After keeping it under blanket for quite some time (remember our little sneak peak last month?), AMD has finally annoucned its next generation A-Series Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) - previously codenamed Trinity – to the world recently. For those who are not familiar with the APU term, think of it as a combination of CPU and graphics processor (GPU) on one single processor.
Available in dual and quad-core models with 17W, 25W and 35W thermal design power (TDP) variations, the new second generation AMD A-Series APU features the new AMD’s 32nm “Piledriver” CPU cores that are paired together with the DirectX 11-capable AMD Radeon HD 7000 series GPU. We will be discussing about the new APU in coming days but first, we would like to show you its gaming capability through our little demo here with Battlefield 3:
The second generation AMD A-Series APU reference notebook that we used above is powered by the quad-core 2.3GHz AMD A10-4600M APU which is the highest-end second generation A-Series APU at launch which is equipped with AMD Radeon HD 7660G GPU that is integrated into the same die. Do note that the notebook that we used here is a test notebook and it doesn’t reflect the actual design of Trinity-based notebooks that are coming to market from various OEMs throughout the globe pretty soon.
