AMD to Unveil Next-Generation APUs on November 11

As a follow-up to our older article on how December-January will play out for AMD's next-generation APU lineup, we have news that the company will unveil, or at least tease its next-generation desktop APU, codename "Kaveri," on November 11, 2013. It's when the company will host its APU'13 event,

[Software_Lover]

If AMD were smart, and I think they are, they will really push and market their 8 core APU's for the pc and help the devs that make games for consoles and pc use them efficiently. Imagine having a 64bit O.S., 8-16gb ram, AMD 8 core APU, and being able to game on PC at a high level. Maybe not everything maxed out, but pretty close for budget builders.

It might make a dent in their low end GPU sales, but it will all even out with more APU sales. Great Gaming PC's would get smaller also ala PS4/XBone, or the Digital Storm Bolt, which actually uses a full size GPU. I actually want the Bolt case but they do not sell it separately.

A man can only dream.

[Rageanitus]

It wont really work for core PC gamers honestly.
Most ppl upgrade their GPU vs their CPU.

The CPU is less important when it comes to gaming.

It is a bit different when it comes to laptops, because there is really no flexiblity in upgrading your laptop from most manufacturers. Usually when a LAptop gamers wants more power he/she usually simply just buys a new laptop.

In terms of consoles its static, so there is no way a person can realy upgrade.

[Software_Lover]

I understand that. I am a core pc gamer. But if budget builders are able to get ps4/Xbone level graphics with just the APU and no separate GPU purchase, we as pc gamers, have to look at that as a win for us.

I also understand that there are other variables that go into play: Ram available, O.S. used, etc. But it could work out, especially with Mantle on the horizon.

[Stsonic]

The CPU is a lot more important in gaming than people seem to think. Especially if you want to Max out everything. I just upgraded from a 4 core amd to an i7 with a 7950 and the performance more than doubles in some games.

[Rageanitus]

@ Software lover
True to a certain extent since established developers usually develop with all platforms in mind.

But the PC market right now is driven RIGHT now by Intel and Nvidia, and honestly AMD is not doing so hot (just look at the finacial records/performance records)
Till the day Intel Or Nvidia produces exceptional APU's over their flagship configurations I do not see it flying so far.

@STSonic , yes CPU is still important because if you don't upgrade your CPU you might get a bottleneck. But it is less important ever since the first 3dfx/Geforce came into the market. I see ppl upgrading GPU's over CPU's much more often.

[Rhaigun]

It depends. Say you have an HD 7950 and this new set of APUs will allow you to crossfire much like the current ones do with the 7750. You may get more performance for less. It's possible you may get the boost you need to jump from medium to high settings, and still keep your current FPS.

[Ju]

Unfortunately, Kaveri is not on a level with the PS4/One. The Steamroller cores might as well hold up (4 of them should be faster than 8 Jaguar cores) but the GPU part is still below 1TF (or close). But, with that said, it should be closer to a 7750 and thus be able to play games in medium settings btween 720p-1080p.

What I am looking forward more than this, though, is that this chip will fully support HSA and the full pool of memory is available to the GPU. Current APUs partition the memory into "GPU" and "System" memory, taking away from either side. I am curious how this will work with current OSs - memory handling needs to address this. And further down the road, this open the doors for more compute applications on the desktop. 16GB VRAM...curious how this will workout. Unfortunately I'll have to upgrade my MB as well as the APU.

For the geeks in us, this is the first machine available where people (at home) can explore HUMA/HSA.

[ABizzel1]

AMD announced a while back that these APU's were coming, but I believe they would only be 4 core versions, and not have GDDR5 RAM, so take that for what it is.

[Software_Lover]

Yes you are correct. I think there was an article on here, or techspy, yesterday that stated they would come with DDR3 ram.

[NarooN]

http://i.imgur.com/yhSthQj....

GDDR5 as well as a part with up to 3 modules (3 modules, 6 cores) was planned at some point in 2012, but I guess when SteamrollerB (aka Steamroller 2.0, bdver3b) came about, those plans were canceled.

Makes sense for GDDR5, since it's unfeasible for reasons I outlined in my other comment here. They are opting to wait for DDR4 instead, which makes more sense.

[NarooN]

An 8-core APU on desktop isn't feasible at the moment. The console APU's use Jaguar cores which were meant for smaller form-factors and isn't meant to clock high like the "big cores" found on desktop and on some laptops.

The die size would have to increase far beyond what the current typical APU die sizes are to accommodate two more modules, and no one would want an 8-core APU if it didn't have beefy graphics, so the die would have to be even bigger to fit more CU's on it.

The GPU would then be super-beefy, but under-fed due to the use of DDR3 as the system memory. The bus would only be 128-bit (dual-channel 64-bit 2x) since FM2+ doesn't support higher than dual-channel DDR3, and the resulting bandwidth would not be enough to feed the GPU so it could perform to its max potential.

This is why AMD decided to not bother with GDDR5 on desktop APU's (amongst other things, like there not being any consumer GDDR5 DIMMs nor any MOBO's with sockets to support such a chip, etc.) and will instead implement DDR4 in either a Kaveri refresh or Carrizo (Q1 2015 Excavator-based APU), which would alleviate the bandwidth issue.

Right now AMD is trying to get more APU's out there so the install base would be huge whenever HSA begins to take off. This will continue with Kaveri's release in Q1 2014. Of course gaming performance is a priority for them, but not the only one.

[kingduqc]

cpu + gpu > apu by a LARGE margin

[NarooN]

You do realize that an APU is still a CPU, right? Also a typical CPU + GPU combo has much more latency than an actual APU, and with the combination of the CPU/GPU being on the same die as well as having cache coherency and sharing a single pool of memory means massive boosts to the computational throughput and bandwidth, which will speed up OpenCL & HSA-enabled workloads massively. That's the point of an APU.

[kingduqc]

@NarooN

I am fully away, just that people speak as if an apu is good for gaming.It will never compete with a dedicated gpu, or certainly not in the next 15-20 years.

[NarooN]

APU's are good for gaming at low resolutions, but yeah, they won't be replacing discreet cards anytime soon.