AMD "Steamroller/Excavator" -info, speculations and experience

[FlanK3r]

Im looking forward for Asus A88X-Pro. Maybe new designed heatsing and 6+2, or some Deluxe version.

[AMDforME]

Well "on time" if you consider Feb '14 on time, which most people don't. AMD delays everything CPU side though so in a way it is on time for them.

Kaveri desktop is shipping in Q3 '13 and Kaveri laptop in Q1 '14, as AMD has stated for some time now. Road maps always have disclaimers as they are typically projecting 6-18 months in advance of product shipping. Intel missed their projected ship dates on both Ivy Bridge and Haswell so it's not just AMD who has had to push back slightly from the published road maps.

[The Stilt]

Gigabyte writes that F2A88X-UP4 is a 8+2: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/pro...px?pid=4709#ov

Check the amount of the inductors, it is 6+2 phase.

[Fottemberg]

Could we find two more inductors under the huge heat sink?

[The Stilt]

Could we find two more inductors under the huge heat sink?

Nope.

The F2A88X-UP4 is a slighty modified and upgraded F2A85X-UP4 board.
Nothing wrong with that as the latter one is technically already the best FM2 board ever existed.

I'm pretty confident a F2A85X-UP4 can be modified to support FM2r2 Kaveri APUs due this fact.
The F2A88X-UP4 bios can be patched to support the older IT8728F EC LPC/IO and the support for the ETRON USB3 controller (instead of VIA) should only be matter of the option rom in bios. Of course the socket needs to be modified to accept FM2r2 APUs by sanding down the keying bumps on the lid.

[EniGmA1987]

From the code stuff for Kaveri we see 4 channel memory support, but do we know for a fact this is quad channel with 64-bit channels that would go to 4 memory slots? Or could it be some sort of quad 32-bit channels designed for GDDR5? Unlikely that we will see some crazy GDDR5 memory slots or whatever, but I am thinking for some sort of embedded use.

[tbone8ty]

http://wccftech.com/amd-desktop-kave...s-gpu-spotted/

832 SP and 13 CU. :-)

[Yeroon]

http://www.planet3dnow.de/cms/wp-con...8cu-crypto.png

Does the 256-bit thing mean anything?

[Darakian]

Hard to say, but I like how kavieri has more memory bandwidth than richland even with slower memory. I really hope this is true

[The Stilt]

http://wccftech.com/amd-desktop-kave...s-gpu-spotted/

832 SP and 13 CU. :-)

Thats with a discrete card.
Kaveri has 8 SIMDs physically.

[FlanK3r]

AMD Kaveri support true audio?
kaveri gddr5 true audio

[Lightman]

I wondered exactly that when AMD announced TrueAudio for new Radeons! This is very sensible move as it will greatly help with adaptation of this new DSP. I hope that nVidia/older gen AMD users will still be able to enable TrueAdudio in APU while rendering game on their discrete GPU.

This might be not possible though if TrueAudio is using GPU data to calculate sound transformations. We will see

[Darakian]

I really hope we get some new info at the upcoming AMD developer conference. I really want to see what huma brings to the table.

Edit:
Came across these via hard. Take them with a grain of salt.
http://juanrga.com/en/AMD-kaveri-benchmark.html
http://www.overclock.net/t/1428372/a...ance-over-iris

[FlanK3r]

wow, if this test are true...The performance seems very good, near some core i5 chips!

[haylui]

wow, if this test are true...The performance seems very good, near some core i5 chips!

maybe if those benchmarking software were compiled by standard compiler, FX CPU will not looked so bad compared to Intel CPU

[FlanK3r]

But if I read is, its only simulation data in graphs

[tbone8ty]

I really hope we get some new info at the upcoming AMD developer conference. I really want to see what huma brings to the table.

Edit:
Came across these via hard. Take them with a grain of salt.
http://juanrga.com/en/AMD-kaveri-benchmark.html
http://www.overclock.net/t/1428372/a...ance-over-iris

i thought the stilt said it was using a discrete gpu not igpu

[xVeinx]

Honest question here: how excited are people over steamroller? While waiting for its release (Kaveri), I'm mulling the FM2 strategy and seeing it both makes sense and doesn't at the same time. Mostly I'm worried that they won't be able to pull a Phenom II out of their pockets like I feel they need to. Is the FM2 socket going to provide a processor that will be able to feed a mid-high end graphics card? Mantle, HuMA, and OpenCL aside, are the fundamentals there? HuMA is beautiful for HPC and scientific computing, but I'm not sure how well it will impact a typical consumer (there may be plenty of ways, sorry I'm ignorant there). I'm not disparaging AMD here, but just finding myself unsure of where they are trying to head with this and other upcoming processors...

[Darakian]

I'm reasonably excited. Honestly more for Kaveri than for an FX line product. I want to start playing with HUMA

[tbone8ty]

I wanna see how the 28nm process does for oveclocking and power consumption.

[vario]

Well i dont see anyone here changing from 8 core FX to 4 core Kaveri, it may be a fine chip for a second pc and/or some tinkering though.
Im still hoping that AMD will come to their senses and either release 8 core kaveri or do a am3+ FX steamroller.I was mulling about going s2011 but i cant take this kind of douchebagery on the intel side to do this :-)
On the other hand if it would clock like crazy, those 2 module kaveris maybe are closer to 4 core intels with all the changes.

[tbone8ty]

It would be awesome if they did produce an FX steamroller. I bet OC would be nice!

[informal]

I guess this might sound crazy, but I expect a ~4Ghz 2M/4T Kaveri to outperform 8350 in games. Maybe in some very thread heavy games it won't, but in majority of ~4T games we see today and in near future Kaveri IMO has a potential (on paper) to be a better gaming chip even with 2x less thread count.

[FlanK3r]

we must waiting few months. Im really looking forward how good will be iGPU nad HSA in practice.

[demonkevy666]

I guess this might sound crazy, but I expect a ~4Ghz 2M/4T Kaveri to outperform 8350 in games. Maybe in some very thread heavy games it won't, but in majority of ~4T games we see today and in near future Kaveri IMO has a potential (on paper) to be a better gaming chip even with 2x less thread count.

the only time FX series will get out done is single thread. Kaveri will still look a dual core in things like cinebench. I'm not talking about it reading 2 cores 4 threads either. I'm talking about the MP ratio on advance setting.