AMD PRO A12-9830B vs AMD FX-8800P vs AMD A8-8600P

AMD PRO A12-9830B

The AMD PRO A12-9830B 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 variant of the FX-9830P. The A12-9830B / FX-9830P is the fastest Bristol Ridge APU with a 45-Watt TDP and the successor to the 15-35-Watt FX-8800P from the Carrizo generation. The 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 2400 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 A12-9830B is slightly ahead of the old 35-Watt top model FX-8800P and competes with the entry-level dual-cores from Intel (Skylake and Kaby Lake). 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 900 MHz (compared to 758 MHz for FX-9800P/A12-9800B). 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). Many games from 2015/2016 can be played smoothly at low settings. 

Power Consumption

AMD specifies the TDP of the A12-9830B with 25-45 Watts, which is comparable to Intel quad-core processors from the H-series. This means the APU is a good choice for big and heavy notebooks with at least 15 inches.

AMD FX-8800P

The AMD FX-8800P is the top-tier 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 8 compute cores (512 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 1992 points (15 Watts) to 2753 points (+38% with 35 Watts cTDP) in 3DMark 11 (P).

According to AMD, the 35 Watt configuration scores 12% (Cinebench single-thread) and 15% (Cinebench Multi-threaded) higher compared to the previous Steamroller generation (most likely the AMD FX-7600P). If configured to 15 Watt instead, the gains are higher (40% to 55%) compared to the 19 Watt Kaveri FX-7500 APU.

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

AMD A8-8600P

The AMD A8-8600P is a mid-range Carrizo APU of 2015 for mainstream laptops. It is a SoC that contains 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). Compared to the faster A10-8700P, the A8-8600P features a slower clocked CPU and GPU.

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. The faster Carrizo models gain about 35% in 3DMark 11 depending on the cTDP and results for the A8-8600P model should be similar.

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