AMD Kaveri Mobile APU, FX-7600P Preview
High Level Architecture, Kaveri Mobile Line-Up
A full complement of Kaveri mobile cores is 12 total--four CPU cores and 8 GPU cores. AMD refers to all cores as "Compute Cores" and specifically, on the highest-end variant of Kaveri for notebooks, there are 4 Steamroller CPU cores and 8 AMD GCN-based graphics cores. These GPU cores are also based on AMD's latest architecture found in their Hawaii GPUs, which includes AMD's TrueAudio technology for multi-directional output, signal enhancement and noise removal.
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With Kaveri, AMD is claiming a significant performance uplift in both CPU and GPU performance. Obviously, GPU performance comes courtesy of the aforementioned GCN GPU technologies, but Kaveri's Steamroller CPU core architecture brings beefed-up resources in a number of areas as well. According to AMD, with Steamroller, mispredicted branches have been improved by about 20%, scheduling efficiency by 5-10%, and i-Cache misses by up to 30%. Combined, Kaveri's fetch, scheduler and cache enhancements can offer up to a 20% IPC (Instructions Per Cycle) uplift over the previous generation of AMD's Richland architecture.
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Here we see AMD's positioning of their Kaveri mobile line-up versus chief rival Intel. At the top of the stack is the AMD FX mobile series; we actually tested an AMD FX-7600P, which is a 35 Watt variant, the fastest Kaveri mobile chip there is currently. The FX-7600 has 8 GCN GPU cores. However, looking at the product map here, AMD is positioning a 19 Watt variant of Kaveri, the FX-7500, versus Intel's 15 Watt Core i7-4500U. While unfortunately we don't have this match-up to show you on the following pages, from a CPU clock speed and GPU core count perspective, we should be able to extrapolate approximate performance expectations.
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Probably the most mainstream Intel SKU we've seen in the wild for ultrabooks as of late, has been the Core i5-4200U. Here AMD is matching up their 19 Watt TDP A10-7300 which has 6 GCN cores and a four CPU cores clocked at 1.9GHz with a 3.2GHz max. turbo speed. Again, Intel's Core i5-4200U does technically drop in at a lower 15 Watt TDP, however, so it will be interesting to see how battery life shapes up once we get some hands-on time with retail-ready notebooks based on AMD's new Kaveri mobile silicon.
For now, let's look at our test vehicle for this preview, some quick APU vital signs and top-end performance with AMD's FX-7600P Kaveri mobile APU.
For now, let's look at our test vehicle for this preview, some quick APU vital signs and top-end performance with AMD's FX-7600P Kaveri mobile APU.
