AMD Bristol Ridge APUs Launched For AM4 Desktop PCs

AMD Launches 7th Gen Bristol Ridge APUs For AM4 Desktop-OEM PCs – Promontory Chipset Stack Detailed

AMD has officially launched their 7th generation, Bristol Ridge APUs for desktop platforms. The latest APUs will exist available for sale through several OEM manufacturers. The new series would utilize the Excavator and GCN core compages to deliver increased functioning on the aforementioned process node. AMD has done some fine tuning with their latest processors and that should be visible on Bristol Ridge processors.

AMD Launches Bristol Ridge APUs For AM4 Based Desktop PCs

AMD has launched a total of viii new Bristol Ridge processors for the AM4 platform. These incorporate of A-Serial and Athlon branded SKUs. AMD had already launched Bristol Ridge for notebooks simply are at present bringing it to the masses on desktop platforms. AMD has chosen OEMs to send their AM4 platform to the mass market. The DIY market would get a taste of AM4 a fleck afterwards when Zen is closer to launch. Till and then, those interested in AM4 PCs tin catch a ready-to-use PC from a local PC OEM.

"The consumer release of these new HP and Lenovo designs is an important milestone for AMD on two fronts. First, information technology marks a major increase in productivity performance, streaming video and eSports gaming experiences sought after by today'south consumers, delivered through our new seventh Generation AMD A-Series desktop processors. Second, because these new OEM designs also feature our new AM4 desktop platform, the motherboard ecosystem shows its readiness for our upcoming loftier-performance "Summit Ridge" desktop CPUs featuring "Zen" cores, which share the aforementioned platform," said Kevin Lensing, Corporate VP and general manager of Client Computing at AMD.

Some features of Bristol Ridge include up to 4 x86 Excavator cores with 2 MB of shared L2 cache. They will take support for HSA compute acceleration and the latest DDR4 memory standard. The Excavator cadre ensures better IPC (Educational activity per clock) versus previous generation cores. AMD Bristol Ridge A-Series APUs likewise come with congenital-in, high throughput media accelerators for HEVC (4K H.264 & H.265) support. The more beefy details are about the AM4 platform itself and so let's go into those.

The Promontory Chipset SKUs - Powering the AM4 Desktop Motherboards

AM4 is a big bargain for team scarlet and they are going all in with feature support. First upwards is the fact that AM4 will be a unified socket for both CPUs and APUs. Information technology will support both Zen based processors and Excavator based APUs. This means that information technology will be able to back up the entire stack of processors ranging from entry level, all the way up to the enthusiast stuff offering users more longevity and time to come upgrade support. AMD plans to support AM4 for many years so that'due south a plus point.

Some full general features of the AM4 platform is that it offers new I/O capabilities. We are looking at faster DDR4-2400 MHz retention, PCI-eastward Gen 3.0, USB 3.i Gen ii, NVMe and SATA Express support. These features take been missing on AMD platforms for a while but information technology's nice that AMD is finally making a proper comeback with modern feature back up.

Next upwards, we will be looking at 4 chipsets on AM4 motherboards. These are part of the Promontory chipset stack which is the codename for all chipsets used on AM4 boards. The two chipsets available today are B350 (Mainstream) and A320 (Essential). There's as well the A300 for small form factor PCs and a "TBA" chip for high-end, enthusiast processors that will launch afterwards. The Bristol Ridge APUs feature 8 Gen iii PCI-e lanes, dual aqueduct DDR4 support, 4 USB 3.1 channels and 2 SATA + 2 NVMe or 2 PCI-e expansion support. Aside from that, B350 features higher PCI-e Gen 2.0 lanes and more than USB 3.one/3.0/2.0 ports compared to A320.

The AMD B350 chipset features seventy% ability reduction over its AM3+ predecessor (5.8W vs 19.6W). The latest DDR4 memory controller also offers 22% more bandwidth compared to DDR3.

The seventh Gen Bristol Ridge APU Lineup Detailed - A12-9800 Leads The Pack

The A12-9800 is leading the pack of the Bristol Ridge lineup with a boost clock of up to 4.2 GHz. It besides comes with the latest GCN core architecture with 512 stream processors running at 1108 MHz. The chip comes with 65W TDP. Remainder of the variants contain of regular and "East" variants which are tuned to offering lower power of 35W.

A12-9800 : 4C4T, rating 3.8GHz, up to 4.2GHz, Radeon R7 Graphics (Compute Unit of measurement number eight, up to 1108MHz), TDP 65W
A12-9800E : 4C4T, rating 3.1GHz, up to 3.8GHz, Radeon R7 Graphics (Compute Unit number viii, up to 900MHz), TDP 35W
A10-9700 : 4C4T, rating three.5GHz, up to iii.8GHz, Radeon R7 Graphics (Compute Unit number vi, upwards to 1029MHz), TDP 65W
A10-9700E : 4C4T, rating iii.0GHz, up to three.5GHz, Radeon R7 Graphics (Compute Unit number 6, upwardly to 847MHz), TDP 35W
A8-9600 : 4C4T, rating 3.1GHz, up to iii.4GHz, Radeon R7 Graphics (Compute Unit number 6, up to 900MHz), TDP 65W
Athlon X4 950: 4C4T, rating 3.5GHz, up to 3.8GHz, GPU not-integrated, TDP 65W
A6-9500 : 2C2T, rating 3.5GHz, up to 3.8GHz, Radeon R5 Graphics (Compute Unit number six, up to 1029MHz), TDP 65W
A6-9500E : 2C2T, rating 3.0GHz, up to iii.4GHz, Radeon R5 Graphics (Compute Unit number 4, up to 800MHz), TDP 35W

AMD besides provided some internal benchmarks and comparison of their new processors against Intel'south Core i5 solution. In PCMark 8 and 3DMark 11, the AMD A12-9800 performed well against a Skylake Core i5 CPU. Both performance tests and performance per watt tests turned out really good. The Bristol Ridge lineup is looking great but I gauge most enthusiasts volition be waiting to upgrade to the high-cease stuff when Zen comes early on next year.

AMD Bristol Ridge Desktop AM4 SKUs:

SKU	Cores	Base/Boost Clock	GPU CUs	GPU SPs	GPU Clock	Retention	TDP
AMD A12-9800	four	3.8/4.2 GHz	eight CUs	512 SPs	1108 MHz	DDR4-2400	65W
AMD A12-9800E	four	3.1/three.8 GHz	8 CUs	512 SPs	900 MHz	DDR4-2400	35W
AMD A10-9700	iv	three.v/3.8 GHz	half-dozen CUs	384 SPs	1029 MHz	DDR4-2400	65W
AMD A10-9700E	four	3.0/3.5 GHz	6 CUs	384 SPs	847 MHz	DDR4-2400	35W
AMD A8-9600	four	3.1/three.4 GHz	6 CUs	384 SPs	900 MHz	DDR4-2400	65W
AMD Athlon X4 950	4	3.v/3.8 GHz	N/A	N/A	N/A	DDR4-2400	65W
AMD A6-9500	2	3.5/iii.8 GHz	half dozen CUs	384 SPs	1029 MHz	DDR4-2400	65W
AMD A6-9500E	two	3.0/3.four GHz	4 CUs	256 SPs	800 MHz	DDR4-2400	35W
Athlon X4 970	four	3.5+/3.eight GHz+	Due north/A	North/A	North/A	DDR4-2400	65W
Athlon X4 950	4	3.5/three.viii GHz	Due north/A	N/A	N/A	DDR4-2400	65W
Athlon X4 940	2	three.ii/3.5 GHz	N/A	N/A	North/A	DDR4-2400	35W