Day of the Dead: AMD Releases new Carrizo FM2+ APU, the A8-7680
by Ian Cutress on October 29, 2018 8:00 AM ESTReports of a new Carrizo APU have been floating around for the past couple of weeks as several ASRock FM2+ recently had BIOS updates stating ‘now supporting new Carrizo APU’. Of course, this sounds preposterous: why would a new Carrizo APU, on an old platform, on an old 28nm process, be launched? When we spoke to our contacts at ASRock, even they did not know. It looks like AMD has let the cat out of the bag, albeit without an official announcement.
In AMD’s own Master Product List, which lists every SKU that AMD makes / has stock of, several new listings have shown up which correspond to the naming conventions of a Carrizo APU.
In this listing, we see the AD767KXBJCWOF, which is the A8-7670K, a known product. Then we have several listings that start AD7680, for the new A8-7680 processor, followed by the A8-7690K, another known unit.
AD7680ACABBOX will be the code for the boxed processor, and AD7680ACABCBX is likely for the tray units sold to OEMs to put into their systems. Currently, out of all the FM2+ boards in the market, only a few A68 boards have it listed as compatible:
- ASRock FM2A68M-HD+
- ASRock FM2A68M-DG3+
- ASUS A68HM-K
- ASUS A68HM-Plus
- GIGABYTE F2A68HM-DS2
- GIGABYTE F2A65HM-H
- GIGABYTE F2A68HM-S1
- MSI A68HM-E33-v2
It would appear that all of these boards (and some by Biostar, which don’t list the CPU), have processed an AGESA Carrizo PI-1.3.0.0 update for the chipset in order to accept the new processor. This means that most of these boards currently on the shelves will need to be flashed to the latest update.
Specifications for the processor are still a little unknown. Given the name, the A8-7680, it is expected to fall somewhere between the A8-7690K and the A8-7670K, which means it should be a dual module processor with four threads (remember AMD’s ‘one module, two threads’ hardware? No, we don’t want to either), a base clock of 3.5 or 3.6 GHz, a turbo clock of 3.8 GHz, a Radeon R7 integrated graphics with 757 MHz base frequency, two channels of DDR3-2133 support, and a TDP of 65W.
The processor seems to be listed at two shops in Europe already, however both are listed as out of stock: LambdaTek for £51.67 ($55) and CentralPoint in the Netherlands for 52 EUR + tax ($59)
Our only guess for this new processor is that AMD has a particular customer who needs a refresh processor custom to their needs. Normally this would fly under the radar and be an OEM only part (and probably be part of the 8000 series), but for whatever reason (they made too many?) it seems to perhaps be coming to retail.
At around the $55-$59 mark, AMD also offers the Athlon 200GE with Ryzen cores and Vega graphics, although that system requires DDR4. This new Carrizo part is DDR3, but I doubt that the price difference in the memory would really make up for the difference in performance. If we happen to pick up a sample, we’ll let you know if the dead have truly risen, or if it’s just for a single night/SKU only.
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hojnikb - Monday, October 29, 2018 - link
That would actually be very awsome. Something like stoney ridge would be perfect.GreenReaper - Monday, October 29, 2018 - link
Forget x265, go for AV1!krumme - Monday, October 29, 2018 - link
Nosta is happykrumme - Monday, October 29, 2018 - link
The rise of Soironx have begun !mickulty - Monday, October 29, 2018 - link
Oh for gods sake, are we really still doing he stupid 'acting like CMT is SMT' stuff? Come on Ian, they're slow cores, not SMT-style threads.dromoxen - Monday, October 29, 2018 - link
Old davo opened some boxes at the back of the warehouse ... oh look , what are we going to do with these? relabel em and ship 'em out ... yep ,$50 a goSamus - Tuesday, October 30, 2018 - link
Intel's turn to release a new Pentium 4!AntonErtl - Wednesday, October 31, 2018 - link
When the Carrizo-based Athlon X4 845 came out, there were reports that the graphics part of the Carrizo was disabled because FM2+ does not provide the right power delivery for the Carrizo graphics. Were these reports wrong? If yes, why did we not get a desktop Carrizo with graphics then? If not, how come we now get a desktop Carrizo with graphics.One speculation I have read is that the A8-7680 is actually a Bristol Ridge that uses the DDR3 controller instead of the DDR4 controller of the Bristol Ridge (according to the source, Bristol Ridge has both). However, I expect that the power delivery problem of FM2+ (if that report is true) would also affect the Bristol Ridge.
ajlueke - Thursday, November 1, 2018 - link
This would be the most cost effective way to add dedicated hardware HEVC decoding to an existing FM2+ platform. Anyone running FM2+ with Kaveri or earlier would benefit from the upgrade.pugster - Tuesday, November 6, 2018 - link
They could sell these CPU's for $10 and it is not worth it because of the high ddr4 prices. Personally I would like to see AMD or Intel releasing low end CPU takes the older ddr3 memory.