Reviews 51942 Published by

Here a roundup of today's AMD Kaveri reviews:



AMD A10-7850K Kaveri: Windows 8.1 vs. Ubuntu Linux @ Phoronix
Aside from sharing the Linux overview of AMD's A10-7850K "Kaveri" APU on Linux, for your viewing pleasure today I also have out some early OpenGL graphics benchmarks comparing the performance of the A10-7850K APU under Microsoft Windows 8.1 vs. Ubuntu Linux in its current 14.04 development form. These tests are a precursor to many more interesting AMD Kaveri benchmarks in the coming days.

Read more: AMD A10-7850K Kaveri: Windows 8.1 vs. Ubuntu Linux @ Phoronix

AMD Kaveri A10 7850K Review @ HCW
AMD has gone all-in on ‘combined processing’ in recent years, and their design philosophy in this regard has been deliberate and focused. Although they did release a niche pre-overclocked FX CPU running at 5 GHz turbo, they haven’t had a new ‘pure’ CPU since Vishera was released in 2012. And it should be no surprise that it has been indicated that they will no longer be releasing products in the FX lineup.

The payoff hasn’t quite come just yet, but when it does, Kaveri is designed to take full advantage of a new style of coding. AMD has added new features that lean even more in the direction of combined processing, including an all new way of allowing the GPU and CPU to access the same memory.

Read more: AMD Kaveri A10 7850K Review @ HCW

AMD Kaveri APU Architecture Overview @ Benchmark Reviews
Today marks the release of the latest in a long line of AMD Accelerated Processing Units. Benchmark Reviews has been there for each one of the previous APU releases, and we would be remiss if we didn't provide you with the latest news regarding this release. It has been a long road since Llano, the very first generation of AMD APUs, was announced just three short years ago at CES 2011. That processor brought together AMD's long held vision of putting a discrete level GPU on the same die as the CPU; a vision that started back with the Fusion project and AMD's acquisition of ATI.

Read more: AMD Kaveri APU Architecture Overview @ Benchmark Reviews

AMD A10-7850K Kaveri: The Linux Introduction @ Phoronix
This morning AMD is releasing the first APUs in their Kaveri family, their most advanced APU ever with up to 12 compute cores and is a big push forward with their overall HSA architecture. We managed to get our hands on a Kaveri system with A10-7850K APU and in the days/weeks ahead there will be many Linux benchmarks looking at the next-generation AMD APU. Here's what Linux users need to know right now about AMD Kaveri APU Linux support.

While it didn't look like we'd get Kaveri pre-launch, given AMD's mixed Linux interest in recent times, etc, at the last minute we were offered an AMD Kaveri test system for providing the Linux community with the necessary information they need for making an informed purchase. A friendly engineer also ended up sending out a second A10-7850K that will be used for other benchmarks and ultimately used as part of our OpenBenchmarking.org / Phoromatic test farm. While we were sent an A10-7850K review sample in advance, its delivery date of this past Friday was unfortunately postponed by FedEx over the nasty weather situation in Chicago. Fortunately, I was able to pickup the Kaveri system on Saturday afternoon, to at least have some launch-day AMD A10-7850K Linux information to share. Unfortunately, this didn't allow enough time to have our complete launch-day coverage we usually have with major hardware launches.

Read more: AMD A10-7850K Kaveri: The Linux Introduction @ Phoronix

AMD A10-7850K (Kaveri) APU Review featuring GIGABYTE G1.Sniper A88X @ HardwareHeaven.com
New GPU tech, new audio tech, more programmable, higher performance and better efficiency... just some of the main claims AMD make about Kaveri. Today we find out how it compares to the direct competition from Intel in real world media tests, some of the latest games (such as Call of Duty: Ghosts and DOTA 2) and also dipping into a few key synthetic benchmarks.

Read more: AMD A10-7850K (Kaveri) APU Review featuring GIGABYTE G1.Sniper A88X @ HardwareHeaven.com

AMD's A8-7600 'Kaveri' processor reviewed @ The Tech Report
AMD's next-generation APU packs in a ton of innovation, including updated "Steamroller" CPU cores, GCN graphics, and advanced HSA features. But is it enough to restore AMD's competitiveness in desktop processors?

