AMD on track for launch of Kaveri in February 2014

[frozentundra123456]

OK, I might have exaggerated a bit, but wast majority of PCs sold use IGPs. Us enthusiasts are very much the minority and it has always been that way.



I will believe Broadwell GT4 can do 2Tflops when I see it. That'll require between HD7850 and HD7870 level performance, and I just don't see that happening. Lets say they double the number of EU's from 40 to 80. That times 4 equals 320 shaders more-or-less (rough simplification). Even the 6800K has 384, the HD7850 has 1024 and the HD7870 1280. Then you have a very nasty bandwidth problem even with 2133MHz(34.1GB/s)/2400MHz(38.4GB/s) DDR3. I haven't seen that many notebooks with 2133 and higher RAM, but if we keep to desktop the HD7850/70 has 153.6GB/s available...

About stacked memory its still a while off for actual shipping products, and no one is stopping AMD/NV from using it with discrete GPUs. I even think I saw a roadmap somewhere where Maxwell's successor (Volta or whatever it is called) used it.

And the problem will also be price. Look at GT3e. Where do you actually see it? Very rare except for Macs, and it is expensive as hell. Pretty much everywhere else you get cheapo HD 4400 or HD4600. I know there are exceptions, but it is really disappointing to see Intel making so much progress with integrated graphics and putting the low end solutions in most applications.

Also, regarding Broadwell, even if they can get a really high number of gflops, that does not necessarily translate into equivalent improvements in real world performance.

 

[sm625]

Quad channel DDR4 = > 100GB/s.

60W cpu + 180W gpu = ideal ratio for gaming. Can easily be dissipated using a $20 cooling solution.

Total power of 240W. Nowhere near the limit of cooling.

There is no reason we cant have a 60W cpu and a 180W gpu and 4 channel DDR3 in an APU.

 

[AtenRa]

And why wouldn't they produce a 200W APU? They made the FX9590...

OEMs will not use a 200W APU, simple as that.

FX 220W CPUs were only used by Overclocking/High End System boutiques, not by HP/Dell etc.

 

[NTMBK]

Quad channel DDR4 = > 100GB/s.

60W cpu + 180W gpu = ideal ratio for gaming. Can easily be dissipated using a $20 cooling solution.

Total power of 240W. Nowhere near the limit of cooling.

There is no reason we cant have a 60W cpu and a 180W gpu and 4 channel DDR3 in an APU.

The only issue is that we could do with a new standardised platform to handle these high TDPs. GPUs get away with it by taking up two whole slots with a cooler which vents directly out of the rear of the PC. Updating ATX to make it more suited towards airflow would be great. You see plenty of decent solutions in high end workstations (my Dell 7600 cools 260W of CPU, for instance) but they're certainly not standard ATX layouts. Something close to BTX, but perhaps with only a couple of expansion slots, would work pretty well.

 

[NTMBK]

OEMs will not use a 200W APU, simple as that.

FX 220W CPUs were only used by Overclocking/High End System boutiques, not by HP/Dell etc.

Most OEMs don't use a 150W graphics card either.

 

[AtenRa]

Why 200W? Is the CPU part that inefficent? Even at 125W it should be possible to mix a 7770Ghz(110$) class GPU with a CPU.

Simple, when the dGPU is 100W+ then your APU that also includes 80-100W CPU will be 200W+.

HD7750 = 75W
HD7770 = 100W
HD7790 = 85-90W

Even if you pair a 22nm Quad core Intel Haswell to the above dGPUs you will get more than 125W. And that just to reach 75-85W dGPU performance. Now why do you believe they used Jaquar cores in the PS4-XBone ??

 

[AtenRa]

Most OEMs don't use a 150W graphics card either.

Exactly what im talking about. Even high end gamers would not buy a 200W APU, why would AMD even try to make one (except for Consoles).

Intel Iris Pro is custom made silicon like AMDs PS4 and XBone. The only one that wanted Iris Pro is only Apple. Low volume, high price product in not what 99% of OEMs care about. It was also a good opportunity for Intel to get high benchmark numbers and use it for Marketing.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Simple, when the dGPU is 100W+ then your APU that also includes 80-100W CPU will be 200W+.

