AMD PRO A12-9800B

The AMD PRO A12-9800B is a mobile mainstream SoC from the Bristol-Ridge APU series for notebooks (7th APU generation), which was announced mid 2016. It is the business version of the AMD FX-9800P and features the same specifications. The PRO A12-9800B is (together with the FX-9800P) the fastest Bristol Ridge APU with a 15-Watt TDP and the successor to the 15-Watt A12-8800B / FX-8800P from the Carrizo generation. The ULV chip has four CPU cores (two Excavator modules = 4 integer and 2 FP units), 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

Thanks to higher clocks, the A12-9800B is slightly ahead of the old 15-Watt top model FX-8800P and competes with a Intel Core i3-6100U (Skylake, 15 Watts). 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.

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 A12-9800B with 12-15 Watts, which is comparable to Intel's ULV models. This means the APU is a good choice for thin notebooks starting with a 12-inch screen.

Codename	Bristol Ridge
Series	AMD Bristol Ridge
Series: Bristol Ridge Bristol Ridge AMD FX-9830P 3 - 3.7 GHz 4 / 4  AMD A12-9700P 2.5 - 3.4 GHz 4 / 4  AMD FX-9800P 2.7 - 3.6 GHz 4 / 4  AMD A12-9720P 2.7 - 3.6 GHz 4 / 4  AMD PRO A12-9800B « 2.7 - 3.6 GHz 4 / 4  AMD A10-9600P 2.4 - 3.3 GHz 4 / 4  AMD A10-9620P 2.5 - 3.4 GHz 4 / 4  AMD PRO A12-9830B 3 - 3.7 GHz 4 / 4  AMD PRO A8-9600B 2.4 - 3.3 GHz 4 / 4
Clock Rate	2700 - 3600 MHz
Level 2 Cache	2 MB
Number of Cores / Threads	4 / 4
Power Consumption (TDP = Thermal Design Power)	15 Watt
Transistor Count	3100 Million
Manufacturing Technology	28 nm
Die Size	250 mm2
Max. Temperature	90 °C
Socket	FP4
Features	Dual-Channel DDR3/DDR4-1866 Memory Controller, PCIe 3.0 x8
GPU	AMD Radeon R7 (Bristol Ridge) ( - 758 MHz)
64 Bit	64 Bit support
Architecture	x86
Announcement Date	06/01/2016
Product Link (external)	products.amd.com

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