AMD Launches Three Kaveri APU SKUs in February 2014 – Feature Set For A10 and A8 APUs Detailed

[suj999]

Gigabyte is NOT ASUS! Personally I prefer AsRock boards to Gigabytes. I don't have an extensive testing to prove this but I tend to find Gigabyte to use lower quality parts and rely on marketing gobbledygook to sell their boards!

Out of Gigabyte and ASRock I personally would prefer Asrock, but if there was a choice of ASUS too then I would have course choose the ASUS one.

Out of ASRock FM2A88X-ITX+ and Gigabyte GA-F2A88XN-WIFI, (mITX boards)
ASRock has Esata port, usable VGA port, and a full size internal mSATA port unlike the wifi only one on the gigabyte.
ASRock also has more SATA ports, HDMI in and better layout for the motherboard for my CPU cooler.

 

[Gazb]

Have Asrock motherboards improved over the last few years?
I had one many years ago and it was a constant source of annoyance. Though to be fair the board I got after that was an Asus P5-N which proved to be far from flawless as well. Haven't had an MSI board since the orginal NVidia nForce boards (which was also temperamental). lol

Gigabyte used to get recommended as they had a uk based support/warranty center, and dual BIOS.

 

[Davedree]

I've used gigabyte since 2010, however they really did cheap out and suck when it came to the 990fx/a ud3, the 8+2 vrm and the rev 3 was one of Gigabytes biggest fails. I don't mind a company who admits reliability and puts their hands up and says, '' ok yep we have a fault it can't be fixed, we'll refund you or provide an alternative'' Instead Gigabyte bull****ted and insisted they didn't have a problem, tried to hide it.
Then the rev 4 was made !!!!!! It's true Gigabyte tried to cheap out and the results showed in their quality. However for example in my signature link that £38, is an example of them getting their act together. a 4+1 that can hold an fx8320 at 4.5ghz p95 stable, and 4.8ghz game stable.

Asrock were gaining ground and marketshare over asus even though they were effectively just a subsidary, offering better boards for cheaper and slowly becoming a high end overclocking alternative. That obviously had to be changed as Asus were threatened. Reliability of asrock is the same as msi for the am3+, it came down to the vrm capability, cooling and no throttling capability for the 4+1 vrm boards, which in turn meant failures or poor clocking.

 

[suj999]

But AsRock is no longer related to ASUS, AsRock's parent company was spun off 4 years ago..

 

[Gazb]

I've used gigabyte since 2010, however they really did cheap out and suck when it came to the 990fx/a ud3, the 8+2 vrm and the rev 3 was one of Gigabytes biggest fails. I don't mind a company who admits reliability and puts their hands up and says, '' ok yep we have a fault it can't be fixed, we'll refund you or provide an alternative'' Instead Gigabyte bull****ted and insisted they didn't have a problem, tried to hide it.
Then the rev 4 was made !!!!!! It's true Gigabyte tried to cheap out and the results showed in their quality. However for example in my signature link that £38, is an example of them getting their act together. a 4+1 that can hold an fx8320 at 4.5ghz p95 stable, and 4.8ghz game stable.

Asrock were gaining ground and marketshare over asus even though they were effectively just a subsidary, offering better boards for cheaper and slowly becoming a high end overclocking alternative. That obviously had to be changed as Asus were threatened. Reliability of asrock is the same as msi for the am3+, it came down to the vrm capability, cooling and no throttling capability for the 4+1 vrm boards, which in turn meant failures or poor clocking.

So how do things stand for FM2+ atm then regarding VRM's?
MSI's gaming boards both look promising (the M-ATX has 2 phases less afaik) on the VRM front, but until people get their hands on them we just won't know.

 

[Davedree]

So how do things stand for FM2+ atm then regarding VRM's?
MSI's gaming boards both look promising (the M-ATX has 2 phases less afaik) on the VRM front, but until people get their hands on them we just won't know.

Great question and more on topic too, I don't have any experience with the fm2+, but i do with m-itx in general. We need to look at the fm2+ with a fresh start, more about the features like sata ports, etc
Power consumption is really a moot point because so many variables can affect the overall outcome.

If anything it's the m-itx boards that we need to pay more attention to aswell. They tend to work in a smaller, hotter enclosures and the boards have to be crammed with more components, so is overclocking limited compared to an m-atx?
I'd only consider a Kaveri setup on an m-itx htpc, I wouldn't buy Kaveri for M-atx.

 

[Legion]

So how do things stand for FM2+ atm then regarding VRM's?
MSI's gaming boards both look promising (the M-ATX has 2 phases less afaik) on the VRM front, but until people get their hands on them we just won't know.

What are you considering building? Which form factor? Usage?

 

[suj999]

Dice has released Mantle, for BF4.

Will test out the Kaveri build when I get a chance, but haven't got around to installing it yet.

 

[Electroshadow]

where can we get mantle drivers?

my bf4 updated it looks nice but im getting minus FPS pretty sure thats down to only having 4gb ram as one chip packed up...

 

[Boomstick777]

Be good to get some results in the thread of BF4 w Mantle running on the 7850K.

where can we get mantle drivers?

