True to its promise around seven months ago, AMD has finally revealed the full line-up of its brand new 6th generation A-Series processors for notebooks which was previously codenamed as Carrizo. Available in three different variants, these new APUs are designed for mainstream notebook segment that revolves around the price range of USD 400 (RM 1,479) to USD 700 (RM 2,588) according to AMD.
Claimed to have better power efficiency over its predecessors thanks to a number of improvements in its design, the 6th generation A-Series processor is the first group of AMD processors to feature the company’s new Excavator CPU cores. These processors apparently able to deliver up to more than twice the battery life of previous APUs for notebooks. Interestingly, this not only applies to video playback but for gaming as well.
Each 6th generation A-Series processor comes with four CPU cores that run at a base clock speed that ranges from 1.6 GHz up till 2.1 GHz as well as boost clock speed of between 3.0 to 3.4 GHz according to specific models. In addition to that, they are also equipped with an integrated six-core Radeon R6 or eight-core Radeon R7 GPU with a clock speed of between 720 and 800 MHz.
AMD stated that these GPUs actually have discrete class performance even at full HD resolution and also supports DirectX 12 that will be present in the upcoming Windows 10 operating system. According to statistics provided by the company, the top of the line Carrizo processor at the moment – the FX-8800P – is able to churn out more than 30fps in Dota 2 at 1920 x 1080 resolution with maximum graphics settings while the mid-range model A10-8700P is able to reach almost 50fps in League of Legends at the same graphics and resolution settings.
Other than longer battery life and gaming capability, the 6th generation A-Series processors also features hardware-based support for HEVC/H.265 that allows them to have exceptional 4K video playback capability. Additionally, AMD also claimed that its new processors are able to transcode video faster than its competitors as well. Not to forget, these are also the first HSA 1.0 compliant processors which would provide accelerated experience for HSA-supported applications.
Other than these essential features, all of these new 6th generation A-Series processors are also equipped with an AMD Secure Processor which is a dedicated 32-bit ARM Cortex-A5 processor that helps them support security features such as TPM 2.0, BitLocker, ARM TrustZone and many more.
All in all, there are indeed plenty of good things from AMD regarding its brand new 6th generation A-Series processors for notebooks. We even witnessed some of these features ourselves (more on that in subsequent posts) but nevertheless, we have to see how the processors perform in actual products before we can put actual verdict on it.
While we have yet to see actual products based on these new APUs when this article is published, AMD has stated that several of its partners are already committed to the new 6th generation A-Series processors for notebooks including Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Toshiba. Notebooks featuring these new processors will be made available to the market starting from this month onwards.
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