Was AMD holding back on their fusion line?

Blitzvogel · Apr 13, 2014

Shaydza said:
I wonder what kind of performance boost would be achieved by tri channel memory vs the current dual channel architecture currently used. Correct me if I am wrong but wouldn't that lift memory bandwidth by 50% and seriously help apu performance without having to adopt a new memory type.

Requires a third memory controller on the APU and more memory traces on the motherboard which makes it more expensive.

sefsefsefsef · Apr 13, 2014

raghu78 said:
AMD's desktop APUs did not have a good solution until now. GDDR5 was high power / high bandwidth and DDR3 was low power / low bandwith. Only now does HBM solve both bandwidth and power concerns. Here is a keynote by AMD Sr Fellow and 3D stacking (HBM) program manager, Bryan Black.

http://www.microarch.org/micro46/files/keynote1.pdf

I was at that talk, and it was much more exciting than just looking through the slide deck would have you believe. He did an excellent job of selling this notion to me and all the other academics that 2.5D was going to be used for *everything* in the near future.

I snapped this picture from the presentation, and this slide seems to have been edited out from the version released to the public:

http://i.imgur.com/hxQCe8N.jpg

It looks cartoony, but that's my phone's camera's fault. It's a photograph of a real prototype.

SPBHM · Apr 13, 2014

AtenRa said:
In order to have almost the same CPU and iGPU performance of Kaveri A10-7850K, you will need an Intel Core i3 + a GT630.

A10-7850K = $185
TEAM 2x 4GB DDR-3 2133MHz CL10 = $73

Total = $258

Intel Core i3 4330 = $140
Cheapest 2x 4GB memory = $60
EVGA GT 630 DDR-3 (same card used in the review bellow) = $64

Total = $260

http://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-...mes-A10-7850K-vs-Intel-Core-i3-GeForce-GT-630

You can go with the Core i3 4130 and save a $15 but you will loose CPU performance.

You get higher Graphics performance and the ability to use a Slim mini-itx case with the A10-7850K plus you can OC both the CPU and iGPU.
With the Core i3 you get higher CPU performance and perhaps lower power consumption but you cannot OC and you will need to buy a bigger case.

I will say that Kaveri is competitive with current Haswell parts, but it all depends on your usage and what you are looking to get from you system.

"You can go with the Core i3 4130 and save a $15 but you will loose CPU performance. "

really? you also loose CPU performance by going with the 7850k, 4130 is a superior CPU for gaming,

newegg prices:

i3 4130 $125
7850K $185

that's $60 free for a VGA and a faster gaming CPU.
you can also save money with memory as you shown, and also MB in some cases, it looks like cheap fm2+ MBs can't handle the 7850K power requirements so well http://www.anandtech.com/show/7914/msi-a88xme35-review/11, and the cheaper A55 boards don't even support sata III, USB 3.0

the 250x(=7770) is only $99 and it destroys the 7850K IGP,

oh and, 760K (3.8GHz richland) = $90
250x = $99
cheap 8GB = $60

the 7850K is not a good solution for gaming based on price and performance, not even close.
for a cheap small PC the 7600 could be compelling if only it was available, the lower TDP and specially price are the key.

the consoles CPU would be a very poor solution for desktops...
if they could (they can't) run at 2x the clock it would still suffer for a few games.

the IGP portion is only as fast as the R7 265 realistically which is $150 at newegg, the CPU portion well... for a desktop the 760K would be a lot better.

and if you go with an "APU" you have a problem, the 2GB from the 265 would not be enough, so you have to use more money for 8GB of GDDR5 to not kill the GPU performance... so yes... AMD would need to sell it as a board with all the stuff soldered,

another thing, since the Jaguar cores are not enough, and AMD only makes "bulldozer cores" at GloFo, and never built a huge GPUs at GloFo I think you will see why such product doesn't exist.

VirtualLarry · Apr 13, 2014

SPBHM said:
another thing, since the Jaguar cores are not enough, and AMD only makes "bulldozer cores" at GloFo, and never built a huge GPUs at GloFo I think you will see why such product doesn't exist.

No, AMD makes the AM1 Kabini socketed CPUs at GloFo too, now.