Rumor is AMD are still bug fixing on the driver side, DICE have already released the Mantle patch for the game. So hopefully get driver in next few days?

AMD time.. Very much like Valve time..

 

[joeyjojo]

Be good to get some results in the thread of BF4 w Mantle running on the 7850K.

I'm very excited for this.

 

[Boomstick777]

A Quick Look at Battlefield 4 Performance with Mantle on AMD’s Kaveri 7850K APU

Another day, another Kaveri article! If you haven’t yet, be sure to first read our full Kaveri review, then perhaps move on to see how it performs when overclocked to 4.7 GHz with 1020 MHz GPU. Also if you’re curious, you may want to check out how gaming performance scales with memory speed, up to DDR3-2400.

http://www.hardcoreware.net/battlefield-4-mantle-kaveri-performance/

 

[Ferrari100]

AMD mantle 14.1 drivers now here:
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop?os=Windows+7+-+64

 

[Legion]

14.1 Beta 3DMark11

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/7914474

Couldn't break 3k on the 13.30 driver at those clocks.

 

[stulid]

So im still safe then with my score using 13.35

 

[Legion]

So im still safe then with my score using 13.35

Pff, I'm only using modest clocks on a mITX board and Pico Psu
There's more in the tank yet

/Edit
Have some of that
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/7914774

 

[Gazb]

What are you considering building? Which form factor? Usage?

Probably M-ATX as I'm very limited on space atm. Using something like the corsair obsidion 350D as the case.
Not really a lot of options for decent FM2+ m-ATX boards atm.

I will be running it with an R9 290, I'm sure some of you will say that's a waste, but due to a lack of space and limited funds this seems to be a viable way for me to make a second pc that I can game on.

 

[haxxbaxx]

Probably M-ATX as I'm very limited on space atm. Using something like the corsair obsidion 350D as the case.
Not really a lot of options for decent FM2+ m-ATX boards atm.

I will be running it with an R9 290, I'm sure some of you will say that's a waste, but due to a lack of space and limited funds this seems to be a viable way for me to make a second pc that I can game on.

wouldn't you be better just buying a 6300?

 

[Gazb]

wouldn't you be better just buying a 6300?

Not for when it becomes the basis of media center pc a year do the line.

 

[Legion]

So here's something for people who've been "misinformed" with the power consumption of the Gigabyte GA-F2A88XN-WIFI mITX motherboard.

I brought my power meter home over the weekend to test this, as I was calling BS on the article that was showing abnormally high power consumption figures.
They used an A10-6800K Processor in that review and while that is a little less power efficient than Kaveri, there's definitely something up with their numbers.
I'm testing in an Overclocked environment and will do the same tests as shown in the graph further up the page. (I'll do some stock tests at some point)
I'll also include some real world results of my own.

Test setup
AMD A10-7850K Overclocked to 4.2ghz CPU, 1000mhz iGPU
Thermalright AXP-200 cooler
Gigabyte GA-F2A88XN-WIFI motherboard (F4a Bios)
2x4gb Team Xtreem LV DDR3 2400 Cas 10, 12, 12, 31, 2T
256gb Samsung 830 SSD
500gb HGST 2.5" Storage Drive 7200rpm
160w Pico Psu /w 192w power brick
Silverstone Milo ML06B case
USB mouse and keyboard

Windows 8.1 Pro 64 bit
iGPU on AMD catalyst 14.1 beta
AMD Chipset driver 13.20

All C states enabled and APM enabled
Onboard WIFI enabled (using even more power)
Figures given are total system power consumption measured at the socket with my trusty Kill A Watt meter.

Here's the tests to Compare with the graph, although it's not clear on their methodology for their 3DMark Firestrike testing, I'd concur that scaled up, my overclocked testing would be similar to their results clock for clock if they'd posted proper numbers and not some skewed kind of average.

Idle power consumption (after 5 mins idle) = 28w

3DMark Firestrike
Graphics Test 1 = 103.8w Peak
Graphics Test 2 = 102.4w Peak
Physics Test = 101.7w Peak
Combined Test = 114.3w Peak

Cinebench 11.5 = 104.7W Peak

Somehow their CPU intensive test (Cinebench 11.5) vastly differs from mine, like I've said previously Kaveri is a little more power efficient than Trinity, but there is something badly wrong with their result.
This particular test result is the one responsible for the "Misinformation", they didn't even test the board with a Kaveri APU.

Real world results and observations of my own.

Borderlands 2 1080p, Medium Settings, No AA
Co-op play with 3 other friends
Buttery smooth, no jitters
Complete system power draw ~125w with the odd peaks of ~130w.

Starcraft 2 1080p Medium Settings No AA
Single player game, jitter free, scrolls nicely
Complete system draw 117w

1080p 10gb Blu-ray rips, played back through XBMC (DXVA)
Complete system power draw = 62w

Got Guiminer working, 112k hashrate (at 1000mhz iGPU)
Complete system power draw = 96w (shows it's working the iGPU nicely)

Stock clocks testing and Underclocking / Undervolting / cTDP function to be tested some time soon