AMD Richland Desktop APUs Now Available
by Jarred Walton on June 5, 2013 12:01 AM EST
We’ve all known for a while that AMD would be releasing desktop Richland SKUs, and there have been a few leaks—including the APUs going up for sale at Newegg yesterday, one day before the NDA. The details of the new AMD Elite A-Series Desktop APUs don’t muddy the waters too much. These are updated Trinity cores, built on the same manufacturing technology, with higher clock speeds and improved memory support thanks to a maturing process and the passage of time. We’ve already covered the mobile Richland APUs, which are starting to show up in laptops (though sadly we haven’t had any in for review yet). Here are the details of the desktop parts, six of which are now available.
| AMD Elite A-Series Desktop APUs, aka Richland | ||||||
| Model | A10-6800K | A10-6700 | A8-6600K | A8-6500 | A6-6400K | A4-4000 |
| Modules/Cores | 2/4 | 2/4 | 2/4 | 2/4 | 1/2 | 1/2 |
| CPU Base Freq | 4.1 | 3.7 | 3.9 | 3.5 | 3.9 | 3.0 |
| Max Turbo | 4.4 | 4.3 | 4.2 | 4.1 | 4.1 | 3.2 |
| TDP | 100W | 65W | 100W | 65W | 65W | 65W |
| Graphics | HD 8670D | HD 8670D | HD 8570D | HD 8570D | HD 8470D | ? |
| GPU Cores | 384 | 384 | 256 | 256 | 192 | 128 |
| GPU Clock | 844 | 844 | 844 | 800 | 800 | 724 |
| L2 Cache | 2x2MB | 2x2MB | 2x2MB | 2x2MB | 1MB | 1MB |
| Max DDR3 | 2133 | 1866 | 1866 | 1866 | ||
| Price (MSRP) | $150 ($142) | $149 ($142) | $120 ($112) | $119 ($112) | $80 | $46 |
Just to put things in perspective, here are the previous generation Trinity desktop APUs:
| AMD Trinity Desktop APUs | ||||||
| Model | A10-5800K | A10-5700 | A8-5600K | A8-5500 | A6-5400K | A4-5300 |
| Modules/Cores | 2/4 | 2/4 | 2/4 | 2/4 | 1/2 | 1/2 |
| CPU Base Freq | 3.8 | 3.4 | 3.6 | 3.2 | 3.6 | 3.4 |
| Max Turbo | 4.2 | 4.0 | 3.9 | 3.7 | 3.8 | 3.6 |
| TDP | 100W | 65W | 100W | 65W | 65W | 65W |
| Graphics | HD 7660D | HD 7660D | HD 7560D | HD 7560D | HD 7540D | HD 7480D |
| GPU Cores | 384 | 384 | 256 | 256 | 192 | 128 |
| GPU Clock | 800 | 760 | 760 | 760 | 760 | 723 |
| L2 Cache | 2x2MB | 2x2MB | 2x2MB | 2x2MB | 1MB | 1MB |
| Max DDR3 | 2133 | 1866 | 1866 | 1866 | ||
| Current Price | $130 | $129 | $110 | $105 | $70 | $55 |
All of the CPU and GPU clocks are up (with the exception with the budget-minded A4-4000), as expected. Maximum Turbo Core speeds across the lineup range from 200MHz faster (A10-6800K) to as much as 400MHz faster (A8-6500); the base CPU clocks have also been increased 100-300MHz, with the 300MHz increase coming on the highest performance models. We’ve also been informed that the Richland APUs will be more likely to hit their maximum Turbo Core clocks, whereas Trinity was more likely to run at the base clock, so all told, we would expect performance to be up anywhere from 5% to as much as 25% in extreme cases, with the average being more likely in the 10% range.
On the GPU front, the Richland APUs are likewise clocked 5-11% higher (the only 11% gap being the A10-6700 vs. the A10-5700; the rest are 5%). At least for now street pricing is also up around 10-15%, so you’re basically paying a bit more to get a bit more performance. Also worth mention is that all of the Richland parts will work in existing socket FM2 motherboards, with support for the A85X, A75, and A55 platforms. There will be forward compatibility with FM2+ motherboards as well. It’s unlikely many people will be looking to upgrade from Trinity to Richland (just like we don’t expect many people to move from Ivy Bridge to Haswell), but the existing FM2 motherboards will help keep the price of adoption low.
