AMD Targets Intel's i5 Processors With New Trinity APUs

Pricing details for AMD's new Trinity-based and quad-core A10-5800K and the A8-5600K chips won't be revealed until Oct. 2, which is when they will be available. But Adam Kozak, desktop product marketing manager at AMD, Sunnyvale, Calif., said they will be targeted primarily at system builders within the entry-level or "mainstream" desktop market.

"These A series accelerated processors fit within that mainstream segment where our customers are looking at building systems and are looking to prepare these with graphics cards for $100 or less, all the way down to the free graphics that come inside that accelerated processor."

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AMD's APUs, including its new 32nm A10-5800K and A8-5600K, combine the compute performance of a traditional CPU and the graphics performance of a GPU on a single piece of silicon. In this case, the new A10 and A8 chips are coupled with AMD's Radeon HD7000 GPU, and are also based on the chip maker's next-generation Piledriver architecture.

With significant performance gains over prior-generation AMD desktop APUs, the new A10-5800K has a base CPU speed of 3.8GHz but can be overclocked to reach speeds up to 4.2GHz. Meanwhile, the new A8-5600K has a base speed of 3.6GHz and an overclock speed of 3.8GHz. Both chips can be unlocked and, according to Kozak, can outperform competing graphics chips from Intel, such as its HD4000.

"It should be obvious and apparent from the 2011 APU that the 2012 APU is even faster and even stronger against Intel products," Kozak said. "The APUs have far exceeded the performance available on competitor integrated chips. In this case, even comparing against an Intel HD4000 chip, the A10 processor is, in some cases, over double the performance."

What's more, Kozak said that many system builders or PC enthusiasts end up having to couple a competing integrated chip like Intel's i5 3450 with an additional graphics card, just to get the same performance that they would glean from a single AMD A-series APU, like the new A10-5800K.

"There's a lot of graphics performance sitting inside these accelerated processors," Kozak said.

PUBLISHED SEPT. 27, 2012