SPBHM · Apr 13, 2014

VirtualLarry said:
No, AMD makes the AM1 Kabini socketed CPUs at GloFo too, now.

I know, but Kabini is not a huge GPU made at GloFo, nor is a "Bulldozer" (BD-PD-SR) core made at TSMC

for a decent big PC APU they would probably need 3 modules (PD or SR), some l3 cache, a huge GPU (like Pitcairn) with 256bit GDDR5.

everything is possible, but it's probably no small challenge.

nothing like copy and past the work they have done for the PS4.
because well, 1.6Ghz Jaguar is garbage for PC gaming with a 7850 level GPU.

AtenRa · Apr 14, 2014

BSim500 said:
Problem is for only $10-20 more, you could get an i3-4130 + GT640 / R7 250, at which point you're suddenly gaining +40-70% higher min & avg fps over the A10-7850K / GT630 level of performance

The problem with you logic is that we are evaluating if A10-7850k at current price of $185 is competitive with Intel Haswell Core i3. And in order for Haswell i3 to have the same graphics performance and keep the total price close to A10-7850K, core i3 needs at least a GT630.

Now if you want to evaluate what hardware has the best price performance ratio then again it is not the Core i3.

Core i3 4130 = $125
R7 250 = $89

Total = $214

Athlon 750K = $80
R7 260X 2GB = $140

Total = $22

AtenRa · Apr 14, 2014

SPBHM said:
"You can go with the Core i3 4130 and save a $15 but you will loose CPU performance. "

really? you also loose CPU performance by going with the 7850k, 4130 is a superior CPU for gaming,

Why dont you read exactly what i said ?? "You loose CPU performance" was against Core i3 4330.
Also i have said that A10-7850K has lower CPU performance and Core i3 has lower iGPU performance. You can OC the A10-7850K and have equal or better CPU performance (MT), but you really need to add a dGPU with Core i3 to reach Kaveris iGPU performance.
You can also OC the Core i3 iGPU but no matter how high you go you will never reach A10-7850K performance, not to mention that you can also OC Kaveris iGPU.

SPBHM said:
newegg prices:

i3 4130 $125
7850K $185

that's $60 free for a VGA and a faster gaming CPU.

Yes you have more money for a dGPU but you can only buy the GT630 with that amount. So at the end, for the same amount of money you get the A10-7850K or the Core i3 + GT630.

Edit: the only Core i3 that can directly be compared to A10-7850K is the one with the GT3 graphics. But since it is only a OEM SKU we dont even consider it here. And even that SKU has inferior Gaming performance when compared to A10-7850K.

http://pclab.pl/art56975-4.html

SPBHM said:
also MB in some cases, it looks like cheap fm2+ MBs can't handle the 7850K power requirements so well http://www.anandtech.com/show/7914/msi-a88xme35-review/11,

I dont know which motherboards AT have used, but i havent seen any of that problem with the ones i have used from ASUS and Asrock.
In my Thief Mantle review, i have used the mini-itx Asrock FM2A88X-itx and OCed the A10-7700K at 4.3GHz using the default Heat-Sink and never experienced any of the above problems.

bunnyfubbles · Apr 14, 2014

VirtualLarry said:
I would love to see a consumer version of the PS4 APU, complete with GDDR5 used for system RAM. I think it would kick ass, relatively speaking. But Sony probably wouldn't let that happen.

It would indeed be interesting, if AMD made an 8-core small-core APU for the desktop space, and added enough GPU CUs to make it comparable to console APUs for gaming purposes.

the console CPUs are low power garbage, the only thing good about the PS4 APU is the relatively beefy GPU portion of the chip (and of course its memory interface with GDDR5, of which the Xbone APU with its 32MB eSRAM might make a better translation to the desktop environment, as we already have Intel chips with 128MB eDRAM to alleviate the memory bandwidth problem)

while I could get behind the beefier iGPU, I really wouldn't care for a closely translated console APU; the CPU would just be too slow (even if we double the clock rate allowed by a higher TDP), give me even the less than ideal steamroller cores in Kaveri over Jaguar any day, there's just no way we'd see a timely enough transition in PC software development that could accommodate 8 pitiful CPU cores

BSim500 · Apr 14, 2014

AtenRa said:
Core i3 4130 = $125
R7 250 = $89

Total = $214

Athlon 750K = $80
R7 260X 2GB = $140

Total = $220

Seriously, at such a low baseline, you're better off buying a Pentium or 2nd hand i3 on Ebay than dip down to an 750K... Its single-thread performance is appalling and that is *still* what's driving many games even in 2014.

