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Advanced Micro Devices is rolling out new chips aimed at gamers and PC enthusiasts who are looking to build desktops that are powerful, small and inexpensive.
Included in the rollout of the new accelerated processing units (APUs) July 31 is the vendor’s A10-7800, a fourth-generation A-Series “Kaveri” processor that includes 12 compute cores—four CPUs and eight GPUs—and Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) features that improve performance by enabling workloads to easily move between the CPUs and GPUs as needed and for the CPU and GPU to share access to memory.
The chip will leverage AMD’s Radeon R7 Series graphics in the vendor’s Graphics Core Next architecture, as well as its Mantle API, for improved gaming performance. The new APU also offers support for UltraHD 4K resolutions. Enhancements to the video post-processing capabilities will improve how 1080p videos look when put onto an UltraHD-enabled monitor or TV, according to AMD officials.
AMD first released the A10-7800 earlier this month in Japan, with officials saying worldwide release would come at the end of July.
Bernd Lienhard, corporate vice president and general manager of AMD’s Client Business Unit, said in a statement that support for Mantle “simplifies game optimizations for programmers and developers to unlock unprecedented levels of gaming performance transforming the world of game development to help bring better, faster games to the PC.”
At the same time, AMD also unveiled two other APUs, the A8-7600 and A6-7400K, which officials said are aimed at consumers who want to improve the performance of the applications on their PCs.
The A8-7600 offers 10 cores (four CPUs and six GPUs) and speeds of up to 3.8GHz, while the A6-7400K holds six cores (two CPUs and four GPUs) and runs as fast as 3.9GHz. Both chips also include HSA features. In addition, the thermal-design power in the new chips can be configured by users to maximize performance.
The A10-7800 APU is priced at $158 per 1,000 units shipped. Pricing for the A8-7600 is $104, while the A6-7400K starts at $79.