Read more: AMD's A8-7600 'Kaveri' processor reviewed @ The Tech Report

AMD A8 7600 Kaveri APU review @ Guru3D
We review the all new AMD A8-7600 APU from AMD. This APU is based on AMD's new Kaveri architecture bringing the CPU and the GPU even closer together as the two "segments" now really have been merged into the die. Kaveri will aim at several segments in the processor business like notebooks, desktops, embedded and even server solutions. Armed bit a whopping 2.41 Billion transistors and based on a 28nm fabrication process, today we look at the mainstream Kaveri APU, the AMD A8-7600. Now in this review we'll focus on the desktop APUs and within this segment AMD initially will release three processors. In the A10 (fastest) lineup you will see the A10-7700K and A10-7850K chips. In the A8 series we'll see one product launch initially, the A8-7600. AMD A10-7000 series APUs each have have 4 Steamroller CPU cores tied to a unified 4 MB L2 cache and will carry a 95, 65 or 45 Watt Thermal Design Power.

AMD A10-7850K
AMD A10-7700K
AMD A10-7600

With improved performance levels the APUs now can be considered a more mainstream product, you'll notice a decent speed improvement on the processor side and a significant increase on the GPU side of the APU. The big distinction here is that the CPU and GPU really have been merged, sharing the very same memory pool and they can address each other; making this a much more efficient design compared to previous architectures. Combined together, they offer a nice amount of processor performance, especially with OpenCL and GPU assisted applications. Yeah that hybrid symbiosis called APU remains hard to beat in terms of features performance. Kaveri APUs offer up to 12 compute cores in total (AMD adds 4 x CPU cores to 8 x GPU cores to get to this figure). The new chips also include AMD's TrueAudio technology and thus come with an integrated DSP.

Read more: AMD A8 7600 Kaveri APU review @ Guru3D

AMD Kaveri A10 7850K & A8 7600 Review @ Hardware Canucks
AMD has been talking about Heterogeneous System Architecture or HSA for what seems like ages now but, with the launch of their Kaveri APUs, those plans are finally coming to fruition. Kaveri doesn’t represent a dramatic departure from previous generations though. It is simply another stepping stone, though a significant one, towards what AMD hopes will be a user and developer environment which embraces their approach.

In order to understand what makes Kaveri special, learning the basics of HSA is essential. In a nutshell HSA is an effort to leverage the potential CPU and graphics horsepower within AMD’s APUs by properly routing parallel and serial workloads towards the resources best able to process them. You see, the x86 cores excel in serial and task parallel scenarios while data parallel workloads can be handled much more efficiently by the GPU’s multiple compute cores. Since an Accelerated Processing Unit combines both x86 cores and a dedicated graphics subsystem, it’s perfectly suited for both situations. The challenge has always resided in developing a synergy between these two seemingly disparate elements. That’s where Kaveri comes into the equation.

Read more: AMD Kaveri A10 7850K & A8 7600 Review @ Hardware Canucks

AMD's Kaveri APU examined @ Hexus
AMD has been steadily improving its premium Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) since the inception of the Llano processor in June 2011. The first-generation APUs integrated AMD's K10 CPU and Radeon HD 5000-series discrete graphics on to a monolithic die, thus enabling mainstream desktop and laptops to be powered by a single processor.

A major APU update, codenamed Trinity, arrived almost a year later, this time imbued with updated technology for both the CPU and GPU in the form of Piledriver cores and Radeon HD 6000 graphics, respectively, though the newer CPU architecture was often slower than the one it replaced. AMD, however, cemented its position as provider of best-in-class graphics through improvements to the GPU. Moving on another year to Richland, considered a minor refresh, AMD's arguably kept ahead of Intel's recent APU-like Core i3 and Core i5 processors in the all-important bang-for-buck-metric... but the gap is closing.

Read more: AMD's Kaveri APU examined @ Hexus

AMD A10-7850K 'Kaveri' review: AMD's new APU @ Hardware.Info
Today AMD launched its new generation APUs called Kaveri. An APU, or Accelerator Processing Unit, is AMD's term for processors with an integrated graphics card. Kaveri is a combination of a quad-core processor from the Steamroller generation with a GPU that uses the same GCN architecture as AMD's recent graphics cards. AMD is initially introducing chips for desktop PCs, unlike last time when the new generation was first released for laptops. Today we are reviewing the flagship A10-7850K.

The Kaveri generation is fully compatible with HSA, or Heterogenous System Architecture. We will elaborate on that concept a bit later on, but what it basically means is that CPU and GPU can work together more effectively. AMD has remained at the forefront of graphics processing and wants to emphasise that even more with Kaveri since more and more non-gaming software is able to take advantage of the GPU, in part thanks to open standards such as OpenCL. The arrival of HSA should accelerate this process. AMD thinks that conventional CPU performance will decrease in importance and that Kaveri therefore is future-proof.

Read more: AMD A10-7850K 'Kaveri' review: AMD's new APU @ Hardware.Info