HD7750 = 75W
HD7770 = 100W
HD7790 = 85-90W

Even if you pair a 22nm Quad core Intel Haswell to the above dGPUs you will get more than 125W. And that just to reach 75-85W dGPU performance. Now why do you believe they used Jaquar cores in the PS4-XBone ??

You need to remember those TDP numbers are with memory and VRM. And GDDR5 is very power hungry.

The 7770 is listed at 80W here:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6837/...w-feat-sapphire-the-first-desktop-sea-islands

 

[ShintaiDK]

Exactly what im talking about. Even high end gamers would not buy a 200W APU, why would AMD even try to make one (except for Consoles).

Intel Iris Pro is custom made silicon like AMDs PS4 and XBone. The only one that wanted Iris Pro is only Apple. Low volume, high price product in not what 99% of OEMs care about. It was also a good opportunity for Intel to get high benchmark numbers and use it for Marketing.

Iris Pro is sold to more than Apple. And it will be even more widespread with Haswell.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Haswell GT3e has 832 GFLOPS, so GT4 with 1.6GFLOPS seems plenty feasible. And 2133MHz DDR3 paired with a 128MB eDRAM cache should still give reasonable bandwidth, if not hitting GDDR5 level.

Please note that I didn't say "impossible", only "I believe it when I see it". I would think a more reasonable number of EU's to expect would be around 60. Then we're looking at around 1-1,2Tflops. Which I admit is pretty impressive for an IGP. Only thing is the 2008 HD4850/70 could do that. You should also consider this is Intel's absolute highest performance option. Its not likely to come cheap (or to the desktop for that matter), and I'm almost willing to bet you won't see a lot of them in mainstream offers...

And the problem will also be price. Look at GT3e. Where do you actually see it? Very rare except for Macs, and it is expensive as hell. Pretty much everywhere else you get cheapo HD 4400 or HD4600. I know there are exceptions, but it is really disappointing to see Intel making so much progress with integrated graphics and putting the low end solutions in most applications.

Also, regarding Broadwell, even if they can get a really high number of gflops, that does not necessarily translate into equivalent improvements in real world performance.

Completely agree. The cheapest CPU with Iris Pro 5200 has a list price of $440. It just goes up from there, the top end i7-4950HQ cost $657. You can buy an awful amount of graphics card for that, and the real caveat is that the 4950HQ is "only" about as fast as a desktop GT640. A card that costs ~$80...

Long live the "halo product" effect.

 

[inf64]

I can't believe you people want AMD to create APU monster with 200W TDP spec while you are kicking AMD left and right for their "furnace" FX9xxx (which do perform like top of the line Haswell i5/i7s in a LOT of cases, games included).

AMD won't be making 200W APUs as nobody would buy them. These would be gigantic chips with lower yields and lower performance than what you can get with APU+ HybridCF. New CF optimizations(both SW and HW) that came in with 280x and Hawaii practically eliminated the frame latency issues and I can't wait to see Kaveri+7750 benchmarked in HyrbidCF mode. It will be awesome combination from both pure perf. and perf./$ POVs.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Completely agree. The cheapest CPU with Iris Pro 5200 has a list price of $440. It just goes up from there, the top end i7-4950HQ cost $657. You can buy an awful amount of graphics card for that, and the real caveat is that the 4950HQ is "only" about as fast as a desktop GT640. A card that costs ~$80...

Long live the "halo product" effect.

You forgot to mention what the HD4600 one cost. And that would be 383$. So Iris Pro only cost you 60$ extra. And the CPUs are all mobile, try see how much dGPU you can get there if you wish to stay with prices. And note it needs to be mobile dGPUs. Not to mention the wattage issue of your dGPUs with the same performance.

 

[mikk]

I will believe Broadwell GT4 can do 2Tflops when I see it. That'll require between HD7850 and HD7870 level performance, and I just don't see that happening. Lets say they double the number of EU's from 40 to 80. That times 4 equals 320 shaders more-or-less (rough simplification). Even the 6800K has 384, the HD7850 has 1024 and the HD7870 1280.

You cannot compare AMD shaders to Intel shaders. Intels shaders are more powerful, hence why AMD need much more shaders. GT3 with 40 EUs has ~800 Gflops computing power. I think this is more than Richland A10 with 384 Shader units. With Skylake I think we will see 2+ Tflop with GT4.

 

[AtenRa]

Iris Pro is sold to more than Apple. And it will be even more widespread with Haswell.

