AMD On Kaveri APU x86 Performance Against Intel Haswell,”We’ll Lose”

According to Adam, the AMD Kaveri A-Series would be positioned against the Core i5-4670K which is the top unlocked Core i5 Haswell part from Intel retailing currently at $225 US. AMD’s flagship Kaveri APU is the A10-7850K which has been detailed here and features a total compute power of 856 Gigaflops. Compared to Intel Core i5-4670K that’s a definite leap in performance but when compared in x86 performance alone, AMD’s x86 enabled Steamroller cores would loose in the performance battle. This means that AMD is unable to keep up with Intel in terms of x86 performance with their new Steamroller architecture.

[solar]

but AMD is the best?

[ABizzel1]

@solar

They're going to lose on the CPU side of things and they've been losing to Intel for the longest on CPU performance since the introduction of the i3, i5, and i7 series. This is why AMD chose to go with an APU layout, which offers solid CPU performance and good graphics processing vs. Intel who offer amazing CPU performance and shitty graphics performance, which is why you have to get a dedicated GPU with Intel. 2 very different approaches.

APU / CPU:

AMD: 7/10 (solid performance + good pricing / $150 or less)

Intel: 10/10 (pricing makes them a 9/10 IMO / $200 and up)

APU / GPU:

AMD: 7/10 (APU's are little powerhouses, and their top APU's are more powerful than a Wii U and around 50% as powerful as the XBO depending on the RAM you use, and all that GPU power is included in that $150 price)

Intel: 4/10 (Intel is still struggling to catch PS360 parity with their HD 5000 graphics)

If you need CPU performance for editing then go with Intel, but not for gaming unless there's a dedicated AMD / NVIDIA GPU. If you want affordability and want to game on your laptop at least on par with PS360 game then AMD is your best choice.

When it comes to desktop CPU performance it's worse for AMD, as Intel takes a commanding lead. AMD only hope here is that their FX series (specifically 6000 and 8000) are powerful enough for most computer purposes "PER CORE" and significantly less than Intel's better offerings. However, things are looking up for AMD as more programs and finally games are starting to use their "MULTI-CORE" setup to their CPU's instead of focusing on power "PER CORE" so their CPU's are getting performance boost of around 20% - 30% and putting them still under Intel, but much closer than it was before with FX 8000 now surpassing the i5 series in some applications (which wasn't happening before), and the FX 6000 series now closer to the i5 series performance in some applications.

With the PS4, XBO, Wii U, and even some versions of Steambox backing AMD performance and finances will only get better.

Right now:

CPU:
Intel >>> AMD

GPU:
NVIDIA > AMD

Pricing:
AMD >>> Intel & NVIDIA

Mobile Gaming:
AMD > NVIDIA (APU's + Pricing give AMD the edge) >>>>> Intel

[Ju]

One thing, though. This chip fully supports HSA and with it all the RAM is (also) available to the GPU - unlike Richland or before where it had to be partitioned (max 2GB for GPU). I am curious to see how this will work in Linux/Windows OS and how compute can take advantage of it. This can have a major impact on low cost high performance compute applications. OpenCL might run quite nicely on this configuration. Hopefully more apps (video encode/decode) will take advantage of this at some point. Given how conservative the PC (SW) industry is adapting to those technologies (see multi core optimization) it will probably never happen, unfortunately.

Technically you could put a discrete GPU in your system leaving the GPU in this thing for compute alone - hence AMD's push to sell this at "850GFLOPS".

[ABizzel1]

3 disagrees, yet only 1 logical response.

[cesuf]

@ABizz

I agree with most of what you said, except for on mobile gaming. I still gotta go with Nvidia (performance wise) for the Tegra 4 they are using in Nvidia shield and in some tablets.

Pricewise, I could see people making a case that AMD gpu's is the better bang for the buck if you really needed to save an extra $50 or so. (I don't have to budget that closely, so that's a non-issue for me.)

[ABizzel1]

@cesuf

When I said mobile I meant more on the laptop side, since you can get entry level APU's on a AMD laptop that are basically PS360's for $299 and less.

Tegra has it are far as tablets and phones go.

[BOLO]

@cesuf

nVidia is getting smashed in mobile by Qualcomm, Apple's A line, and even Mediatek too...They sell their name more than performance on the mobile front.

[3-4-5]

you talking cpu or gpu?

