onekender :
With the A series, at last, there was also something weird where the gpu and "apu" could work together
I'm gonna have to stop you right there....
Don't worry, i understand when you're in the heat of the moment thoughts race faster than your hands can type... but i just need to fix this, and to hell with the Necro, as some people, including myself, will google this topic up and get the wrong impression from misleading information.
To correct what you said there...
The A series is the short name of and blanket term for all models of Accelerated Processing Units, and they named it the APU, because that's even shorter.
An APU is simply put, a CPU and GPU... so speaking to someone who doesn't know what you were attempting to say, you can easily confuse them, like i was...
IF you're talking about the APU speaking with a Discrete GPU meaning an add-in expansion card for Graphics, to perform a Hybrid CrossfireX much like what used to be available on much older Integrated Radeon HD 4000 series motherboards and cards, then yes AND no, only very specific cards will work with specific APU's, meaning, you can't just grab one of each and expect it to work.
IF you were talking about the unit only, as in the CPU and GPU, aka "APU" then again you are correct and much more so with the "weird" label, however not too foreign, Intel has been doing this before AMD. Intel HD Graphics are what inspired AMD to make the APU, with GPU accellerated CPU's you can process more for less. for instance, a laptop APU could alleviate the heat build up while processing large quantities of data, thus performing better than just a CPU + GPU configuration laptop. less hardware also means lighter, and smaller, allowing for fairly small and lightweight configurations.
The APU requires Drivers only because of the GPU side of the chip, it does not require any drivers for the CPU side. Otherwise you would never be able to use it without first already having the OS installed, to use the driver, to install the OS.... just went Paradoxial there.
On to CPU's, the FX CPU isn't technically a natural 8 core, its nothing at all like the hand puppet 8 cores like Intel, using "HyperThreading" to force each core to use TWO threads, no, FX processors are actually 8 cores, 8 threads, however...
With an older Quad core, like a Phenom II x4 980 BE, it is a CPU with 4 cores... this will start to get hard to follow....
Imagine this...
a standard quad core, cut each core in half, 8 halves right?
But then instead of making each core independent like with older generation quad core cpu's...
Take the four spots and split the cores into pairs of cores, kinda like... adding a second quad core CPU without all the junk in the middle.
So, each module has two functional cores, just the same as though they were the older quad core, but smaller, and more complex.
These modules though, need special instruction, HOWEVER...
the CPU is backwards compatible to hardware that has been around for years...
How?
Well, the instruction set for operating the 8 cores is not stored in the BIOS, no, the BIOS see's the CPU initially as a quad core....
but now what happens is the CPU itself has its own instruction set to then instruct on how to use each pair of cores...
but that's starting to get confusing right?... yes, starting to.
after the CPU is awakened into life by the BIOS, the CPU sends out its instruction set to the BIOS telling the BIOS how to really use it...
Much like how the GPU communicates with the BIOS...
So, yes Drivers are needed to use the CPU, and NO you do not, and will never need to install or download any such drivers for the CPU, as it installs them every time the PC turns on, JUST like a GPU.
i forget which it is, the CMOS or the BIOS that stores the data of the hardware, but after your first boot, it shouldn't have such long inter-hardware communications, since the instructions are stored, all it does is confirm the Hardware is the same.