AMD Launches 7th Generation A-Series And Athlon Processors To Retail

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To be honest I'm still amazed at what AMD was able to pull out of Bulldozer. From a fat power hog to something that while not the outright fastest is still very decent for the power its using, and what they were able to to while being stuck at 28nm. Unfortunately like pretty much all of the bulldozer parts, this is a bit late :-/ .
 
Of course 304% is '204% more' than 100% of G4560.
As for the whole release- it is surprising AMD releases these now. It is very late to create new silicon on 28nm (it has to be new- support for DDR4 had to be added). My explanation would be: AMD needs a very cheap product, as they do not have Zen dual-core design readied. Raven Ridge will probably have a 2X faster CPU, and die size of 200mm2+, making it a really fast, but not a cheap product. If AMD is smart, they will also cut it to 3-core, not 2-core for cheaper (and still very fast) chips. So they will not have anything for less than <$100 this year- but by reusing same motherboards and adding DDR4 support to 28nm Carizzo they can have a lineup for the ultra-budget with minimal investment.
 


They've been available to OEM's for about a year, its just now that they're bringing them to retail. They were actually out prior to Ryzen and were the flagship product for a while for AM4. I guess they've finally got enough product that isn't getting thrown out in OEM machines to be able to release it on the consumer market. It's still at least 6 months late though.
 


I wouldn't say they're necessarily late. They probably needed to see how the Ryzen/AM4 platform was received on the retail market before releasing them for retail sales. And, it gives a good lead-in for the upcoming Raven Ridge APUs (http://wccftech.com/amd-raven-ridge-ryzen-2500u-apu-vega-graphics-spotted/), which will replace the Piledriver cores with Zen cores & replace the R7 graphics with Vega.
 
Well, I know it's an older technology, and definitely in the entry-level/low end segment of things, but I'm still actually quite interested to see how these perform relative to their predecessors, and, of course, relative to the Ryzen 3 and Intel Pentium and i3.

I think the interesting factor is the integrated graphics. It'll be interesting (well, to me, I suppose most people don't care), to see where they fall on the hierarchy chart once testing is done.
 
:bounce:
...In the meantime, we'll be collecting a few of the new APUs to run through our test suite. Stay tuned.
Click to expand...
Thanks, THG & Paul.

I'm likely to swing and miss on this one, but if I recall correctly Bristol Ridge is the 28nm hybrid that combines a tweaked Carrizo 'Cat' front-end and AMD 'dense libraries' via 'Excavator' cores, with DDR4, UVD6 & GCN 1.2 (Tonga texture compression, True Audio, etc ?**). I SSD-modded some Lenovo Win10 laptops last Fall with the A10/12 97/98xxPs that were LOL sneaky-fast in daily tasks.

The downfall I recall was that they had dinky internal batteries, but were still good for 5-6 hours a pop --- no power bricks, with simple plug-in adapters.

Easy mod, too --- 1-screw 'trap-door' on the bottom ...

edit -- I fergit. HEVC, too (I think), but never tested it out.

 
What are you doing AMD ? . Will you ever hurry up with the ZEN APU'S because this is just nonsense . We want Zen not this crap
 
It isn't new silicon. Bristol Ridge was first released in June of 2016 (mobile) and October 2016 (OEM desktop). It was in development long before that. It's only new to retail. It's cheap, there are low-power variants, and it mates up nicely to cheap A300/A320 AM4 boards for low-end esports or office use, primarily. Otherwise Ryzen 3 is far better.

Bristol Ridge is a tweaked Carrizo, but neither Carrizo nor Bristol Ridge are a "hybrid" of the "Cat" cores. The "Cat" cores are a different design entirely (Bobcat/Jaguar/Puma) aimed at very low TDPs and prices. Carrizo and Bristol Ridge both use high density libraries, but they continued to make improvements for Bristol Ridge, adding DDR4 + AM4 support and further boosting efficiency.
 

Again, this is not a new product, it's a retail release of a previously OEM-only lineup. This release does not affect their upcoming releases AT ALL. The only reason they did this is to replace entry-level FM2+ with a modern and upgradeable AM4 platform, at the same entry-level price points. FM2+ and AM3+ are winding down fast, they'll be off the market soon.
 