SPBHM · Apr 14, 2014

AtenRa said:
Why dont you read exactly what i said ?? "You loose CPU performance" was against Core i3 4330.
Also i have said that A10-7850K has lower CPU performance and Core i3 has lower iGPU performance. You can OC the A10-7850K and have equal or better CPU performance (MT), but you really need to add a dGPU with Core i3 to reach Kaveris iGPU performance.
You can also OC the Core i3 iGPU but no matter how high you go you will never reach A10-7850K performance, not to mention that you can also OC Kaveris iGPU.

Yes you have more money for a dGPU but you can only buy the GT630 with that amount. So at the end, for the same amount of money you get the A10-7850K or the Core i3 + GT630.

Edit: the only Core i3 that can directly be compared to A10-7850K is the one with the GT3 graphics. But since it is only a OEM SKU we dont even consider it here. And even that SKU has inferior Gaming performance when compared to A10-7850K.

http://pclab.pl/art56975-4.html

I dont know which motherboards AT have used, but i havent seen any of that problem with the ones i have used from ASUS and Asrock.
In my Thief Mantle review, i have used the mini-itx Asrock FM2A88X-itx and OCed the A10-7700K at 4.3GHz using the default Heat-Sink and never experienced any of the above problems.

I know exactly what you said, it's just that there is no logic in not saving that money in this comparison, losing performance to the 4330 or 4770k is meaningless if it's still faster than the 7850K as a gaming CPU.

are you sure? that's at least $73 newegg have some lowly R7 240/250s GDDR5 and other stuff around this price, GT 630 is just crap, really old and not appropriate for gaming at all, but it doesn't make a difference because it makes no sense to artificially limit your budget to $260 when you can get so much more for a small difference,

GT3 core i3 doesn't really exist basically (like a 7600, or worse), it can't be compared, and it would be a bad choice anyway, because much faster VGAs are so cheap.

Anandtech couldn't run the A88X board from MSI properly without additional cooling, it might not be the case with most boards, but it just highlights the advantage from lower power CPU when building a cheap PC.

but anyway, the most important thing is, even an AMD CPU + discrete graphics combination completely kills the 7850K in terms of price/performance for the same money... it would probably be the same with a bigger APU.

TurtleCrusher · Apr 14, 2014

ShintaiDK said:
PC buyers dont want a great GPU with an anemic CPU that can barely do regular tasks. Its completely different.

The CPU isn't anemic at all. That CPU would be great for someone doing 3D, picture or movie editing. Eight OOO CPU cores attached to a super high bandwidth memory subsystem with a very solid GPU built in? Sign me up.

Even regular consumers it would be great. Having 8 cores you could multitask like there's no tomorrow. With today's workloads being more parallel, more threads equal a non-linear improvement in computing experience.

For example, back in the day Athlon 64 ruled over Netburst. Now compare Windows 7 and using Excel on a P4 2.4c w/HT to an Athlon 3500+. If you can, the P4 is now far more responsive in not only general performance, but high intensity workloads as well. Benchmarks will still heavily favor the Athlon, but the user could still listen to internet radio and check their email on the P4 while excel was calculating. The 3500+? Not so much.

The same concept applies to the topic at hand. Highly parallel processors dramatically improve user responsiveness, which is the ultimate barometer of a fast computer. An 8 core jaguar APU would be great for us consumers. I believe the speeds could be upped to 2.5GHz for desktop users without a massive tdp shift.

I would even wager that a 10 core 2.0ghz atom Z530 cores with HT would be a very responsive work processor.

