AMD aims to conquer the mass market of budget PCs with the help of its low-power Bristol Ridge and Stoney Bridge APUs.
According to PCWorld, the notebook PC market segment has become more important to the AMD's future. In this context, the company debuted at the Computex show in Taipei its Bristol Ridge and Stoney Ridge integrated graphics APUs for laptops.
AMD's new seventh-generation APUs consists a combined total of nine new products, catering to a market comprised of budget, low-end notebooks to up to premium devices. Since the company launched the Carrizo chips last May, Bristol Ridge and Stony Ridge represent AMD's first APU refresh in a year.
AMD has traditionally promoted its APUs as alternatives that provide more graphics power for a lower price. The Bristol Ridge and Stoney Ridge APUs feature AMD's Excavator core. This will be paired with R4 and R2 graphics on the low-end A6 and E2 series, respectively; AMD's R5 graphics on the A10 and A9 lines; and AMD's Radeon R7 graphics cores on the FX and A12 lines.
Ars Technica reports that AMD Bristol Ridge APUs have the same Carrizo design but provide 20 percent more CPU performance and 37 percent more GPU performance. What is most impressive is the fact that AMD has been able to pack all this performance in the exact same architecture as Carrizo based on Excavator design and 28nm transistors.
AMD's high-end quad-core AMD FX, A12 and A10 chips come in 35W and 15W variants. Base clock speeds are as high as 3.7GHz boost clock in the 35W FX and as low as 2.4GHz in the 15W A10.
While the A10 comes with Radeon R5 graphics, in a Radeon R7 graphics package, the FX and A12 come with up to eight GCN cores. All models support up to 2400MHz DRR4 memory.
The mid to low range A9, A6 and E2 APUs feature more conservative clock speeds and 15W TDP. The E2 features Radeon R2 graphics, the A6 Radeon R4 and the A9 Radeon R5. These low-end chips still get a boost in performance, compared to Carrizo.