So will there be as much hand-wringing, wailing, and teeth mashing over this release as when Intel resocketed KabyLake for socket 2066? Or, when AMD does it, is it now a 'wise business decision in a time of transition' ? :)
 

I don't see how the retail release of Bristol Ridge discussed in this article is in anyway similar to Kaby Lake-X.
 

I'm sure if AMD had the resources to launch the Ryzen CPU and Raven Ridge APU at the same time, they would have. But they are trying to dig themselves out of a hole, remember?
 


I skimmed over it, granted, but, are these not essentially older socket FM-whatever processors magically shoe-horned into the newer AM4 socket?

Yes, ....no similarity at all... :/

:)
 

No, they've been updated (see article - it's not long) vs. Kaby-X having essentially no changes except slightly boosted clocks and disabled GPU.

Moreover, they were used to launch the AM4 platform well before Ryzen was ready, whereas Kaby-X and Skylake-X were co-launched.

And I don't think anyone is exactly upset about Kaby-X... just mystified, as it seems like a product with little or no market because anyone in LGA2066 would probably just go with a Skylake-X. Whereas, there's a meaningful difference between Bristol Ridge vs. Ryzen in that one is an APU and the other is not. And AM4 is now the unified desktop socket for AMD, so it's not like you'd have the same chips in different sockets (unlike Kaby vs. Kaby-X).

In summary: no, it's not a relevant or useful comparison.

Suggestion: if you want to make an insightful quip, don't skimp on the "insight" part.
 


Launch the AM4 platform well before Ryzen was ready....

LOL!

*Now* who is confused...

AM4 launched the day Ryzen did....they both went into 'available for preorder' the same day

These processors are 28 nm Carizzo from 3-4 years ago shoehorned into the AM4 socket...w/ a bit faster clock tick?

You are comparing these processors to Ryzen, honestly?

And, I will certainly quip whenever/whereever I choose, missed the memo where you were appointed a lifecoach, where you are but thanks. (Perhaps the memo shipped early with the Carizzo/AM4 platform, since we have just now learned AM4 has truly been out 4 years....)
 

Since you didn't read the article, you probably didn't see that these chips were originally launched in September 2016:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-am4-socket-bristol-ridge-apu,32645.html

The problem AMD had was its FM2 platform was obsolete, but they wouldn't have Zen-based APUs until late 2017. This was made to fill the gap.

Honestly, I see nothing in your posts to suggest that you're not just trying to troll some AMD fanboys.

The fact that you're willing to engage in tit-for-tat to defend an admittedly uninformed post is reason enough for me to cut my losses on this exchange.
 
After reading that TH article you linked...

It appears you were correct....regarding the dates of AM4, etc...; rereading it now does ring an ever so faint memory of running across the article last year. 'shipping to some vendors' ... Were any of these AM4 platforms actually sold with these APUs before the Ryzen launch? Or did it predominantly stay in 'shipping to our vendor partners now' status until...well...yesterday.

Legit question, seriously...

However...

They still seem like older Carizzo-design 28 nm APUs shoehorned into socket AM4 to me...; not that that was all bad, I used an A4 in a laptop happily until a few months ago..


 

Yes, they started shipping systems out 10 months ago, maybe longer.
http://techreport.com/news/30674/amd-am4-based-system-spotted-in-the-wild
They used typical cost-reduced OEM boards that only support 65W chips, and thus have various deficits associated with super-cheap OEM boards. But they are AM4 and Bristol Ridge.

They're based on Carrizo, but even just the change in IMC to support DDR4 is a huge boost to the integrated graphics. Further, they made additional design and/or process tweaks to extract more efficiency. Carrizo is Excavator, Bristol Ridge is "Excavator v2".

Finally, while both Carrizo and Bristol Ridge saw a wide lineup on mobile, on desktop the only "Carrizo" model I can recall being released was Athlon X4 845. So bringing BR to AM4 gave Excavator a larger desktop lineup, and also put AM4 systems on the market long before Ryzen.
 
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