AtenRa · Apr 14, 2014

BSim500 said:
LOL. If you're going to drop down that low (an Athlon 750K) to "prove a point", then the nearest overall competitor is a Haswell Pentium G3220 for $10 less and up to 40% higher fps on many games... :sneaky:

http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/radek/2013/pentiumhsw/wykresy/def_n/assassin_1920.png
http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/radek/2013/pentiumhsw/wykresy/def_n/gta4_1920.png
http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/radek/2013/pentiumhsw/wykresy/def_n/skyrim_1920.png
http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/radek/2013/pentiumhsw/wykresy/def_n/w2_1920.png
http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/radek/2013/pentiumhsw/wykresy/def_n/civ5_1920.png
http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/radek/2013/pentiumhsw/wykresy/def_n/shogun2_1920.png
http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/radek/2013/pentiumhsw/wykresy/def_n/sc2_1920.png
http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/radek/2013/pentiumhsw/wykresy/def_n/fsx_1920.png
http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/radek/2013/pentiumhsw/wykresy/def_n/wot_1920.png
http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/radek/2013/pentiumhsw/wykresy/def_n/arma2_noc_1920.png
http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/radek/2013/pentiumhsw/wykresy/def_n/bf3_1920.png
http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/radek/2013/pentiumhsw/wykresy/def_n/metro_1920.png

In fact, even a Celeron G1620 beats it in Skyrim, Metro 2033, Assassins Creed, etc... Seriously, at such a low baseline, you're better off buying a Pentium or 2nd hand i3 on Ebay than dip down to an 750K... Its single-thread performance is appalling and that is *still* what's driving many games even in 2014.

The Athlon 750K is faster than any Celeron/Pentium and provides same CPU performance as Core i3 in most of the MT applications. When you evaluating if A10-7850K is competitive against Core i3 you evaluate the entire package, not only in Gaming. The Athlon 750K can be OC to 4GHz with default heat-sink and provide way higher MT performance than any Celeron or Pentium. Also, Dual-Core CPUs start to under-perform in newer games.

So again, we are not talking Gaming only here but if Kaveri is competitive against Intel SKUs in the same segment.

NTMBK · Apr 14, 2014

BSim500 said:
LOL. If you're going to drop down that low (an Athlon 750K) to "prove a point", then the nearest overall competitor is a Haswell Pentium G3220 for $10 less and up to 40% higher fps on many games... :sneaky:

http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/radek/2013/pentiumhsw/wykresy/def_n/assassin_1920.png
http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/radek/2013/pentiumhsw/wykresy/def_n/gta4_1920.png
http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/radek/2013/pentiumhsw/wykresy/def_n/skyrim_1920.png
http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/radek/2013/pentiumhsw/wykresy/def_n/w2_1920.png
http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/radek/2013/pentiumhsw/wykresy/def_n/civ5_1920.png
http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/radek/2013/pentiumhsw/wykresy/def_n/shogun2_1920.png
http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/radek/2013/pentiumhsw/wykresy/def_n/sc2_1920.png
http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/radek/2013/pentiumhsw/wykresy/def_n/fsx_1920.png
http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/radek/2013/pentiumhsw/wykresy/def_n/wot_1920.png
http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/radek/2013/pentiumhsw/wykresy/def_n/arma2_noc_1920.png
http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/radek/2013/pentiumhsw/wykresy/def_n/bf3_1920.png
http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/radek/2013/pentiumhsw/wykresy/def_n/metro_1920.png

In fact, even a Celeron G1620 beats it in Skyrim, Metro 2033, Assassins Creed, etc... Seriously, at such a low baseline, you're better off buying a Pentium or 2nd hand i3 on Ebay than dip down to an 750K... Its single-thread performance is appalling and that is *still* what's driving many games even in 2014.

We're still comparing just average framerates in 2014?! A two-thread CPU is a recipe for a stuttering mess. Just look at this:

And yet in the same test, the framerate looks perfectly acceptable:

http://techreport.com/review/23662/amd-a10-5800k-and-a8-5600k-trinity-apus-reviewed/10

A two-thread processor just won't cut it any more.

BSim500 · Apr 14, 2014

AtenRa said:
The Athlon 750K is faster than any Celeron/Pentium and provides same CPU performance as Core i3 in most of the MT applications.

When you evaluating if A10-7850K is competitive against Core i3 you evaluate the entire package, not only in Gaming. So again, we are not talking Gaming only here but if Kaveri is competitive against Intel SKUs in the same segment.

