AMD A8-3870K - Radeon HD 6550D Graphics

A few days ago AMD announced several new A-Series APUs for desktops and notebooks. Knocking the Llano A8-3850 out of the top spot now for the A-Series is the A8-3870K, which was received by Phoronix just in time for some holiday testing of this updated APU.

After announcing the updated A-Series APUs, AMD sent over a review sample of the A8-3870K for testing at Phoronix. The initial round of testing wrapped up on Christmas. In this article is an updated look at the Radeon HD 6550D graphics found on the A8-3870K while coming out in the next day or two are the compute benchmarks and overclocking results.

These new APUs aren't too different from existing Llano APUs but there are some frequency boosts and also the APUs with a K post-fix come with an unlocked CPU and GPU, which will allow for greater overclocking headroom. Besides the A8-3870K are the A8-3820, A6-3670K, A6-3620, and A4-3420 APU parts. On the notebook side is also the A8-3550MX, A8-3520M, A6-3430MX, A4-3320M, A4-3305M, and E2-3000M.

The unlocked A8-3870K APU carries a 3.0GHz base frequency with a 100W TDP for the APU package, which is the same power level as the A8-3850 but with a 100MHz boost to the CPU clock. The graphics between the A8-3850 and A8-3870K are the same Radeon HD 6550D graphics with 400 GPU cores and a 600MHz CPU clock. The GPU clock on the A8-3870K is unlocked for overclocking potential up to 800MHz.