AMD’s Richland Desktop APUs Arrive In Style

A famous person once was quoted as saying “You don’t have to be rich to have Richland”, well okay you got me there, so maybe not quite, but it is true however, as seen by the pricing on AMD’s latest Elite- APU series. The waiting and speculating has ended, as yesterday the latest SKUs and pricing were made public so we jumped to buy one to unbox and test for you fine folks.

Like Intel’s Haswell launch many of the key benefits to Richland will be its mobile performance in the graphics arena where AMD fans hope to see Intel get impaled and their favorite company to some out on top. In truth I think that is probably how it will be as AMD has had much more time to develop and mature their APU technology than Intel has had with embedded graphics.

There is nothing ravishingly new with the release of Richland as it was built off the existing Trinity core technology with just a few new speed bumps here and there to pump up the performance. The higher clock speeds and improved memory support will hopefully show the benefits of a mature platform. All but one line item of the newly released APU SKUs have increased GPU and CPU clocks as the A4-4000 is the budget APU and the graphics chip is as if yet to be announced on that particular model.

The maximum turbo core speeds have also been increased from 200MHz on the A10-6800K and all the way up to 400MHz on the A8-6500. Base clock speeds have also been increased ranging from 100MHZ on the entry-level models and up to 300MHz on the highest end models. Another thing of mention is that Richland APUs will be able to actually run at their targeted Turbo clock speeds where Trinity had an inclination to run more at their base clock speeds. In theory this has possible performance increases anywhere from 5% to 25% with an average boost more likely in the 10% range.

AMD has been focusing on their APU technology much longer than Intel has and on the GPU side of the coin Richland APUs have also been clocked 5-11% faster with 11% going to the A10-6700 against the A10-5700 as all others are at the 5% range. The price has also been adjusted in about the same manner so you pay for what you get in any case, but the good news however is that all existing Socket FM2 motherboards will be able to support the new APUs so need to buy a new motherboard, which is always good.

There will also be support for the A85X, A75, and A55 platforms with forward compatibility with FM2+ motherboards as well so plenty of flexibly for AMD fans. In the same light that most Ivy Bridge users will not move forward to Haswell it is most likely that Trinity users will upgrade to Richland, but the availability is there if users want to make the switch. At least with the ability to just change out an APU and keep all your existing parts the price range to upgrade to the A10-6800K is $149.00.

In price comparisons the fastest AMD APU costs $40.00 less than the lowest-end Core i5 Haswell CPU and is still priced lower by $30-$40 than a Core i5 Ivy Bridge entry level CPU showing AMD priced very competitively with Intel in this arena. If you want to see where Intel competes price wise against AMD’s A10-6800K take a look at Intel’s i3 Ivy Bridge as there is no Haswell SKU in desktop at this moment and no plans yet seen to do so. Previous generation A10 APUs have proven themselves to be very efficient in most tasks including decent gameplay, and even high end gaming only needs a stronger CPU unless you are using two or more cards.

For most high-end gaming solutions its good enough to upgrade just your graphics card and be on your way to effective 1080p gaming that will satisfy most users. We all know that for the highest performance CPUs come from Intel and that Quick Sync is great for improved video encoding, but for anything outside of those two areas AMD seems to have a solution that will satisfy many users. APUs are a great idea and in the right users system a very solid solution for a very low price. Like I stated in the opening paragraph we were able to buy a A10-6800K from Newegg the day of the break and we will be bringing you the unboxing and full review as well as battles in the next few days so stay tuned to THETECHIT.