AMD today announced availability for the 32nm AMD Fusion A-Series Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) A8-3850 and A6-3650 desktop processors (Llano).
The AMD A8-3850 and A6-3650 quad-core desktop processors have been designed to enable a high-performance experience for desktop users, including HD graphics, supercomputer-like performance, and fast application speeds.
Both the AMD A8-3850 and A6-3650 desktop processors announced today combine four x86 CPU cores with DirectX 11-capable discrete-level graphics, and up to 400 Radeon cores along with dedicated HD video processing on a single chip. AMD Fusion APUs offer AMD Dual Graphics, with up to 120 percent visual performance boost, when paired with select AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series graphics cards. AMD promises to deliver consumers supercomputer-like performance of more than 500 gigaflops compute capacity and rapid content transfers via USB 3.0.
All A-Series processors are powered by AMD VISION Engine Software, which is composed of AMD Catalyst graphics driver, AMD OpenCL driver and the AMD VISION Engine Control Center.
With a suggested retail price of $135, the AMD A8-3850 desktop processor operates at 2.9GHz (CPU) and 600MHz (GPU) with 400 Radeon Cores, 4MB of L2 cache and a TDP of 100W.
AMD A6-3650 desktop processor has clock speeds of 2.6GHz (CPU) and 443MHz (GPU) with 320 Radeon Cores, 4MB of L2 cache and a TDP of 100W. The suggested retail price of the AMD A6-3650 desktop processor is $115.
FM1 motherboards for the A-Series APUs are available now from original design manufacturers (ODMs), including ASUS, ASRock, Biostar, ECS, Foxconn (Hong Hai Precision), Gigabyte, Jetway, MSI and Sapphire.
AMD A8-3850 and A6-3650 desktop processors are scheduled to be available for purchase through system builders and at major online retailers, including Amazon, CyberPower Inc., iBuyPower, Newegg and TigerDirect beginning July 3, 2011. In September, AMD will also announce E-450 and E300 for its Brazos platform.
For the high-end Scorpius platform, AMD will announce the AM3+-based FX-8150, FX8100, FX6100 and FX4100 by the end of September with FX8170, FX8120, FX6120 and FX4140 set for the first quarter of 2012.
AMD is also set to launch a chipset codenamed Hudson D4 in February 2012.
AMD is targeting Llano at the entry-level and mainstream markets, competing mainly against Intel's Core i3 and Pentium. If you're building an entry level gaming PC and have to rely solely on integrated graphics, Llano could be a good solution.
On the other hand, AMD's rival Intel is also prepared to launch its high-end X79 chipset after September along with 11 upgraded CPUs including Core i5-2320, Core i3-2120T, Core i3-2130 and G540.
