AMD Quietly Releases New A8-7680 Carrizo APU For Socket FM2+

[crazyeyesreaper]

In what will likely seem baffling to many, AMD is releasing a new APU for their ancient FM2+ socket. While the release of the newly minted A8-7680 was alluded to previously via an ASRock BIOS update for their A68H motherboards, many considered it a fake at the time. However, with AMD's own literature listing the processor for the mass market, along with it popping up at various etailers with the product number AD7680ACABBOX, its release is now all but certain.

The processor is still being manufactured on the old 28 nm node and is very similar to the older A8-7600, with this speculated to also being a quad-core design based on the AMD Excavator architecture. It would appear the main difference between the two, noting that the A8-7680 specs are not formally released yet, is a 400 MHz increase on the base clock bringing it up from 3.1 GHz on the A8-7600 to 3.5 GHz on the A8-7680. Sadly, the boost clock remains the same at 3.8 GHz as noted at various etailers. Currently, only the A68 chipset works with the new CPU with the following boards having all received BIOS updates adding support for the A8-7680: Asus A68HM-K, A68HM-Plus, Gigabyte F2A68HM-DS2 rev1.1, F2A68HM-H rev1.1, F2A68HM-S1 rev1.1, MSI A68HM-E33-v2, ASRock FM2A68M-HD+, and FM2A68M-DG3+.



The rumored specifications follow.


Speculated A8-7680 APU Specifications:

• 4C/4T
• Base: 3.5 GHz, Boost: 3.8 GHz
• Unlocked
• Radeon R7 GPU: 1029 Mhz
• DDR3 2133
• TDP 45 W
• 28nm node
• Socket FM2+, A68 chipset

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[newtekie1]

What the....

 

[GoldenX]

Why?

 

[eidairaman1]

Might be for a specific market, could be getting rid of old stock too

 

[Solaris17]

Glad those 5 people have an upgrade path.

 

[Basard]

I would have gladly kept my AM3+ system going for another couple years.................

 

[eidairaman1]

I would have gladly kept my AM3+ system going for another couple years.................

FM2+ only.

 

[GoldenX]

AM3+ and FM2+ should have been a single socket. And on that line of thinking, AM4 needs cheaper mATX and ITX boards.
Or the idea was to say that FM2 was consumer and AM3+ was HEDT?

 

[Space Lynx]

Glad those 5 people have an upgrade path.

made me lulz. cheers mate

 

[Deleted member 158293]

Whoa, I can only see this as AMD supporting specific commercial clients (under contract?) who built their products based on FM2+

 

[chaosmassive]

this is the best example of regression !

 

[king of swag187]

AM3+ and FM2+ should have been a single socket. And on that line of thinking, AM4 needs cheaper mATX and ITX boards.
Or the idea was to say that FM2 was consumer and AM3+ was HEDT?

Ha AM3+ HEDT.... now thats a funny joke
But replying to the article, just why? Are that many companies running FM2+ that they need a 400mhz performance boost?

 

[GoldenX]

My brain wants to justify it by saying it's to eliminate stock, it's not even an A10.

 

[bubbleawsome]

But a boost of 400Mhz on base clocks wouldn't even change much would it?

 

[GoldenX]

It's an FX, you can get it to run at 5GHz and it will still be slow, plus the iGP takes priority when you reach the power throttle.

 

[king of swag187]

It's an FX, you can get it to run at 5GHz and it will still be slow, plus the iGP takes priority when you reach the power throttle.

A 2500k handily beats the 8350, and considering how low adoption likely is for FM2, they must have a large amount of backlog to consider this

 

[john_]

If they had a reason to sell this processor, they should keep it for the OEMs only, or bring it out as one of the already known models that are already supported from motherboards. Why create a useless new model and get all the mess with boards not supporting it?

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Supply isn't likely constrained for these processors because they're made on depreciated nodes. They also may be manufactured in a region that is tariff exempt. In other words, they can mass produce and sell these chips via OEMs to compensate for fall in supply from Intel across the board and newer AMD chips that are fighting for TSMC wafers. We live in strange times so we should expect strange behaviors from corporations in response to it.

Bare in mind the bulk of computers out there are office machines accessing servers. These processors are more than adequate to fill that need at an affordable price. They can also recycle DDR3 memory for these machines so they're largely unaffected by the DRAM cartel's iron grip on DRAM production (massive cost savings for the complete machine).

 

[Turmania]

I`m speachless! all I can say at the moment....

 

[SIGSEGV]

maybe they have a specific reason. that's why they released this APU and no one knows.

 

[JB_Gamer]

Maybe (probably) there are large stocks of A68 motherboards, but no processors to go with those? But even if that's the explanation, why not A10???

 

[Valantar]

Seeing how the A8-7600 is a 65W part (with a BIOS-configurable 45W mode), it'd be strange if this was 45W flat. That'd require some significant process optimization.

Still, a launch like this is pretty odd. As mentioned above, it's probably a move to get rid of stock and/or a slightly improved option for some long-term contract.

 

[Vayra86]

/thread

 

[Deleted member 178884]

I wonder what the performance is like, I've got a fm2+ in my old ayymd collection.

 

[LiveOrDie]

news headline should be AMD releases the cheapest CPU of all time, buy now for just 99 cents .