FRONTPAGE Testing AMD Kaveri APU Dual Graphics Performance

[Overclockers.com]

There has been a lot of talk about AMD’s Dual Graphics as of late, especially since the release of the Kaveri APU lineup. Today, we’re going to explore the performance gains that can be had by leveraging the Kaveri A10-7850K’s built-in R7 graphics with a R7 250 discrete graphics card. AMD is constantly pushing affordable gaming to higher levels, and Dual Graphics with the latest Kaveri APUs is another example of this effort.

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[magellan]

Will any AMD/ATI based video card see a performance increase when using a Kaveri APU? Or can it only be crossfired w/certain GPU combinations?

 

[hokiealumnus]

Only with certain ones. There is a chart in the review

 

[ssjwizard]

The performance scaling seems to be a bit better with this generation VS the Liano generation that I played with for a while. The APU platform may not be top shelf gaming, but if your on a budget and you dont need all of the eye candy it is certainly a fair option.

 

[Lvcoyote]

AMD pretty much locked down what will work for discrete cards (refer to chart in review). Because the Kaveri A10-7850K has a R7 based iGPU, at first I thought maybe a R7 260X would work. I happened to have one here so I tried it..... No dice. The option to enable Dual Graphics disappears

 

[Fugu]

AMD

Thanks for your efforts on this chip Lvcoyote, as an a10 7850k owner my self it's great seeing what this chip can do. Was hoping it would work better with higher up graphics cards and that the limit is with a R7 250 that is a bit of a dissapointment.

One question though, when you are overclocking the GPU side, what settings do you use? Is it NB?

 

[Lvcoyote]

There should be an option in BIOS to set the iGPU speed. At default it's 720 MHz, but 1000 MHz should be easy to do with a small bump in NB voltage, or maybe no bump at all.

 

[JeremyCT]

Nice review, good to see this working well. For something like an HTPC that supports gaming or SteamBox, this sort of setup could be a very viable option.

 

[Fugu]

Nice review, good to see this working well. For something like an HTPC that supports gaming or SteamBox, this sort of setup could be a very viable option.

I have a Kaveri chip Jeremyct and I built it originally as a steambox with no GPU. I used SteamOS as my operating system and it worked very well, games were playable but the linux tools for overclocking just aren't user friendly or easy to obtain so I wiped it and installed windows 7 64bit and havn't looked back.
Steam is loaded on the pc now and you can just go into Big Picture mode which works exactely like steam os.

 

[xrror]

heh, this really makes me want the "vapor/wish-ware" rumor you always hear about AMD making an APU using DDR5 for main memory to match the Playstation4 tech.

Yea I know that's totally not going to happen, but it's a fun thought. But then again there's always DDR4, I wonder how the bandwidth compares to GDDR5 in that case?

Of course that wouldn't be until 1 or 2 years from now? And the whole landscape will be different then. But fun to think about.

 

[Requia]

View Post
@xxror AMD says they plan but can't yet promise DDR4 APUs for early 2015. Should be interesting since the reason for the limit to the 250 may be that only DDR3 GPUs need apply for Kaveri's dual mode, that enbles better cards to be release for the 5th gens dual mode.

@Lvcoyote I've seen some anecdotes that RAM speeds matter a surprising amount for Kaveri, when you get around to overclocking some tests with over or under clocked system memory would be useful to confirm or deny this.

 

[Requia]

double post

 

[rescuetoaster]

Are there any discrete cards that even utilize ddr4? I've really only seen ddr3 or ddr5 variants. What would you pair with such a system?

 

[JeremyCT]

GDDR4 was never terribly popular for whatever reason. I think AMD used it on the 2900XT.

It's also important to remember (since people seem to toss around the terms haphazardly) that DDR4 and GDDR4 are different memory technologies. They're not interchangeable or compatible AFAIK.