AMD A-Series Processor Launched

AMD has just announced its A-Series of Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), (A4 is dual-core, while the A6 and A8 are quad-core chips), X86 processor (CPU) with a discrete-class graphics processor (GPU) in the same chip.

The A-Series aims at competing with Intel in the entry-level market by providing additional horsepower, mainly thanks to its higher-performance graphics and quad-core processors.





To make a long story short, the AMD solution is typically better than Intel’s as soon as complex graphics tasks are involved.

The top of the tops model, the A8-3850 features four Cores @ 2.9 GHz, 4MB of cache, built-in Radeon HD 6550D DX11 graphics (with 400 Stream Processors or ‘Radeon cores’) clocked at 600 MHz, DDR3-1866 memory support, and a TDP of 100W. Next is the A8-3800 which similar specs but its x86 cores are set to 2.4 GHz (2.7 GHz via Turbo Core), and the TDP reaches 65W.

Further down the line we have the A6-3650 with a TDP of 100W, a 2.6 GHz core clock, Radeon HD 6530D graphics (320 SPs) @ 443 MHz, and 4MB of L2 cache. Lower still one can find the A6-3600 which has a 65W TDP, the same graphics solution as the A6-3650, but an x86 core clock of 2.1 GHz (2.4 GHz Turbo Core).

Last one out, the A4-3400 comes with a 65W TDP, two cores @ 2.7 GHz, Radeon HD 6410D graphics (160 Stream Processors) @ 600 MHz, 1MB of cache, and DDR3-1600 memory support.
All in all, the AMD A-Series is pretty exciting and the company is aiming at taking share from Intel’s Core i3, which is a dual-core CPU.
Obviously, many factors go into the overall system performance, but if you want to play games or use above-average graphics, this is certainly an option to look at.

 
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