News AMD's desktop Kaveri chips rumoured for February

Should be "unified".

Anyways. AMD better have a chip with Kaveri that improves heavily on the singlethreaded CPU-side of things. Otherwise these chips can't compete with the i3 Gen4 from intel.

An powerful iGPU is the last thing that's of any interest for the bulk of PC-software, and the majority of PCs sold isn't ment for gaming to begin with.

 

so the awaited "end of year launch" was in fact a "paper launch". I really hoped that kaveri would hit shelves in december :'(.

 

Estimate is a 10% improvement in IPC, so big improvement in single thread no.

Since it isn't going to be a new process either (as far as I know), no promises of improved power consumption (maybe worse, depending on what they did to get that 10% IPC improvement) and likely no higher clock speeds.

This is moving the markers a yard, not a whole knew down.

Granted, the last couple of releases Intel hasn't done much to improve their processors CPU performance much, other then some edge cases (TSX, some new instruction sets)...but I will grant that Intel has increased GPU performance on chip from Sandy to Haswell of roughly 200-500% depending on which version of the graphics you are comparing.

AMD in the same time period I think has increased graphical performance something like 30-50%. Sure, AMD had been way ahead to start with...but there are a large number of Intel GPU solutions that are FASTER than AMD in the same power envelope. About the only area AMD is still generally pretty far ahead is most desktop graphics (and then only if you are comparing against the "common" HD4600 in most socketed Intel solutions). Mobile, Intel seems to generally be ahead by a little to a lot in the same thermal envelope.

Things do not look good for AMD.

I do hope Intel improves on the CPU side of things a fair amount with Broadwell, even if it is ONLY higher turbocore speeds and base clocks and not much IPC improvements. With a supposed 30+% improvement in power consumption, they could use a bit more dynamic setup. It'd be a shame if they funneled all of that in to a lower TDP and nothing in to increased performance (Crap, Haswell laptops, if done right, can already get 8-10hrs of battery life, which should be good enough for most everyone. Instead of a lower TDP, how about improved graphics and maybe tweak the base and turbocore speeds 100/300Mhz respectively?)

AMD needs a new process and possibly a new design. Badly.

 

This a process shrink from AMD? If so could be intresting. If not how are they getting the figures?

 

Wikipedia says that steamroller min process size is 28nm. I've never seen a cpu manufactured on a half node, but it looks like that may be the route AMD takes from now on with Excavator supposidly a half node 20nm part too?

 

Your welcome.

(Spell and Grammar check are your friends).

Pedantic-ism is no one's friend. LOL

 

Would like an AM3+ steamroller.