Reviews - AMD's Kaveri APU examined

[Willzzz]

As far as i can tell, a load of steam users still play games on their Intel graphics laptops.

Isn't a lot of that supposed to be misidentification?
They have a discrete GPU but the IGP still gets detected first.

[Bakashinji]

They are looking good for media PC's but AMD need more mITX boards that are actually good.

Gigabyte have launched A88x mITX boards so have asus, i think even the sniper a well known gaming board is available with A88x chipset for those in need of SFF performance.
As for how well they will handle Kaveri is yet to be confirmed, but shouldn't be just dismissed as a budget gaming setup. Not everyone can afford to pay £700 - 2k for the best gaming gear, If £400 - 500 is a max budget the new Apu's offer power and performance better than any laptop for the same price.

[Bakashinji]

As far as i can tell, a load of steam users still play games on their Intel graphics laptops.

Isn't a lot of that supposed to be misidentification?
They have a discrete GPU but the IGP still gets detected first.

Not really, anyone with a budget laptop and an intel cpu mostly has IGP as their only source.
Dedicated or discrete gpus cost more and the higher perfomance you need so does the price,
If you want a gaming laptop your talking in the price range of £800+ for one with decent spec and gpu.
Half of the world have to deal with old uncle bobs hand me down that cost around 400-500 so he can check his emails, banking and online shopping and watch a movie when hes supposed to be at work.

[kalniel]

Not really, anyone with a budget laptop and an intel cpu mostly has IGP as their only source.
Dedicated or discrete gpus cost more and the higher perfomance you need so does the price,
If you want a gaming laptop your talking in the price range of £800+ for one with decent spec and gpu.
Half of the world have to deal with old uncle bobs hand me down that cost around 400-500 so he can check his emails, banking and online shopping and watch a movie when hes supposed to be at work.

'Have to' is a bit strong - fact is that for most gamers they don't need more. The best selling games are things like Peggle and Farmville - your 'gaming' laptop doesn't need more than an IGP to play them.

[Willzzz]

Can you tell from the steam survey which are laptops and which are desktops? Regarding Intel IGP only.

[flufflogic]

Seeing reports that the Hybrid Crossfire's 240/250 R7 cards. Bit disappointing, TBH; I hoped it'd partner with a 270x for a decent boost. Plus: this or a 760k and discrete R7 250 GPU? Can't help but imagine the latter's better performance...

[Alistair]

I got one delivered today from Dabs & have it up & running on an Asrock FM2A88X-ITX with 16gb of patriot viper 3 low profile 2133Mhz. I setup up the ram at 2133 but was getting lockups so stuck it back down to 1600 mhz (auto) until I get everything installed & up & running. Its for media playback using madvr for software rendering & my first thoughts are I no longer need a dedicated GPU to achieve this. So will be able to downsize my media PC's footprint.
I see dabs have put the price up since yesterday

I didn't get a copy of BF4 should this have been bundled with the APU?

[kalniel]

Can you tell from the steam survey which are laptops and which are desktops? Regarding Intel IGP only.

No, it's just listed by make and model number. So the top 'card' is the Intel HD4000 series, which is present in both desktop and laptop chips from Intel.

[jim]

Both of these points are saying AMD wins the value argument - which I'd completely agree with. But that's not what AMD were trying to say when they say things like 'better at gaming than x % of steam computers'. From a gaming point of view you still either go discreet or could be fine with something from Intel. So while it's definitely laudable that they've got such good gaming performance, it's either not enough, or it's too much, at the moment.

In the long-term I can APUs becoming standard-fare for budget Steamboxes. It's the only way they're going to compete on compactness, quietness and value with the consoles, and I'm sure AMD are well aware of that opportunity. Agree that it's a no-man's-land solution at present though.

[kalniel]

In the long-term I can APUs becoming standard-fare for budget Steamboxes. It's the only way they're going to compete on compactness, quietness and value with the consoles. I'm sure AMD are well aware of that opportunity.

Heck they're not all that far removed from console specs outright. If AMD can get around the heterogeneous environment problems of PC games then there's a good chance games could be optimised well for them. But as always, it's effort vs reward.

[jim]

Heck they're not all that far removed from console specs outright. If AMD can get around the heterogeneous environment problems of PC games then there's a good chance games could be optimised well for them. But as always, it's effort vs reward.

Point is, even if they're not a brilliant gaming solution at the moment, they could well be in a year or two. If they could run recent games at 45fps and 1080p in low quality, that would be fine, and that's not asking too much. If Steam could build in a function that tested the performance of the PC and set the graphical quality to match, most wouldn't even know what settings they're using - all without too much effort on AMD's part. I've got high hopes for these chips.

[Lucio]

It would be interesting to see if a motherboard manufacturer offers something which lets you fit a pair of these chips together and to link them up in a method akin to Crossfire. Heck, these also must offer something to the cluster-computer market, in allowing a hybrid workload mix of integer and floating point maths to be processed more power efficiently than the large GPU based clusters.

[The Hand]

Just looking at the UK prices, Scan.co.uk are selling the A10-7850K for £138.94, whereas Ebuyer.com are selling it for £125.99? Usually Scan are cheaper on the processor front or am I behind the times? Maybe Scan will price match them in time.

[DanceswithUnix]

Just looking at the UK prices, Scan.co.uk are selling the A10-7850K for £138.94, whereas Ebuyer.com are selling it for £125.99? Usually Scan are cheaper on the processor front or am I behind the times? Maybe Scan will price match them in time.

Last summer Scan weren't competitive on my FX8350, nor the Trinity build I did before that. My last build was split between Ebuyer and Amazon.

[makavien478]

Yes I agree used to use scan a lot but not touched them in last 12 months due to well they aren't cheap ..Im sure ill buy this chip as it is a ideal chip for a media pc but sadly not from scam..sorry scan

[keithwalton]

Drat's I intended to make a post this morning put failed to hit the correct buttons.

I basically pondered how many of the 'casual gamers' out there play poorly coded flash based games (the ones you get on facebook) as they're all about single thread cpu grunt