New Details Revealed on AMD's Upcoming Richland Chips
The initial releases of AMD's new family of chips are aimed primarily at laptops and ultra-portable devices.
With the upcoming release of its Richland APUs, AMD aims to improve the attractiveness of its chips for mobile devices and is specifically targeting power consumption and dynamic load based on temperature and performance.
Based on the numbers AMD provided, Richland's overall power consumption appears to be slightly more conservative than Trinity's, yielding better efficiency, particularly in more demanding workloads. It's worth noting that the chart below does not include any benchmarks for full system load, but instead focuses on more realistic scenarios that an average user would encounter on a regular basis.
Based on the Fire Strike DirectX 11 test in 3DMark, Richland's graphics component appears capable of outperforming comparable chips from Intel's Ivy Bridge-based line-up, which would confirm what we've already seen on the desktop in benchmarks pitting Ivy Bridge against Trinity. With that said, this isn't a measure of Richland's x86 performance so much as its on-die GPU.
By far the most noteworthy improvement is "Temperature Smart Turbo Core" (TSTC), Richland's new temperature and clock management technology. TSTC primarily involves the use of 17 temperature sensors (five on each CPU and seven on the GPU) combined with a package sensor that allows the internal software to dynamically change the clock speed of both the CPUs and GPU based on load to enable the best possible performance whilst staying within the chip's thermal limits. For example, if the user is playing a GPU intensive game, the technology will reduce the CPU's clock speed which will then reduce its temperature and enable the GPU to run at a higher clock rate.
Though AMD's previous generation of Trinity chips also featured a similar system, it did not account for bottlenecks since the algorithm simply granted the CPU or GPU whatever power it demanded. Richland's algorithm, on the other hand, takes this into account and only supplies additional power if it will result in performance improvements or a more efficient operation.
The family also includes a number of new technologies to allow a more natural interaction with the computer such as AMD Gesture Control, AMD Face Login, AMD Screen Mirror, AMD Quick Stream, Steady Stream and Perfect Picture HD.
Richland will initially come to the market with four SKUs, the A10-5750M, A8-5550M, A6-5350M, and the A4-5150M.
| APU | Cores | Clock (Max/Base) | TDP (W) | L2 Cache | GPU | GPU Clocks (Max/Base) | DDR3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A10-5750M | 4 | 3.5 GHz / 2.5 GHz | 35 | 4 MB | HD 8650G | 720 MHz / 533 MHz | DDR3-1866 DDR3L-1600 DDR3U-1333 |
| A8-5550M | 4 | 3.1 GHz / 2.1 GHz | 35 | 4 MB | HD 8550G | 720 MHz / 515 MHz | DDR3-1600 DDR3L-1600 DDR3U-1333 |
| A6-5350M | 2 | 3.5 GHz / 2.9 GHz | 35 | 1 MB | HD 8450G | 720 MHz / 533 MHz | DDR3-1600 DDR3L-1600 DDR3U-1333 |
| A4-5150M | 2 | 3.3 GHz / 2.7 GHz | 35 | 1 MB | HD 8350G | 720 MHz / 514 MHz | DDR3-1600 DDR3L-1600 DDR3U-1333 |
The aforementioned quartet is currently being shipped to manufacturers with regional availability of OEM products tentatively scheduled to commence next month. Whilst AMD has revealed that low-voltage variants for ultra-thin notebooks will begin in Q1 / Q2 2013, it has yet to provide any information on desktop Richland chips.




AMD promised another chip for FM2 after Trinity.
In reality - Richland is like a new stepping of Trinity.
I hope that doesn't count as a new upgrade for Trinity, because if AMD abandons FM2...
Any difference from our good old gaming desktop?
still better than intel when was the last time they kept a socket? 775?
Tried the windows 8 tablet with the Atom dual core N2600 1.6Ghz and GMA graphics, and graphics sucks, I also noticed there is a little fan on the CPU to keep it cool, that makes the bettery life short rather. Hope to see an AMD based soon.
Just that you can have a PC with a relatively small form factor that can play AAA games in a home theater setting.
Doubtful. If AMD was to get a decent amount of money from console GPUs, the Wii and XBox 360 probably would've helped keep them very much afloat.
Depends on what you mean. If you mean video playback, then yes, it would be enough. If you are talking about gaming at 4K/5K, then no, but most gpus cant play AAA games at that anyway.
My Wi-Fi router consumes twice as much...
the measures they took to improve power efficiency seem good.
AMD promised another chip for FM2 after Trinity.
In reality - Richland is like a new stepping of Trinity.
I hope that doesn't count as a new upgrade for Trinity, because if AMD abandons FM2...
if kaveri indeed adds support for gddr5/ddr4, amd may change kaveri's pin count.
still better than intel when was the last time they kept a socket? 775?
no. lga 1156 supported nehalem and some of the westmere cpus(arrendale) iirc. lga 1155 supported sb and ivb. lga2011 will(rumored) support ivy bridge-e. haswell and broadwell will(rumored) fit lga1150.
amd hasn't integrated anything or added support for new ram since am3/am3+, that's why they didn't change sockets. they spun it as doing service to customers though. convenient.
when they put pcie controller on die, they introduced a new, incompatible platform (fm1) right away.
FM2(1) and AM3+, have served his purpose, now should go. The sooner they get unified the better.
AMD do not have the staff to develop so many concurrent chipsets. For that reason the 990 series is now lacking features. It would make sense if the FM2/AM3+ MoBos where differentiated but in the maket their prices overlap a lot.
The reatil channels do not like keeping inventories in 3 levels (entry,middle,enthusiast) for two different sockets, therefore order Mobos with caution.The stock do not move fast enuff nowdays.
Besides the whole era of sockets as We know it are coming to an end. Keeping MoBo signals synchronized 12 cm apart at the proyected speeds is increasing harder.Add the new ram type (DDR4 or even GDDR5) will demand a new design.
Some clever ideas are being propose to save the sockets, like MoBos with components in both sides or adding stuff in the CPU interposer.If Intel manages to put the ram in the CPU interposer at commercial prices, the next gen Apus better be fast; very fast.So it seems Kaviery Apus and Steamroller FX are the end of the line.
Good riddance
I think the trinity A10-4600m is still better in terms of performance than the Richland A8's - it looks like all of the Richland A8's have a 256 shader count; the trinity A10's have 384 shaders. Even assuming Richlands shaders are higher clocked, they won't overcome the shader count. And the A8 Richland GPU is still being fed by ddr3-1600.
Now, the A10 richland is interesting. The cpu portion is an extra 200 mhz base and 300 mhz turbo above the trinity a10-4600m, and the gpu is clocked a little faster. But the ddr3-1866 potential may really give a nice boost to the gpu memory subsystem, which is a bottleneck in the AMD apus. But I don't know what ddr31866 so-dimms are going to be priced at as there doesn't seem to be much of a market at the moment; ddr3-1600 so-dimms just became affordable over the past 16 months or so.