When I first read many of the initial AMD A10 7850K reviews, my primary question was how would the APU act if there was a different GPU installed on the system and did not utilize the CrossFire X functionality that AMD talked about.  Typically when a user installs a standalone graphics card on the AMD FM2/FM2+ platform, they disable the graphics portion of the APU.  They also have to uninstall the AMD Catalyst driver suite.  So this then leaves the APU as a CPU only, and all of that graphics silicon is left silent and dark.

Who in their right mind would pair a high end graphics card with the A10-7850K? This guy!

Does this need to be the case?  Absolutely not!  The GCN based graphics unit on the latest Kaveri APUs is pretty powerful when used in GPGPU/OpenCL applications.  The 4 cores/2 modules and 8 GCN cores can push out around 856 GFlops when fully utilized.  We also must consider that the APU is the first fully compliant HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) chip, and it handles memory accesses much more efficiently than standalone GPUs.  The shared memory space with the CPU gets rid of a lot of the workarounds typically needed for GPGPU type applications.  It makes sense that users would want to leverage the performance potential of a fully functioning APU while upgrading their overall graphics performance with a higher end standalone GPU.

To get this to work is very simple.  Assuming that the user has been using the APU as their primary graphics controller, they should update to the latest Catalyst drivers.  If the user is going to use an AMD card, then it would behoove them to totally uninstall the Catalyst driver and re-install only after the new card is installed.  After this is completed restart the machine, go into the UEFI, and change the primary video boot device to PEG (PCI-Express Graphics) from the integrated unit.  Save the setting and shut down the machine.  Insert the new video card and attach the monitor cable(s) to it.  Boot the machine and either re-install the Catalyst suite if an AMD card is used, or install the latest NVIDIA drivers if that is the graphics choice.

Windows 7 and Windows 8 allow users to install multiple graphics drivers from different vendors.  In my case I utilized a last generation GTX 580 (the MSI N580GTX Lightning) along with the AMD A10 7850K.  These products coexist happily together on the MSI A88X-G45 Gaming motherboard.  The monitor is attached to the NVIDIA card and all games are routed through that since it is the primary graphics adapter.  Performance seems unaffected with both drivers active.

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I find it interesting that the GPU portion of the APU is named "Spectre".  Who owns those 3dfx trademarks anymore?

When I load up Luxmark I see three entries: the APU (CPU and GPU portions), the GPU portion of the APU, and then the GTX 580.  Luxmark defaults to the GPUs.  We see these GPUs listed as “Spectre”, which is the GCN portion of the APU, and the NVIDIA GTX 580.  Spectre supports OpenCL 1.2 while the GTX 580 is an OpenCL 1.1 compliant part.

With both GPUs active I can successfully run the Luxmark “Sala” test.  The two units perform better together than when they are run separately.  Adding in the CPU does increase the score, but not by very much (my guess here is that the APU is going to be very memory bandwidth bound in such a situation).  Below we can see the results of the different units separate and together.

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These results make me hopeful about the potential of AMD’s latest APU.  It can run side by side with a standalone card, and applications can leverage the performance of this unit.  Now all we need is more HSA aware software.  More time and more testing is needed for setups such as this, and we need to see if HSA enabled software really does see a boost from using the GPU portion of the APU as compared to a pure CPU piece of software or code that will run on the standalone GPU.

Personally I find the idea of a heterogeneous solution such as this appealing.  The standalone graphics card handles the actual graphics portions, the CPU handles that code, and the HSA software can then fully utilize the graphics portion of the APU in a very efficient manner.  Unfortunately, we do not have hard numbers on the handful of HSA aware applications out there, especially when used in conjunction with standalone graphics.  We know in theory that this can work (and should work), but until developers get out there and really optimize their code for such a solution, we simply do not know if having an APU will really net the user big gains as compared to something like the i7 4770 or 4790 running pure x86 code.

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In the meantime, at least we know that these products work together without issue.  The mixed mode OpenCL results make a nice case for improving overall performance in such a system.  I would imagine with more time and more effort from developers, we could see some really interesting implementations that will fully utilize a system such as this one.  Until then, happy experimenting!