BIOSTAR launches AMD’s Godavari APUs

The partners are ready to roll…

7800 APU Shoot (2 of 2)

This morning we received an email from Biostar stating that it was now offering official support for AMD’s new Godavari APUs. What is Godavari? Well that’s a good question, because AMD has yet to mention to us that this chip even exists. So let’s look at what our friends at Biostar have to say about AMD’s so far silent desktop APU refresh.

Godavari APUs are socket FM2+ compatible and Biostar is launching a series of new motherboard to mark its arrival. There is no mention of any BIOSes updates for older FM2+ motherboards so that they can support Godavari chips. But such updates are a solid possibility given the socket compatibility of Godavari and Kaveri APUs.

According to Biostar AMD’s new Godavari APUs are part of the Kaveri-refresh platform and will come with Axx-8xx0 branding rather than the current generation of Axx-7xx0 branding. Godavari offers the same Steamroller cores and GCN architecture we’ve come to know quite well. But the press release also states that Godavari chips will feature an upgraded CPU and GPU architecture, whatever that means.

Godavari AMD CPU Support

Biostar’s new Godavari motherboards are based on AMD’s A88, A70, and A68 chipsets. A quick look at the CPU Support list of these motherboard on Biostar’s website reveals a few of the product names for these Godavari APUs. First up we have the A10-8850B which offers the same clock speeds as AMD top 7 series APU the A10-7870K but with a much smaller 65 Watt TDP versus the old part’s 95 Watt rating. Moving down the list we have the A8-8650B and the A8-8650 which appear identical with the same 3.2 Ghz clock speeds and 65 Watt TDPs. Finally we have the A6-8550 which clocks in at 3.7 Ghz with a 65 Watt TDP and appears to be a dual core model.

Looking at the OPN code reveals one interesting point: while the 7 series models use the JA revision these new Godavari models have the JC revision implying that there are at least some silicon level differences between Kaveri and Godavari. Whether these changes were made just to increase chip yields or were made to reduce power consumption is an open question. But given the lower 65 Watt TDPs on the Godavari chips we seen so far there is reason to believe that AMD has improved performance per watt with a new silicon revision.

Of course all of the above is unofficial information taken from one of AMD’s partners and should be considered in that light. Outside of announcing a new round of APU price reductions last week AMD has yet to release any public statements on its desktop APU line-up. Circling back to the question that spurred this article: what is Godavari? It’s a refresh of Kaveri aimed at the desktop that includes a new silicon revision and lower TDPs. Or so Biostar tells us; because AMD has yet to say a word on the subject.S|A

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Thomas Ryan is a freelance technology writer and photographer from Seattle, living in Austin. You can also find his work on SemiAccurate and PCWorld. He has a BA in Geography from the University of Washington with a minor in Urban Design and Planning and specializes in geospatial data science. If you have a hardware performance question or an interesting data set Thomas has you covered.