News - AMD’s 45W TDP A10-6700T is expected to be launched shortly

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New member of the Richland APU lineup could be good for HTPC and media PCs.

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Read more.

Finally they get it.

It is certainly a good part; pleanty of horsepower for most people, attractive TDP and no fiddling with undervolting. That said, I'd still go for the 6700 since that strikes a better balance between core clock and TDP for me. AMD should have called the 45W part the 6600 or something rather than add a T, since that is pretty much the same distinction between the 6700 and 6800.

These would be great for my HTPC if I didn't already have a A10-5800K. You can achieve lower TDP with the 100/65W APUs by under-clocking them. I'm sure they'll be very attractive as long as AMD doesn't charge a premium for them, they need to be cheaper than the standard A10/A8's otherwise people can just under-clock those for a similar result. Now what most HTPC enthusiasts who like a bit of gaming would really love is an APU based on the PS4/XB1 chips. 8x Jaguar cores with 768 or 1152 stream processors, that would something to get excited about! Faster DDR4/5 system RAM would need to come along before that happens though & I suppose AMD would be afraid of cannibalising discrete card sales. Although for the ITX market you can't fit discrete cards in anyway.

I think I'll hold out for Kaveri for my next silent/quiet system.. Hopefully it will live up to the hype in some respects.

£150 / $150 is close to a a 7770GPU and Athlon 2 x 4 651, Other than the obvious Wattage difference , I wonder what the performance difference is.

One thing I'm missing in practically all reviews is underclocking / undervolting. These APU's (and other CPU's) can often be undervolted without problem, and should reach much lower power levels. I would be very interested to learn if a higher power SKU can be made to run close to the power levels of the lower power SKU.

I'd be more interested if they pushed the Crossfire Hybrid aspect, I don't need top-end PC graphics, what I do need is a quiet, economical machine that can still run the games at X-box / PS3 level graphics at a HD resolution, and still act as a PC.

If they could pair these APU's with a discrete GPU running at 7770 / 7790 levels to deliver a boost, it'd win hands down over the equivilent Intel offering, especially if when using my machine in 2D mode, the GPU didn't draw power

The A10-6700T is a part for HTPC and SFF PC use in small cases with limited cooling abilities.

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Originally Posted by Brewster0101

£150 / $150 is close to a a 7770GPU and Athlon 2 x 4 651, Other than the obvious Wattage difference , I wonder what the performance difference is.

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The list price of the A10-6700 in the US is around $150, and around £110 to £120 in the UK which is around the same price with VAT on top. Hence the A10-6700T will probably be around £110 to £120.

Wish I'd been able to get one of these for my mum when she had to upgrade her computer recently, but finances limited us to an A4-4000.

Any chance of a competition for one of these perhaps Hexus? :)

45W max is important of course to make sure the chassis/PSU can handle it but I'm just as interested in the platform idle consumption, have to see what that is like. HTPC spends far more time idle so it's pretty important when looking at running costs and "usually silent" running etc. Reviews, reviews :-)

I will say I am in the process of underclocking my 3870k due to heat, functionally its perfect for HTPC use but if I could slot the a10-6700t in I would do it without blinking.

This should be a brilliant chip for small form factors. It's a shame hardly any motherboard manufacturers make ITX boards for them, which is where these chips make the most sense. You either risk your board setting on fire with asrock, get something very basic from zotac and msi or pay over the odds for the gigabyte.

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Originally Posted by kingpotnoodle

45W max is important of course to make sure the chassis/PSU can handle it but I'm just as interested in the platform idle consumption, have to see what that is like. HTPC spends far more time idle so it's pretty important when looking at running costs and "usually silent" running etc. Reviews, reviews :-)

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Platform idle for FM2 generally is very good - slightly better than intel equivalents in fact*. The 45W TDP parts will actually idle at exactly the same power draw as all other FM2 processors, because the voltage reduction under Cool'n'Quiet is generally downward locked, so they all idle at the same core clock and voltage. The 45W TDP is acheived by reducing the load clock speeds and voltages. So just check the platform idle power draws from any other socket FM2 richland review ;)

*EDIT: except Haswell, it seems, checking recent reviews. But yeah, the 100W TDP 6800k idle draw is only 1W more than the 65W TDP 6700: http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/57...chland/?page=9

Sadly Intel are already at 35W TDP for the "T" range and the new "U" and "Y" range, whilst much lower clocked (and intended for laptops so finding a motherboard will be a problem) are at 15W TDP or lower.

Given that you can pick up an i3 "T" for under £100 (including VAT), I am not convinced by the pricing for AMD, probably £120 including VAT would do it - A10-6700 is a better performing chip, and IGP is much better, than i3 but this is the budget end of the market where gaming is limited to casual gaming

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Originally Posted by scaryjim

Platform idle for FM2 generally is very good - slightly better than intel equivalents in fact*. The 45W TDP parts will actually idle at exactly the same power draw as all other FM2 processors, because the voltage reduction under Cool'n'Quiet is generally downward locked, so they all idle at the same core clock and voltage. The 45W TDP is achieved by reducing the load clock speeds and voltages. So just check the platform idle power draws from any other socket FM2 richland review ;)

*EDIT: except Haswell, it seems, checking recent reviews. But yeah, the 100W TDP 6800k idle draw is only 1W more than the 65W TDP 6700: http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/57...chland/?page=9

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Well yeah, if it's running the same voltage at the lowest clock as regular A10 then it's just a easy way to restrict max-TDP (rather than underclocking/limiting previous chips). I rather hoped maybe it was a top binned part capable of running slightly lower voltages at all clocks... but probably not... or that it would be more under-volt-able than the regular parts, would be nice to read a review to see, I don't have the budget for an experiment at the moment!

I've also (as noted in the Hexus review) found that motherboards make a difference so I take comparisons with a pinch of salt, testing different boards with the same CPU and PSU (read at the wall) I found noticeable differences even between some ITX boards with same chipset, hence why I often settled on Intel made boards which seemed to do well in that regard (still disappointed they've cancelled their motherboard business).