AMD steps up to Nvidia and Intel with new Kaveri APU

Kaveri, AMD's next-gen APU (Accelerated Processing Unit), has been revealed at the CES 2014 trade expo in Las Vegas.

Kaveri is AMD's third-generation performance APU and the first to feature heterogeneous system architecture (HSA). It supports AMD's TrueAudio technology and its Mantle API too.

AMD promises that Kaveri will give "vastly superior performance" over competition that includes Intel's Haswell range. The processors are designed to combat CPU and GPU combos, and with its highest configuration, the A10-7850K, being built on four "Steamroller" x86 multi-thread cores accompanied by eight graphics cores, they look well up for that fight.

Kaveri offers up to 50 per cent more GPU and 20 per cent more CPU performance, as well as a system of shared memory and heterogeneous queuing that allows both CPU and GPU to create and dispatch work individually and efficiently. With up to twelve computable cores running simultaneously, it's not hard to imagine how much that combo could chew through.

87% faster than Intel

Indeed, AMD claim that in system performance, the new Kaveri models (A10-6800K and A10-7850K) outperform Intel's Core i5 4670K by 15 and 24 per cent respectively. Likewise in computing, gains of 7 and 63 per cent are claimed. Most impressively, in graphical power and gaming, this extends to 37 per cent and a whopping 87 per cent.

Scalability is a big aim for AMD, who has spoken to TechRadar previously about the new processors. Optimised, the APUs will draw 45 to 95W with a configurable TDP, so those worrying about it melting their motherboard can rest easy.

The Kaveri A-series will be on-shelf starting January 14 and are available to pre-order from system builders starting today.

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