Long live Kaveri! In the computer world you buy a chip and if it is the top model in family for more than 8 months, you are shocked. Well will all the press, including us, have been waiting for Godavari APUs, to come out at Computex. AMD had other plans! First shown at CES 2014, AMD’s Kaveri-based Kaveri-based APUs have maintained relevance for the last 18 months and just got a refresh today just before
New Drivers
A new driver released today brings news technology to the Kaveri platform. AMD Today announces support for both DirectX 12 and FreeSync. This give new life and value to existing Kaveri-based APUs, ensuring even more performance and better Windows 10 support.
New Flagship APU
Plus, AMD has launched a new flagship processor, as well. The A10-7870K is the new king of desktop APUs.
The new chip is not a “Godavari” APU – It is still part of the Kaveri family. The A10-7870K is known as “Kaveri Refresh” because the A10-7870K is the same die as the rest of the A-series 7000 desktop processors, which AMD referred to as “Kaveri!”
the new chip sports more iGPU power than before. AMD’s advanced Kaveri binning process, let engineers push out an additional 146 MHz out of the refreshed GCN cores.
The CPU cores clocked 200 MHz higher than the A10-7850K. When asked about the thermal characteristics of the new APU,
When comes to thermals, AMD reports the core voltage has been increased ~50mV without increasing the socket power from 95 W. AMD now ships the more stronger heat sink from the FX processor line as the standard in the retail box. Since the new heat sink has a larger copper base and heatpipes, the fan can now spin slower and maintain boost speeds longer.
How Does It Game
AMD is targeting the 75 million gamers playing the top four most popular games in esports today. StarCraft II, League of Legends, DOTA 2, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive were used as the benchmark goals for the new APU, setting out to attain playable frame rates at high settings in each of these titles.
“AMD takes a major step forward today by unveiling the world’s most advanced eSports and online gaming processor technology in the A10-7870K APU, giving players the ability to game like a pro without spending like one,” said Matt Skynner, corporate VP and general manager, Computing and Graphics Business Unit at AMD. “eSports is one of the fastest-growing pastimes in the world with hundreds of millions of gamers worldwide playing games like StarCraft II, League of Legends, DOTA 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. With the new A10-7870K APU, gamers can play the most popular online and eSports games right out of the box with features to make that experience even better.”
The company claimed that without the addition of a discrete GPU, the A10-7870K will run these four games at well over 30fps. It even goes so far as to say the standalone APU will outperform an Intel Core i3-4360 paired with an Nvidia GT 740 in all of the aforementioned games running max settings at 1080p.
More Graphics News – Dual Graphics, DirectX 12, Virtual Screen
Even with the capable iGPUs, AMD knows many of the gamers buying an APU today will also want to pair it with a discrete GPU at some point. This will be even more relevant once Windows 10 arrives. The power of the integrated GPU can then be harnessed and used as an advantage when paired with another GPU. The main discreet graphics card can handle the bulk of the workload, and the APU’s GCN cores can be used to do a portion of the work.
This concept isn’t new, and it has been used with AMD’s Dual Graphics technology for some time. However, currently the iGPU is disabled with all but a very limited selection of GPUs. DirectX 12 will have the ability to work with multiple different GPUs from different architectures simultaneously. Direct access to the GPU cores is a function built into the new DX12 API, making it much easier for game designers to make use of all the available resources. Having Direct X 12 support on the iGPUs means that no part of the APU will go unused.
The extra horsepower that the A10-7870K can deliver enabled the company to introduce AMD Virtual Screen Resolution to the APU lineup for the first time; the feature is unique to the flagship processor. VSR is especially compelling to those in emerging markets that may not have readily available 1080p panels. In situations where gamers are displaying on lower-resolution panels, VSR can render the image at 1080p and display the native resolution. This process significantly improves visual fidelity.
One of the biggest advantages of running DirectX 12 is the increase in drawcalls per second. AMD has stated that early testing with Futuremark’s 3DMark API Overhead feature test has shown that Kaveri has plenty more throughput available when harnessed correctly. The use of DX12 can increase drawcalls per second on an A10-7870K by as much as 11x.
Cost and Availability
The A10-7870k is AMD’s latest addition to its A-Series APU lineup and is available now with a suggested price of $137 USD. The new processor maintains use of the current A-series chipset support, and will post and boot to Windows out of the box. A new BIOS update is required to unlock FreeSync, DX12 and VSR capabilities which is available now.
