Specs of AMD ‘Kaveri Refresh’ revealed: no performance boost coming

Advanced Micro Devices is expected to introduce new versions of code-named “Kaveri” accelerated processing units (APUs) with a bit higher performance in the first half of the year. In fact, the company is already shipping samples of its “Kaveri Refresh” products also known as “Godovari” to clients, which is why their specifications inevitably leak.

Chinese VR-Zone has published specs of twelve processors that belong to the “Kaveri Refresh” family. Just like existing “Kaveri” chips, the new accelerated processing units will feature two or four “Steamroller” cores, AMD Radeon R7 or R5 graphics engines (powered by the GCN 1.1 architecture), heterogeneous system architecture capabilities, FM2+ form-factor and all the other features.

The “Godovari” products will belong to the A-series 8000-sequence family, even despite of the fact that there will be no architectural difference between them and currently available A-series 7000-sequence APUs. The only difference between “Kaveri” and “Godovari” chips is slightly higher CPU and GPU clock-rates of the latter. However, the difference will be so negligible that performance advantage will be barely noticeable in real-world applications.

AMD will offer four “Kaveri Refresh” chips with unlocked multiplier – the A10-8850K, the A8-8650K, the A6-8550K as well as the Athlon X4 870K. The new processors should enable easy overclocking, but it is unclear whether their overclocking potential is any better than that of the current-gen APUs/CPUs. Keeping in mind that AMD produces “Kaveri” chips using super-high-performance 28nm (28SHP) process technology at GlobalFoundries, the chips can operate at high frequencies, but their overclocking potential is very limited.

It remains to be seen when exactly AMD intends to release its “Kaveri Refresh”/”Godovari” products commercially. It is logical to expect the new chips to arrive in May or June.

AMD did not comment on the news-story.

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KitGuru Says: Specifications of the refreshed family of APUs do not look exactly impressive, especially keeping in mind not very high performance of AMD’s existing hybrid processors. But to make the matters worse, AMD’s next-generation APU’s code-named “Bristol Ridge” APUs are over 1.5 years away.

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