The whole point of both this thread and buying a discrete R7 260X card in the first place *is* gaming... And most gamers care far more about 30% higher fps whilst they're sitting at their computer playing games, rather than whether or not the one 10 min Youtube vid they encode per week takes 5min vs 6m 30s and both will be idle anyway long before they get back from cooking dinner, walking the dog, having a shower, etc...

When you're on such a rock-bottom baseline budget as that, you tend to prioritize anyway to get the most out of your equipment - like setting a ton of video's to be encoded overnight or at work / school. And if you don't have a ton of video's to encode, then it doesn't really matter anyway...

AtenRa · Apr 14, 2014

SPBHM said:
I know exactly what you said, it's just that there is no logic in not saving that money in this comparison, losing performance to the 4330 or 4770k is meaningless if it's still faster than the 7850K as a gaming CPU.

Only if you compare both with the same High-End GPU. But we are evaluating the SKUs alone and if one is competitive to the other. Yes the Core i3 with a High-End GPU may be better, but that is not the only scenario one CPU will ever be used for.

SPBHM said:
are you sure? that's at least $73 newegg have some lowly R7 240/250s GDDR5 and other stuff around this price, GT 630 is just crap, really old and not appropriate for gaming at all, but it doesn't make a difference because it makes no sense to artificially limit your budget to $260 when you can get so much more for a small difference,

We evaluate the performance at that price point because that is the price of the A10-7850K + 8GB of 2133MHz memory. What Hardware can you have at that price that is close to CPU and iGPU performance ??? That is the question here, not what hardware is better in one or the other.

SPBHM said:
GT3 core i3 doesn't really exist basically (like a 7600, or worse), it can't be compared, and it would be a bad choice anyway, because much faster VGAs are so cheap.

I mentioned the Core i3 GT3 SKU because it is technically and performance wise equivalent to Kaveri.

SPBHM said:
Anandtech couldn't run the A88X board from MSI properly without additional cooling, it might not be the case with most boards, but it just highlights the advantage from lower power CPU when building a cheap PC.

Again it is an MSI board that has the problem, i dont believe it has to do with the CPU because every motherboard would have the same problem. I have also used low end FM2/+ boards without any of that problems.
In fact, i have used the ASUS F2A85-M that is an older design without cooling on the VRMs and i could OC the A10-6800K at 4,8GHz without any problems.

SPBHM said:
but anyway, the most important thing is, even an AMD CPU + discrete graphics combination completely kills the 7850K in terms of price/performance for the same money... it would probably be the same with a bigger APU.

Yes but we are not evaluating that here, we are evaluating if A10-7850K the SKU is competitive against Core i3 both in CPU and iGPU. And the fact remains that A10-7850K provides better graphics and nice MT CPU performance even without OC and Core i3 provides better CPU performance and worst GPU performance.

AtenRa · Apr 14, 2014

BSim500 said:
The whole point of both this thread

The title of this thread is if AMD was holding fusion back and if Todays APUs are competitive against Intels SKUs, so it is only about APU performance alone. The faster you realize it the batter for you and the rest.

BSim500 said:
and buying a discrete R7 260X card in the first place *is* gaming... And most gamers care far more about 30% higher fps whilst they're sitting at their computer playing games, rather than whether or not the one 10 min Youtube vid they encode per week takes 5min vs 6m 30s and both will be idle anyway long before they get back from cooking dinner, walking the dog, having a shower, etc...

When you're on such a rock-bottom baseline budget as that, you tend to prioritize anyway to get the most out of your equipment - like setting a ton of video's to be encoded overnight or at work / school. And if you don't have a ton of video's to encode, then it doesn't really matter anyway...

You have completely lost the context of the thread, this is not about gaming only, this is evaluating each APU alone.

AtenRa · Apr 14, 2014

NTMBK said:
A two-thread processor just won't cut it any more.

Well, they havent used a dual core with todays games to really understand that. They only see the avg fps on reviews and believe that a Dual core is better.

If you only see the avg on the graph bellow you would believe that Pentium G3420 is the best CPU in price performance, but with minimums at 15fps you start to understand that something is going wrong. And i can attest that Thief is unplayable with the Pentium G3420 no matter if it gets high avg frames (in D3D).

NTMBK · Apr 14, 2014

AtenRa said:
Well, they havent used a dual core with todays games to really understand that. They only see the avg fps on reviews and believe that a Dual core is better.

