Six months ago, AMD introduced its Kaveri APU design to the desktop market. It represented a lot of firsts for the company. For instance, it was the first processor to feature what AMD calls a truly Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA). Its x86 execution cores are the first to leverage the Steamroller architecture, replacing the Piledriver design leveraged in both Trinity and Richland. Kaveri is also the first desktop APU armed with AMD's Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture, featuring many of the same building blocks at the heart of today's discrete Radeon graphics cards, offering TrueAudio functionality and support for AMD's Mantle graphics API.
On paper, and in practice, Kaveri is a compelling mainstream, budget-oriented SoC. You can read more about it in our launch coverage: AMD A10-7850K And A8-7600: Kaveri Gives Us A Taste Of HSA.

Unfortunately, the APU's life in the desktop space isn't easy. Kaveri is intended to operate within a broad range, from 15 to 95 W. AMD has already talked about sweet spots inside of that thermal envelope; right from the start, company representatives said this design does its best work at TDPs under 45 watts.
We also know that Kaveri's 28 nm SHP bulk silicon process optimizes density at the expense of higher clock rates, which could be another reason the mobile version proves more capable than anything AMD could enable on the desktop.

Indeed, when it comes to the desktop, the 45 W A8-7600 (an APU that we reviewed in January, but is still not available to purchase, by the way), serves up performance results that look impressive compared to the 95 W A10-7850K. In other words, you get relatively little extra in the benchmarks for the 50 W-higher power ceiling. In fact, in many cases, the Kaveri-based A10-7850K barely improves on the previous-generation A10-6800K, which offers more overclocking headroom thanks to its 32 nm SOI process.
Yes, Kaveri's Steamroller-based cores do get more work done per clock cycle than Piledriver. However, the architecture's advantages are largely masked by lower clock rates at comparable power levels. When the playing field is normalized by battery power, though, AMD says its modern APU design is at its best.

And so we now have fairly aggressive expectations, shaped by AMD's triumphant marketing message. At the end of the day, though, engineering has to live up to the PR team's promises. It's time to determine whether practice lives up to theory.
That's enough for their 8-core chips to catch up or surpass current i5s, right?
I sure hope not. North Bridges and HT Link are so 5 years ago.
That's enough for their 8-core chips to catch up or surpass current i5s, right?
I agree, though it still makes sense to keep one demanding game in the test suite to give perspective on where this hardware stands compared to dedicated graphics cards and high-end CPUs.
1080p and demanding games are not good benchmarks for this GPUs you must use less demanding games or test lower resolutions It is not the same benchmarking F1s than Nascars or electric cars
That's why we used Dota2, Grid2, and WoW... they have low system requirements, and ran fine.
Mantle only shows an advantage in Battlefield 4 in rare cases, regardless of the driver. The game also requires a ton of VRAM for Mantle to show a gain instead of a loss. I have an in-depth analysis coming soon.
Having said that, Thief shows impressive gains across the board in Mantle.
1080p and demanding games are not good benchmarks for this GPUs you must use less demanding games or test lower resolutions It is not the same benchmarking F1s than Nascars or electric cars
We *did* use 720p where the graphics processor couldn't handle it... in Battlefield 4
The FX-7600P worked fine at 1080p with Dota2, Grid2, and WoW, so why would we lower the resolution?
I take great pride in testing at real-world settings, and I often lower to 720p when 1080p is too demanding.
“That top-of-the-line FX-7600P is a completely functional Kaveri APU, with both of its Steamroller modules (four integer cores) and all 512 of its shaders enabled.”
“While AMD appears confident in the ULV Kaveri's ability to compete against Core i7-4500U, the higher TDP meant we needed to find an Intel-based platform with a comparable thermal ceiling. I tapped the 37 W Core i7-4702MQ within Acer's Aspire V3.”
37 W Core i7-4702MQ this a 380$ dollar part……….. way more than Kaveri
No Firestrike score.
I would prefer different benchmarks.
“AMD is trying to give the impression of fast, responsive performance, and our sample does seem to achieve that.”
“That top-of-the-line FX-7600P is a completely functional Kaveri APU, with both of its Steamroller modules (four integer cores) and all 512 of its shaders enabled.”
“While AMD appears confident in the ULV Kaveri's ability to compete against Core i7-4500U, the higher TDP meant we needed to find an Intel-based platform with a comparable thermal ceiling. I tapped the 37 W Core i7-4702MQ within Acer's Aspire V3.”
37 W Core i7-4702MQ this a 380$ dollar part……….. way more than Kaveri
No Firestrike score.
I would prefer different benchmarks
Hi h2323, great to see you again. I took the liberty of erasing your unproductive rhetoric to address your actual concerns:
1. You've listed the top three quotes with no comments beside them. Not sure what kind of point you're trying to make, there. Does that mean you like them?
2. AMD didn't provide pricing, so we compared a mobile Core i7 part with similar wattage AS PER AMD's DIRECTION. If you disagree with their decision, I encourage you to contact their PR team.
3. I can only assume you have no idea what Firestrike is for. As per Futuremark:
"Fire Strike is a showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for today's high-performance gaming PCs. It is our most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today."
Mobile integrated GPUs are not "high performance gaming PCs". Would you find it valuable to see benchmark results of a slideshow? We wouldn't.
4. You indicated that you would prefer different benchmarks, but didn't mention which ones, or why?
Have a great day!
Granted most of the tests in that review focus on gaming but AMD's not half bad in everyday tasks. Considering the price of i7-4702MQ, I feel its too expensive to be compared.