AMD's next APUs?

[sam1405]

Hello, there.

I'm sorry if this has already been spoken about, but I couldn't seem to find anything on it. Also, I wasn't sure where else to put this, so I guess the 'General Discussion' will do...

Anyway, I'd like to hear your thoughts on the next APUs by AMD.

When I saw the current APU series, I was very excited to see how it would effect me, but as it turns out, it didn't. The APUs' lack of compatibility with R9 series graphics cards left me disappointing, and I questioned who would really buy one to go with an r7 250 if they really wanted to play games...

So, my question is, when, if at all, do you think AMD will release APUs capable of crossfiring with R9 graphics cards?

Personally, I hope very soon. I like the idea of having an inexpensive heterogeneous architecture in my system, because hey, my CPU is in need of upgrading shortly, and what better way to do it than to purchase one which will crossfire with my R9 270? I think this would be very exciting for me, because I could experience great performance boosts. Anyhow, I'd like to know your opinions.

Thanks for reading!

- On a side not, please no fanboy-ism, there's no need for that .-. I'm a fan of both sides.

[Glenwing]

Kaveri didn't come out that long ago. I don't expect to see another release until late 2014 or more likely some time in 2015. Although, I haven't looked into it.

[Peter Vaughan Truslow]

I honestly think that pairing onboard graphics with a high end GPU would do little good.

a decent GPU like the 270 would be obsenely better than anything that could be on board. already mediocre scaling combined with the relatively slow memory used for CPUs, and I expect that trying to run them together would result in lower framerates.

that being said, if the game engine could use extraneous GPUs such as the onboard for side rendering as Nvidia does with physX, it would be practical. I don't think AMD should have a high end enough APU to run well with a R9 in dual graphics due to memory constraints, but I do think it should be used for something.

[dev893]

It would be nice to see an AMD APU that can crossfire with a R9 series graphics card as I plan on adding the MSI Gaming R9 270 to my build when I get the money but as Glenwing stated probably won't be till late (maybe november or later) 2014 or early to mid 2015

[The Crazed Child]

AMD made a mistake with Kaveri. They didn't solve the memory bandwidth problem with the iGPU. Intel did with Iris Pro by adding a mere 128MB of extremely fast eDRAM. My guess is that AMD was going to do this originally, but adding super-fast memory would have raised the price of the Kaveri chips by quit a bit.

 

AMD has two options if they want to solve the bandwidth issue. They can add memory on-die as Intel did with Iris Pro, or they can get motherboard manufacturers to solder GDDR5 memory chips to FM2+ boards. This is similar how the PS4 is configured.

[Opcode]

Carrizo (Kaveri's successor) has no set release date. Tho speculation is that it will be a Kaveri refresh. Tho with a few key differences, one being replacing the SteamrollerB cores with Excavator. It seems as if DDR4 support will not come with Carrizo. That might be likely due to the fact that it's going to take a while for DDR4 to become standard in the market. So the next APU from AMD will not be majorly different than Kaveri other than slightly better CPU performance. Tho we cannot confirm anything until we get official word from AMD.