AMD has finally unveiled the mobile Kaveri line-up and the ten upcoming parts look promising.
The first three chips were leaked a couple of weeks ago and we found them to be quite interesting. The rest of the line-up is more of the same, nice clock bumps, revised CPU cores, abundance of GPU cores.
The list includes three 35W parts and seven 17W-19W parts. Eight of them are quad-cores, while two 17W parts are dual-cores. The full mobile Kaveri line-up is listed at amd.com.
Mobile Kaveri focuses on ULV segment
Judging by the specs, it is evident that AMD focused much of its efforts on ULV parts. The two 17W parts feature a total of five compute cores, including two CPU cores and three GPU compute cores, or 192 GCN shaders. The A6-7000 and the A6-7050B PRO are clocked at 2.2GHz (3.0GHz Turbo). The only difference is the Radeon R4 graphics clock, which stands at 533MHz and 553MHz respectively. Both parts have just 1MB of L2 cache.
The five 19W SKUs are a bit more exciting. The A8-7100 packs 8 compute cores and it’s clocked at 1.8GHz/3.0GHz. Radeon R5 graphics with 256 shaders are on board, clocked at 514MHz. Like the rest of the quad-core line-up it has 4MB of L2 cache.
The A8-7150B PRO has 10 compute cores, and it’s clocked at 1.9GHz/3.2GHz. It has 384 GCN cores clocked at 553MHz.
With the A10 series we start to enter the 35W space, but there are a couple of ULV parts, too. The A10-7350B PRO is clocked at 2.1GHz/3.3GHz and it sports 384 graphics cores clocked at 553MHz. The A10-7300 is a quad-core clocked at 1.9GHz, or 3.2GHz on Turbo. It features 256 graphics cores clocked at 533MHz.
The FX-7500 is the fastest ULV part, with ten compute cores. The CPU is clocked at 2.1GHz/3.3GHz, while the 384-shader GPU runs at 553MHz.
35W mobile Kaveri shows promise
Although there are just three 35W parts in the mix, they certainly look impressive. The flagship FX-7600P has four CPU cores clocked at 2.7GHz/3.6GHz. The Radeon R7 GPU packs 512 cores clocked at 686MHz, making it the fastest GPU ever integrated on a mobile part.
A10-7400P has ten compute cores, i.e. 384 GCN shaders and four CPU cores. The CPU is clocked at 2.5GHz/3.4GHz, while the GPU runs at 654MHz. The A8-7200P packs eight compute cores and it’s clocked at 2.4GHz (3.3GHz on Turbo). It sports Radeon R5 graphics with 256 shaders clocked at 626MHz.
Early benchmarks are encouraging. The FX-7500, AMD’s flagship 19W part, can outpace Haswell-based Core i5, Core i3 and even Core i7 products with a similar TDP (U-series SKUs). Of course, Intel will counter with Broadwell parts in time for the holiday season, but AMD’s comeback is impressive.
There are a few lingering questions. Pricing is the most obvious one, but AMD traditionally tends to offer somewhat better value than Intel, so this should not be a problem. We are left wondering about Dual Graphics support, too. While it does not make much sense on ULV parts, allowing vendors to integrate a mobile Oland or similar discrete core to 35W platforms sounds quite interesting. In theory it could pave the way to truly affordable mainstream laptops capable of running the latest games at native resolutions up to 1080p on the fastest SKUs, or a tad less on cheaper 35W parts.