AMD’s Kaveri lineup has seen its fair share of success since its launch about a year ago. Both entry level and mid-end systems have incorporated this architecture in an effort to combine both respectable x86 performance an excellent graphics capabilities into affordable PCs. However, with Intel’s Skylake right around the corner and lackluster financial results dogging their heels AMD needed something, anything, to spark a bit of interest in their product stack. This is where the A8-7670K steps into the equation.
Like the so-called “Godavari” A10-7870K, the A8-7670K utilizes the same Kaveri base architecture as its predecessors but leverages the inherent advantages of a very mature 28nm manufacturing process to boost performance without negatively affecting efficiency. Yes, we realize this is the same old story AMD has been using for its rebranded 300-series graphics cards and other APUs but it’s all they’ve got for now. Carrizo will remain a notebook-oriented architecture for the time being while next generation parts are still a long while off. Meanwhile Intel has successively increased their lead with Haswell and Broadwell.
Like the A10-7870K Godavari APU before it, AMD’s A8-7650K simply utilizes the same layout and features of the xx50-series product below it and increases clock speeds by a slight amount. In this case the base frequency has increased by 300MHz while the maximum Turbo speed sees a boost of a lackluster 100MHz. Meanwhile, the 384-core R7-series graphics core gets a bump up to 757MHz. All of this has been accomplished while keeping the chip’s TDP at 95W.
Pricing shouldn’t come as any particular surprise given how AMD’s current lineup has seen its relative costs gradually decrease over the last few months. For the time being the A8-7670K hits the $118 mark or about two bucks less expensive than Intel’s i3 4160. That’s actually not too bad considering Intel’s budget-focused chip only has two cores and its integrated graphics processor tends to fall behind quite drastically. In addition AMD’s APU boasts the K-series designation so it comes with an unlocked multiplier, potentially boosting overclocking potential.
In applications that play to AMD’s relative strengths of processor graphics like gaming and GPU compute, the A8-7670K naturally pulls ahead of Intel’s offering. While Broadwell CPUs narrowed the gap between Intel and AMD chips within this respect, the Kaveri architecture has managed to remain ahead as it leverages the Radeon lineup’s substantially superior driver package.
As AMD has struggled to retain some form of presence within the processor market, certain aspects of their APUs have been brought into sharp contrast. After years of towing the same Heterogeneous System Architecture talking points it is becoming abundantly evident that development of supporting applications is nowhere near where it needs to be for their dreams to become reality. For example, hUMA and Heterogeneous Queuing optimizations have yet to make it into any mass-market programs and likely won’t anytime soon. Even the use of GPU acceleration and its abundant potential for performance speedups has been largely ignored (other than a few cases) by developers and programmers alike. Granted, the programming space is slowly dragging itself forward but it is looking more and more like Kaveri and even Carrizo will be long gone before GPU compute integration becomes mainstream.
This causes a problem for AMD since they’ve been forced to fight a battle with architectures that have awesome graphics potential but wholly underpowered x86 processing stages. The A8-7670K will face those exact same challenges as its predecessors but it shouldn’t be written off either. It can pack an almighty punch for anyone that wants graphics-first throughput for a light gaming or HTPC machine.
With all of that being said, this is an abundantly convenient launch time for AMD since they are still able to compare their APUs to the older Haswell chips. Intel’s Skylake series CPUs promise to turn these metrics on their collective heads with significantly better graphics specifications and much better performance per watt numbers. Even upcoming Broadwell CPUs will likely cascade down into lower price brackets eventually. So while the A8-7670K may staunch the bleeding in the mid-range for now, AMD will soon need a ground-up refresh to effectively compete with what’s coming down the pipeline
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