDRAM costs Intel a lot of money, because its eDRAM is a second IC connected with 'brand new' interposer (Wide-IO) technology. They are first to mass-market with it.

 

That's why I was speaking the truth no matter what Harl thinks, his dry leg humping just doesn't cut it.

 

I haven't read anything about IrisPro, it's just as good/better than the AMD iGPUs?

Who cares what the marketing says, just wait and see how they perform, most likely they'll be great for most people.

 

Iris Pro is faster than the iGPU in the 5800K and most likely the 6800K as well (given the latter is only marginally faster than the former). It is somewhere between the current top end AMD APU 's and a GT640 in terms of overall performance. At a rough guess I would imagine Kaveri will be slightly in front GPU performance wise - depending on the game in question and the settings used (and of course the DDR3 memory being used in the system tested).

Unfortunately it is only available with very specific CPU setups - i5 4670R & i7 4770R+ I am not sure what else.

 

For most people a smartphone or tablet is great and totally sufficient for mediaplayback, browsing the web or even office. Most people don't need PCs anymore.

 

I didn't realise they'd caught up so much, from a quick google those cpus don't seem to be very available? And they don't exactly cover the same market I guess coming in 150%+ of the cost.

True, but I was meaning even people who play games, should have clarified.

 

Tablets and smartphones are very popular for playing games. It's actually a bigger market than consoles or PC-gaming.

If we could connect all kinds of input-devices to our smartphones and tablets - which is actually possible via bluetooth - there's no reason why we couldn't play FPS or RTS on these devices, like we do on a console or a PC. The graphics become better and better on these mobile devices aswell.

So load your game from the appstore, connect keyboard and mouse via bluetooth, connect your smartphone or tablet to your 50" TV and start having fun. It's totally possible from a technical POV and all that's missing is the imagination of the developers.

The direction AMD is heading with their APUs is basically allready existant, just with less power. So instead of designing such APUs for the desktop AMD should 100% concentrate on mobile APUs as the desktop PC for homeusers is a dying specimen. Desktop PCs are ment more for work these days and that's exactly the area where the APUs lack performance aslong as no software is getting optimized for their HSA.

 

Is that why 300 million of them were sold last year versus 100 million tablets ?
Most people (1.7 billion) buy Android based smart phones and I'm not sure they are ideally suited if you want to do more than the basics, like email, web browsing and consuming media.

 

Yeah I know, and for the most part I agree. Certainly GDDR5 is out of the question. But quad-channel DDR3 would not have been such a big deal. LGA 2011 motherboards are not more expensive than LGA 1150 board with similar specs. Quad channel ram could have been done without a large cost increase. But the OEMs see AMD APUs as cheapo platforms. I just think AMD had a chance to change that perception with Kaveri.

 

I meant PC games, thought that would have been obvious.

 

Maybe things will change when Carrizo arrives, as if rumors are to be believed DDR4 may give a larger boost to the iGPU.

 

There's only that much PCs sold, because people use them for work, but how many people do you know who use their home-PC for working?

And tablets and smartphones are the same devices in different sizes, you need to combine these numbers. An iPhone has the same hardware as the iPad besides the screen.

 

Indeed and that is what I was aluding to earlier. This level of iGPU performance coupled with a cheaper core i3 would really put presure on AMD, as effectively Intel would be offering the same thing albeit with better power efficiency and CPU single thread performance.

Sadly Intel seem to have limited Iris Pro to specific CPU setups which are in a completely different price tier to AMD APU's. Cost is most likely a reason but it still dissapointing as I would love to see both CPU manufacturers really push the boat out in terms of APU performance.

 

CPU's nowadays all handle everyday home applications without too much hassle.

For home based APU's, the goal I would use to gauge if the product is something I would consider is GPU grunt.

Does the iGPU have enough graphical grunt to play Ghosts/BF4 at 1080P with medium settings, if it did, then I, sirs, would be suitably impressed

Kaveri is a nice step forward, it has it's own existing market to protect and has enough few features to perhaps present options in other areas.

I always live in hope that one day GloFo/AMD die-shrinks will get closer to the Intel products, this is begging to be a 16nm (or lower) part (x% power reduction, x% more speed) it would really show it's legs then.

 

Home working is probably a market so small no one keeps figures
My point was that in terms of market share its not a case of "Most people don't need PCs anymore." its a case of the casual computer user not bothering to upgrade that 12 year old XP machine that has been gathering dust in the corner, as their new ARM based smartphones does everything they used to do on the desktop.

For most people i would venture to say when they go to work that they still sit in front of a desktop PC, so its not a matter of most people don't need a PC but more a case of they no longer need them for use in the home.

I'm guessing Consoles are going to be AMD's biggest market, along with professional graphics, server and tablets.

 

That's the biggest problem for AMD currently I'd say aswell, seeing that intel has started pre-production runs on their 14nm node. Currently only for their mobile-parts however, but in 2015 we'll see the 14nm Skylake CPUs with DDR4 being released.

AMD seriously needs to catch up here.

That's exactly my point, and the corporate-sector get's lots of discounts and are happily buying intel i3 or Pentium CPUs as their iGPUs are sufficient enough for office-stuff.

 

eDRAM has been around donkey's years in IBM products (since GameCube iirc) but it's not connected by WideIO til now.

 

Iris pro is in most new apple MacBooks be it air or pro last I checked. That's who it was designed for after all.

I3 with iris pro Gpu would be some good performance but intel has little reason to do it. They don't want to compete at the bottom end of the market segment where profit levels are small.

They make a lot more selling 1 4770k than AMD makes selling 100 budget range chips.

You could compare apple to intel in the way they have went about this intel is happy to dominate the high end where profits are a lot higher. And leave others to the budget range sector. ( that story has been told before andriod dominates the smartphone sector but 90% of the companies make nothing at all in money.)

The iris pro they sell to apple is bringing them in a lot of cash. ( they got 1bil from apple for the last quater in chips, tiny in comparison to what they give other companies for chips but still) as I've said before elsewhere I think apple had a exclusive on the chip for a while as only now is the iris pro Gpu really heading into oem channels.

 

http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2408515


look at the relevant markets year on year - pc`s are declining at 7% year on year , wheras tablets have increased by 42% - and some analyst`s are already saying they will overtake pc shipments this year not next.


that's all pc`s - and the market is made up of workstations rather than home users.


as for price - the current OEM price for the i5 4570R is $255 in BULK

that's far MORE than the new kaveri is in RETAIL (pre ordering for $189)

so again you can buy an AMD based system for under the cost of the Intel part alone.


and again your spouting rubbish about android phones , Samsung had $55 BILLION in revenue for last quarter , 4 times as much as Intel.

not bad for an android using company ,

and as I said before - ARM make money (£113 MILLION in Q3 2013) , which isn't bad for company that doesn't BUILD anything itself and so doesn't have the manufacturing overheads.