Just in time for the New Year sales, AMD has announced a complete refresh of its A-Series APU line-up. Though not the introduction of a new architecture or a reduction in manufacturing process sizes, AMD has still managed to squeeze that crucial amount of extra performance from the new line-up; with indications that the new products will take the price brackets of their predecessors, the new APUs are looking to offer good value for money.
Taking the place of current front-runner, the AMD A8-3850, is the AMD A8-3870k, sporting an increased clock raising the quad-core design from 2.9 to 3.0GHz and featuring an unlocked multiplier for the over-clocking community. The design remains within the same 100 watt power envelope and sports the same 600MHz 400-core HD 6550D integrated graphics core, though now also with an unlocked multiplier, allowing both the CPU and GPU cores to be fine-tuned, with AMD claiming possible frequency increases of up to 500MHz on the CPU and 200MHz on the GPU.
On the lower end of the spectrum, matters are a little less clean-cut, the new A4-3305 remains the same speed as the existing A4-3300 APU, however has half the cache and 80 less GPU cores, however these are clocked to run 149MHz faster, making performance comparisons quite the challenge; it's looking like the 3305 may be able to run at a lower voltage than the 3300 and so whilst still claiming a 35 watt TDP, the reality may be that AMD has been able to cut power usage by reducing GPU cores and cache. The new A4-3320M looks to sit around the spot of the existing A4-3310MX, offering comparable performance thanks to an increased Turbo Boost frequency from 2.5 to 2.6GHz whilst keeping a slightly lower base clock of 2.0GHz as opposed to 2.1GHz, thus remaining within the 35 watt TDP range as opposed to the 45 watt TDP of the 3310MX. We agree that it's perhaps a smart move at the low-power end of the line-up to focus on performance-per-watt as these chips will likely see themselves placed in notebooks where good thermal performance and average power consumption are paramount.
The full line-up is as follows:
| AMD A-Series Desktop APUs | |
| A8-3870K | Four CPU cores, 3.0 GHz CPU base (unlocked), 100W TDP, 400 Radeon cores, 600 MHz GPU base (unlocked), 4 MB L2 cache |
| A8-3820 | Four CPU cores, 2.5 GHz CPU base (2.8 GHz Turbo Core), 65W TDP, 400 Radeon cores, 4 MB L2 cache |
| A6-3670K | Four CPU cores, 2.7 GHz CPU base (unlocked), 100W TDP, 320 Radeon cores, 600 MHz GPU base (unlocked), 4 MB L2 cache |
| A6-3620 | Four CPU cores, 2.2 GHz CPU base (2.5 GHz Turbo Core), 65W TDP, 320 Radeon cores, 4 MB L2 cache |
| A4-3420 | Two CPU cores, 2.8 GHz CPU base, 65W TDP, 160 Radeon cores, 1 MB L2 cache |
| AMD A-Series Notebook APUs | |
| A8-3550MX | Four CPU cores, 2.0 GHz CPU base (2.7 GHz Turbo Core), 45W TDP, 400 Radeon Cores, 4 MB L2 cache |
| A8-3520M | Four CPU cores, 1.6 GHz CPU base (2.5 GHz Turbo Core), 35W TDP, 400 Radeon Cores, 4 MB L2 cache |
| A6-3430MX | Four CPU cores, 1.7 GHz CPU base (2.4 GHz Turbo Core), 45W TDP, 320 Radeon Cores, 4 MB L2 cache |
| A6-3420M | Four CPU cores, 1.5 GHz CPU base (2.4 GHz Turbo Core), 35W TDP, 320 Radeon Cores, 4 MB L2 cache |
| A4-3330MX | Two CPU cores, 2.2 GHz CPU base (2.6 GHz Turbo Core), 45W TDP, 240 Radeon Cores, 2 MB L2 cache |
| A4-3320M | Two CPU cores, 2.0 GHz CPU base (2.6 GHz Turbo Core), 35W TDP, 240 Radeon Cores, 2 MB L2 cache |
| A4-3305M | Two CPU cores, 1.9 GHz CPU base (2.5 GHz Turbo Core), 35W TDP, 160 Radeon Cores, 1 MB L2 cache |
| E2-3000M | Two CPU cores, 1.8 GHz CPU base (2.4 GHz Turbo Core), 35W TDP, 160 Radeon Cores, 1 MB L2 Cache |
