AMD PRO A8-9600B vs AMD A10-8700P vs AMD A12-9700P

AMD PRO A8-9600B

The AMD PRO A8-9600B is a mid-range APU of the Bristol Ridge series (7th generation of APUs) with 4 CPU-cores (two Excavator modules) clocked at 2.4 - 3.3 GHz. It is intended for business laptops and features the same specifications as the consumer AMD A10-9600P SoC.

It was announced in mid 2016 and is based on the same silicon as Carrizo but with more and refined features. It is a ULV-chip with a TDP of 15 Watt and integrates a Radeon R5 graphics card (384 shader cores / 6 compute cores) and a dual-channel DDR4-1866 memory controller. As Carrizo its a full featured SoC that offers all I/O ports on the chip.

The A10-9600P is slightly faster than the old 15-Watt top model of Carrizo, the FX-8800P. Therefore, the CPU performance is similar to a Broadwell 15 Watt Core i3 like The i3-5010U. See our Bristol Ridge article for more information on the architecture and improvements compared to Carrizo.

AMD A10-8700P

The AMD A10-8700P is a mid-range Carrizo APU of 2015 for mainstream laptops. It is a SoC containing two Excavator CPU modules (with 4 integer and 2 FP units counted as 4 compute cores), a Radeon R7 graphics card with 6 compute cores (384 shaders), a DDR3-2133 (35 Watt cTDP) memory controller and a video engine (including UVD 6 with hardware HEVC / H.265 decoding).

The performances of the CPU and GPU cores depend on the configurable TDP. This cTDP can range from 12 to 35 Watts depending on the cooling solution and size of the laptop. Thus, clock speeds of the compute cores will vary. E.g., the GPU can score between 1764 points (15 Watts) to 2359 points (+34% with 35 Watt cTDP) in 3DMark 11 (P). CPU performance with a 35 Watt cTDP should be slightly above the Kaveri A10-7400P. If configured at 15 Watts, the CPU should be clearly slower as the Boost speed cannot be maintained for extended periods.

More technical details and features of the 6th generation of APUs (Carrizo) can be found in our launch article.

AMD A12-9700P

The AMD A12-9700P is a mainstream SoC from the Bristol-Ridge APU series for notebooks (7th APU generation), which was announced mid 2016. The ULV chip with a TDP of 15 Watts (can be configured to 12 Watts) has four CPU cores (two Excavator modules), a Radeon R7 GPU as well as a dual-channel DDR4-1866 memory controller. Carrizo is a full-fledged SoC and is also equipped with an integrated chipset, which provides all I/0 ports.

Architecture

Bristol Ridge is the successor of the Carrizo architecture and the design is almost identical. Thanks to optimized manufacturing processes and more aggressive Boost behavior, however, the clocks are a bit higher at the same power consumption. The memory controller now also supports DDR4-RAM, in this case up to 1866 MHz. More technical details are available in the following articles:

• AMD's Bristol Ridge and Stoney Ridge Architecture
• AMD: Bristol Ridge APUs announced

Performance

The performance of the A12-9700P is between the two 15-Watt processors A10-9600P and FX-9800P, and therefore roughly on par with a 15-Watt Core i3 from the Skylake or Kaby Lake series, respectively. Compared to the Intel model, the AMD chip has a small advantage in multi-thread scenarios, but is beaten when you only stress one or two cores. Due to the TDP limitation, the performance of the A12-9700P will drop significantly under sustained workloads.

This means there is sufficient performance for typical office and web applications as well as light multitasking.

Graphics Card

The integrated Radeon R7 (Bristol Ridge) GPU has 512 active shader units (8 compute cores) clocked at up to 758 MHz. Thanks to the better utilization of the clock range as well as faster DDR4-RAm, the GPU can slightly beat its predecessors Radeon R7 (Carrizo) and competes with a dedicated GeForce 920MX in the best-case scenario (dual-channel memory, low CPU requirements). Many games from 2015/2016 can be played smoothly at low settings. 

Power Consumption

AMD specifies the TDP of the A12-9700P with 15 Watts, which is comparable to Intel's ULV models. This means the CPU is a good choice for thin notebooks starting with a 12-inch screen.