While it may appear that Intel’s new Haswell chips could cause AMD some grief in the graphics department, there’s more to the story than just performance. With Trinity and Ivy Bridge, AMD clearly had a faster iGPU, but depending on what you’re looking at that’s no longer inherently true. It’s going to be a bit closer now when we compare Intel’s HD Graphics 4200/4400/4600 with the HD 8670D, but the GT3e Iris Pro 5200 should prove substantially more potent. That will likely be true of the GT3 HD Graphics 5000 when compared with mobile Trinity as well. However, Iris Pro 5200 also ends up adding to the cost of a Haswell chip, and U-series Haswell chips will be selling in substantially more expensive Ultrabooks. So we’re basically back to the same story as before: AMD will sell you “good enough” performance at a much lower price than Intel.
The fastest AMD A10-6800K costs $40 less than the least expensive Core i5 Haswell CPU, and in fact it’s still $30-$40 less than Core i5 Ivy Bridge. Intel competes against the A10-6800K with their Core i3 CPUs, which on the desktop remain Ivy Bridge for now. Unless you need absolutely top CPU performance, AMD’s A10 APUs have proven more than sufficient for most tasks—even high-end gaming rarely benefits from a faster CPU than an A10 until you start using two or more GPUs. That’s really the question you need to answer: what do you intend to do with your PC? For pure CPU performance, Intel wins easily, and Quick Sync is great for fast video transcoding; outside of those use cases, though, AMD’s APUs continue to provide a good experience that will keep all but the most demanding of users happy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
41 Comments
View All Comments
Einy0 - Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - link
It is completely possible the extra clocks are courtesy of a more mature process at GF. Perhaps even a silicon revision or two. It is not uncommon for engineers to make minor tweaks to a design's layout. Apple specifically purchased a company who made a living out of tweaking chip designs to fit certain power consumption and performance profiles. They of course leveraged that expertise, added on to it and started designing their own SoCs. I would assume if AMD was tweaking voltages to achieve higher clocks without process enhancements, far better yields and good binning practices; there would be a noticeable difference in power consumption and TDP. These new chips are a case of too little too late as usual. This time Intel has the graphics prowess to compete as well. Let's see if Intel can get their drivers straight...testbug00 - Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - link
that probably helps, but the voltages on Llano and Trinity have both been very far over.... i managed to get my A10-5800K from 3.8 base to 4.4 base without raising the voltage.i managed to lower the voltage of an older Llano A6 quad core by .15 and raise the base clock from 1.4 to 1.8.
I hope it is both :)
And Intel is still far behind Trinity/Richland if you want to push for 30-40fps at highest possible resolution/settings.... i ran a lot of numbers (44 games)
It is ahead of AMD only with GT3 (probably at low settings, even/slightly ahead at highest playable) and GT33 parts cost more than my whole A10-5800K build...
let us see :)
majorleague - Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - link
Here is a youtube link showing 3dmark11 and windows index rating for the 4770k 3.5ghz Haswell. Not overclocked.This is apparently around 10-20fps slower than the 6800k in most games. And almost twice the price!!
Youtube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7Yo2A__1Xw
testbug00 - Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - link
I also expect that these prices will decrease slightly as more vendors have the product in the USA area at least (only newegg according to www.pcpartpicker.com) AND/OR once trinity get EOLed.anonymous_user - Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - link
Is it just me or does there seem to be a significant price gap between the A6-6400K and A4-4000?JarredWalton - Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - link
Trinity APUs like the A4-5300 continue to plug that hole I think is the plan.7beauties - Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - link
I've been an AMD loyalist since I built my first PC in 2000 around the Athlon 700MHz chip which was better than the Pentium. Six or seven years ago the Athlon II 64 was the best chip in the world and I felt like the Jedi defeated the evil Empire, but then Intel roared back and AMD laid a stinker with the original Phenom and its infamous TLB bug. And it's been ugly since. I felt a little hopeful when Anand recently wrote "The King Returns." I'm glad that AMD appreciates the importance of its human capital, but for me it's too little and too late because yesterday I bit the bait and bought the new Intel Core i7 4770K when Microcenter put it on sale for $280. This is bitter sweet for me; I know I'm going to rock 'n roll, but I which it could've been with AMD.stickmansam - Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - link
AMD Richland is a refreah ala the Nvidia/AMD rebranding. The real thing to wait for is Kaveri and seeing how GCN plays with Steamroller. I myself will begetting an lappy near the holidays and hopefully will get to see GCN vs HD5200. AMD's been doing catch up no doubt about it.testbug00 - Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - link
Richland actually has some significant power saving achievements in mobile... on desktop agree is respin with better OC/baseaxien86 - Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - link
Congrats, but simply buying a Haswell for $280?
What about that new motherboard you need ($150-$250)? What about that new and expensive cooler to cool down that hot Haswell that idles at over 100 degrees fahrenheit? ($50-$100+) and what about that new power supply with that Haswell ($100-$150)?
So, it's simply more than a single item purchase that Intel has forced on those choosing to upgrade.