According to leaked information, AMD will allegedly be releasing mobile versions of its Kaveri APU later this year. There are reportedly seven new processors aimed at laptops and tablet that follow the same basic design as their desktop counterparts: steamroller CPU cores paired with a GCN-based graphics portion and an integrated memory controller.
According to information obtained by WCCF Tech, AMD will release four ULV and three standard voltage parts. All but one APU will have four Steamroller CPU cores paired with an Radeon R4, R5, R6, or R7 graphics processor with up to 512 GCN cores. The mobile APUs allegedly range in TDP from 17W to 35W and support various AMD technologies including TrueAudio, Mantle, and Eyefinity.
An AMD slide showing a die shot of the desktop "Kaveri" Accelerated Processing Unit (APU).
Of the seven rumored APUs, two of them are OEM-only parts that feature the “FX” moniker. The FX-7500 is the fastest ULV (ultra-low voltage) APU while the FX-7600P is AMD’s flagship mobile processor.
The FX-7600P is the chip that should most interest mobile gamers and enthusiasts looking for a powerful AMD-powered laptop or tablet. This processor allegedly features four CPU cores clocked at 2.7GHz base (that turbo to a maximum of 3.6GHz), a GPU with 512 GCN cores clocked at a base of 600MHz and a boost clock of 666MHz. The chip further uses 4MB of L2 cache and is a 35W TDP part. This should be a decent processor for laptops, offering acceptable general performance and some nice mobile gaming with the beefy integrated GPU!
The leaked AMD mobile Kaveri APU lineup via WCCF Tech.
Of course, for productivity machines where portability and battery life are bigger concerns, AMD will reportedly be offering up the dual core A6-7000. This 17W ULV processor combines two cores clocked at 2.2GHz (3.0GHz boost), a GPU based on the Radeon R4 with 192 GCN cores (494MHz base and 533MHz boost), and 2MB of L2 cache. Compared to the FX-7600P (and especially the desktop parts), the A6-7000 sips power. We will have to wait for reviews to see how it performs, but it will be facing stiff competition from Intel’s Core i3 Haswell CPUs and even the Bay Trail SoCs which come in at a lower TDP and offer higher thread counts. The GPU capabilities and GPGPU / HSA software advancements (such as LibreOffice adding GPGPU support) will make or break the A6-7000, in my opinion.
In all, the leaked mobile chips appear to be a decent upgrade over the previous generation. The new mobile APUs will bring incremental performance and power saving benefits to bear against competition from Intel. I’m looking forward to more official information and seeing what the OEMs are able to do with the new chips.
How about the retail
How about the retail (desktop) A8-7600?
AMD forgotten to give us that APU.
APU are better on mobile,
APU are better on mobile, memory still not good enough to make an APU worthwhile on desktop performance wise, i hope next year they could bring some high end apu gddr5 dual graphic r9 series, that would be a perfect apu for desktop gaming, untill then beh, let them work on mobile apus
7600 is a good option for
7600 is a good option for desktop thanks also to it’s configurable TDP. On the other hand 7700K and 7850K are not in 99.9% of the most common cases.
And guess what. 7600 is the only desktop Kaveri APU that haven’t seen retail yet.
We have Still competition
We have Still competition from Intel, please fix urgently.
“benefits to bear against still competition from Intel”
Were you attempting to write
Were you attempting to write “stiff competition” noting Intel’s strength, or “still competition” denoting a lack of progress from Intel?
I would like to see how the battery life of the 19w Quad Cores compare to the 17w dual core. i.e. whether the quad cores complete their tasks quick enough to offset the extra voltage they draw.
On a related note, i have an AMD a6-3420m (35 watt) quad and an AMD a6-4455m (17 watt) ulv dual core laptop. The base speed of the 4455m makes some tasks quicker, but intensive tasks run better on the quad core.
I meant stiff, sorry. I was
I meant stiff, sorry. I was out of the office all day, but the typo has been fixed.
The graphics, is what these
The graphics, is what these SKU’s will have over the Intel Parts, and with a lot more GPGPU power in compute loads OpenCL accelerated on those CGN cores. LibraOffice, Gimp, and Blender3d(Get that support for Cycles render up there AMD) should benifit, as the open source software uses OpenCL, and OpenGL, as well as other standard APIs for the Khronos group. What about the FX-7600P paired with a Mobile AMD descrete GPU, will the graphics work well together? There will not be much stiff competition from the core i3’s level of integrated graphics, the other points will have to wait for the New AMD CPU microarchitecture to appear. AMD Should try, with a proces node shrink, to get a mobile APU with 6 CPU cores and the FX-7600P’s level of graphics, at least they could compete with the Core i5, if they had a 6 CPU core high end mobile/laptop part.
I’m currently running an AMD
I’m currently running an AMD A-10 5750M (Richland) which uses a FS1r2 socket, makes me wonder if this new chip will be using the same socket, or be moving to a FS2 mobile socket.
I’d like an upgrade because the Richland processor is a bit bottlenecked in the CPU side, although the integrated Radeon HD 8650 isn’t too shabby for a built in GPU. The laptop also has a 8970 dedicated card.
To keep a competitive edge, AMD is going to need to develop these mobile APU’s to support a larger L2 cache and introduce a L3 cache, as well as support faster than 1866MHZ mobile RAM.
Even as the underdog, I still go with AMD hardware because in the end, its better for games, and even though they’re developing for smaller and faster, some of us don’t mind energy sucking powerhouse CPU’s (Like the mobile Phenom X4 965). Virtual cores isn’t the way to go. A dual core with 2 virtual cores, is in the end, still a dual core.