I try to be more careful with my terminology.

A dual core with Hyperthreading (i.e. an i3) will suffice, but a two-thread part will not.

AtenRa · Apr 14, 2014

NTMBK said:
I try to be more careful with my terminology. A dual core with Hyperthreading (i.e. an i3) will suffice, but a two-thread part will not.

Yes, i agree im talking about two threaded CPUs.

AtenRa · Apr 14, 2014

And this is how competitive Kaveri really is,

A8-7600 65W TDP is faster than Core i7 4770K 65W TDP Iris Pro while consuming the same power. Core i3 GT3 will even be slower than Core i5 Iris Pro.

http://pclab.pl/art56975.html

desura · Apr 14, 2014

So from what I gather...

desktop APU needs to have more CPU power, while consoles can devote more to graphical due to the dedicated nature. But PC have to be general purpose.

So you cannot lower the CPU power on a PC. That limits the transistor budget available to the GPU side of the APU. That and price considerations, since a more powerful APU would be like $300 and hard to sell.

It seems like the PS4 can get away with it, but the CPU is severely limited, probably like in Core2Duo territory.

frozentundra123456 · Apr 14, 2014

While the 7850k is not a bad chip, per se, at 185.00 it is a terrible value.

Scenario 1: Cheap general use box. A pentium at 100 dollars less is more than sufficient.
Scenario 2: Budget gaming box. Athlon x4 750K plus HD7770. Same price for cpu plus dgpu, and no need to buy expensive ram. If the money saved on ram is used to upgrade the gpu even further, the comparison becomes even more lopsided.
Scenario 3: Max cpu performance on a budget. A low end i5 is better in both single and multithreaded performance at the same price.

Even if one for some reason (low power SFF pc??) wants so-so cpu performance with the best igpu performance, the older Richland APUs at a much lower price are very competitive with Kaveri on a price/performance metric.

Yuriman · Apr 14, 2014

desura said:
So from what I gather...

desktop APU needs to have more CPU power, while consoles can devote more to graphical due to the dedicated nature. But PC have to be general purpose.

So you cannot lower the CPU power on a PC. That limits the transistor budget available to the GPU side of the APU. That and price considerations, since a more powerful APU would be like $300 and hard to sell.

It seems like the PS4 can get away with it, but the CPU is severely limited, probably like in Core2Duo territory.

Precisely.

Digression:

Also, I'm with AtenRa here in that I don't think I'd buy a dual core for gaming. TBH, I wouldn't buy a 750k either, though, but given budget restrictions it's probably a better all-around choice. It'll be terrible in Blizzard games, but generally speaking it's going to provide a better experience, and FM2 chips have fantastic idle power draw.

I recently had a $500 hard cap to build my younger brother a gaming machine, and ended up putting a locked i5 and a 7790 in it. I got a great deal on the 7790, and as I figure it, the i5 is going to be plenty for a long time, and next major holiday we can sell the video card, add $100 to his budget, and move up to something like a 270x.

Food for thought, you can get away with single channel RAM on an i3 allowing you to save some $$ by getting a motherboard with only 2 RAM slots and go with a single higher density stick. (still leaves room for expansion)

frozentundra123456 · Apr 14, 2014

desura said:
So from what I gather...

desktop APU needs to have more CPU power, while consoles can devote more to graphical due to the dedicated nature. But PC have to be general purpose.

So you cannot lower the CPU power on a PC. That limits the transistor budget available to the GPU side of the APU. That and price considerations, since a more powerful APU would be like $300 and hard to sell.

It seems like the PS4 can get away with it, but the CPU is severely limited, probably like in Core2Duo territory.

These are pretty much correct, but also APUs have severe bandwidth restrictions in the current environment, so adding more gpu power would be wasted for the most part.

Enigmoid · Apr 14, 2014

AtenRa said:
And this is how competitive Kaveri really is,
http://pclab.pl/art56975.html

That graph is showing exactly what AMD did wrong. 512 gcn cores on kaveri is pointless. Extremely minimal performance gain for a larger die.

IMO Kaveri should have been 384 gcn cores. So were they holding back in that aspect? No, they were overextending themselves.

Was AMD holding back on their fusion line?

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