Intel for CPU....AMD for GPU is my preference

[sinjonezp]

Intel has always had the leg up on cpu's but i always applaud amd for trying to implement performance\cost cpu apu designs. I prefer descrete gpus oved soc. If this were to be implemented in smaller solutions i would definitely check it out. What if sony or microsoft put this apu in future iterations of ps4 xb1 and state that it offers gains over the original architecture, would anyone buy? Like android phones wherd you have the snapdragon 600 with adreno 320 and the phone out next year has the snap800 with 330 adreno. Both can play all the same software but one hits higher fps. Could this happen to the game system model? All signs can lead to plausibility. Just an open discussion not to say its right or wrong to agree or disagree.

[DeadlyFire]

Its possible with x86 and next gen we could see it, but I am doubtful they upgrade along the way. Unless serious OS lag for either console and that is very unlikely really. This concept is one that Valve is very interested in though. Who knows what could happen to the model in the future. I personally don't ever plan to upgrade every single year.

Intel had great gains then AMD had some great gains over Intel then Intel got better and AMD has yet to come back from that. Funny thing is AMD's big gains all came from jumping to 64-bit CPU tech first. I wonder who will hit 128-bit CPUs first. Since gen 4 aims alot of game development towards GPU compute over CPU compute. So I expect games could actually be closer to being on par with Intel's hardware performance even on an AMD APU at some point down the road. AMD's CPUs have a long road to reach Intel's performance. Steamroller is a first step, but there is no dramatic overhaul plans for the architecture until at least 2016. As the end of the Bulldozer line up comes in 2015. So something should be following it.

[TheKayle1]

nothing new..amd....really nothing you is 10 or more year that u lose on all the frontline

against intel and your direct rival nvidia...

go and continue to do good things as u doing in the low end/ low cost..market with ur cpus or apus for the consoles

forget about intel and nvida...

[Sarcasm]

The problem for AMD is that Intel simply has a bigger budget for R&D, that as their litho process is about 4 years ahead. At this rate, nobody can compete with Intel with pure raw CPU power and technology. The only upper hand AMD will have is on the graphics front.

[kevnb]

And price/performance ratio. I use an fx 6300 and it plows through all games no problem.

[Sarcasm]

Oh yeah I should have said in the super high end space Intel sits there by themselves. But for the rest of the range, AMD have some good parts and good price/perf like you said.

[DeadlyFire]

Well they do know Kaveri is a 4 core part and Haswell is 8 core part. So its pretty much common sense that x86 vs x86 with less cores = a losing situation. AMD Steamroller isn't bad and its a step in the right direction, but we won't see a major shift in AMD computing until 2016 CPUs are revealed.

AMD is putting all of its gears on gaming front with Gen4 development techniques aimed directly at using GPU compute. As AMD has Mantle API, GPU compute as their main goals. APU + GPU combination for power is a great asset for AMD. NVIDIA is working hard on its first CPU/GPU or APU chipsets. It has hopes for a full ARM desktop to compete with x86 desktops by 2020. AMD is more concerned with NVIDIA than Intel.

[AndrewLB]

Haswell is a 4-core part. The only 8-core haswell based chip is coming in 2H 2014 and it will be the Haswell-E CPU.

And you forgot the word "might" in regards to this "major shift" you claim is coming.

Truth is, AMD is more likely to go bankrupt than pull off some massive win on the CPU front against intel.

[Maxor]

AMD is what you buy when you can't afford the best. Being behind on tech and selling price for performance is thier specialty.

[Coach_McGuirk]

really? loose? who's writing this stuff

[LordDhampire]

Isn't this more techspy?

[shutUpAndTakeMyMoney]

lol

[ATiElite]

AMD needs to go after the Gaming laptop industry very hard.

AMD APU Laptops game way better than Intel/HD5000 laptop

only problem is there are Gaming laptops out there for $900 that have Core i7 and Nvidia GTX760m which are DARN GOOD laptops that can run BF4 at 50fps med/high.

[gamernova]

The best of the best has to be an Intel and Nvidia set up. The new AMD cards run too hot and I like to do video editing.
If I was on a budget I would just get the cheapest intel processor and nvidia card I could afford or save up.

[cesuf]

^that. If I wanted more performance from an NVidia card, Id just OC it to run hot like an AMD.

But competition is good. There's no doubt that with AMD in the gpu race, it's forced NVidia's hand to release their tech earlier than they would have liked, and some price drops along the way.

Not to mention the lower price AMD can deliver on has for sure benefited console gamers in ps4 and x1.