It still is a low Volume High Priced product.

 

[Pilum]

Completely agree. The cheapest CPU with Iris Pro 5200 has a list price of $440.

i5-4570R @ $288. And Crystalwell currently is on the N0 process - next year it moves to N-1, which changes the economics considerably. This will be a nice dumping place for "excess" 22nm capacity.

 

[AtenRa]

i5-4570R @ $288.

Where exactly did you see that price ??

 

[Phynaz]

It still is a low Volume High Priced product.

Depends upon how you define low volume. I'll bet you Iris Pro shipments will be equivalent to a large percentage of AMD's entire mobile volume in units, and may even surpass surpass AMD's entire volume in revenue.

Put in on your calendar and we can check back at the end of '14.

 

[Pilum]

Where exactly did you see that price ??

Here.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

You forgot to mention what the HD4600 one cost. And that would be 383$. So Iris Pro only cost you 60$ extra. And the CPUs are all mobile, try see how much dGPU you can get there if you wish to stay with prices. And note it needs to be mobile dGPUs. Not to mention the wattage issue of your dGPUs with the same performance.

You think for a second, that if Intel made a full-on desktop equivalent it would be any cheaper? Big die + eRAM doesn't come cheap. I'm not thinking about the R series, those have lower clocks and less cache then a 4770K.

A hypothetical 4770K+ with eRAM would be very nice, but very expensive for relatively low performance (below GT640'ish). It would make for one hell of a HTPC though.

You cannot compare AMD shaders to Intel shaders. Intels shaders are more powerful, hence why AMD need much more shaders. GT3 with 40 EUs has ~800 Gflops computing power. I think this is more than Richland A10 with 384 Shader units. With Skylake I think we will see 2+ Tflop with GT4.

You're quite right. They use hugely different architectures. Hence the "roughly simplified" label... ()

 

[Gloomy]

Question, but it's a bit off-topic. Whatever happened to Intel's video card that they were developing? Have they given up on discrete GPUs?

 

[Shivansps]

APUs will never get more performance than $60-70.00 dGPU market.

dGPU segment will not have any problem above that price point.

AMD will not do it by itselft, they are not going to shoot in the foot like that, but Intel may force their hand, not so long ago AMD could choose at will how much IGP performance give, but with Intel improving IGPs this is not true anymore.

AMD is forced to keep up better igp than Intel, or at least competitive ones, not like the dissaster with Kabini, that eventually will start to eat up all dgpu segments, the low end dgpus is already gone, only nvidia keep offering shitty things like the GT610/620 that performs worse than igps.

 

[tweakboy]

Cant wait!!!!!!!!!

for my steak to get ready.. hmmmm

 

[LegSWAT]

i5-4570R @ $288. And Crystalwell currently is on the N0 process - next year it moves to N-1, which changes the economics considerably. This will be a nice dumping place for "excess" 22nm capacity.

So, you assume that Intel's 22nm production prices drop because they upgraded fabs to 14nm production?

 

[monstercameron]

AMD will not do it by itselft, they are not going to shoot in the foot like that, but Intel may force their hand, not so long ago AMD could choose at will how much IGP performance give, but with Intel improving IGPs this is not true anymore.

AMD is forced to keep up better igp than Intel, or at least competitive ones, not like the dissaster with Kabini, that eventually will start to eat up all dgpu segments, the low end dgpus is already gone, only nvidia keep offering shitty things like the GT610/620 that performs worse than igps.

can you please stop trolling?
kabini is a fine product and the smart people at nvidia still think it is worth producing very lowend dgpus so who are you to judge?
also nothing is stopping intel from producing overpowered igps, same as with amd, they decide based on many factors and their overall strategy.

 

[Shivansps]

Im trolling? everytime i prove you wrong in you own game you just shut up for a moment then start with the same nonsence again in some other tropic.

The GT610 is a rebranded GT520 that is WORSE than a HD3000. There are a few benchmarks around that proves that plus i did my own tests because i have one.
http://i.imgur.com/6ywoHhe.png

Kabini is a 15W ultrabook processor and its igp perform worse than last generation HD4000 on a I3-3217U http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/kabini-a4-5000-review,3518-7.html

That is not a fine product at all, it could be outperformed by Haswell GT1, yet still you call pointless a I3 or Celeron Haswell, among some other things.