AMD refreshes A-Series APUs, adds overclocking support

AMD may be changing its focus to the mobile space, but it’s not leaving desktop and performance-seeking laptop users behind just yet. The company has announced an update to its A-Series line of APUs, bumping clock speeds and adding overclocking to the desktop line. The new APUs combine up to 400 Radeon cores with multiple x86 cores, all integrated on the same chip. The notebook variants range from a dual-core 1.8GHz model to a quad-core 2.0GHz version, with the desktop line spanning from a 2.8GHz dual-core chip all the way up to a 3.0GHz quad-core.

The company claims the new APUs offer graphics performance comparable to that of discrete GPUs, but while the new options are intriguing, we’ll take that with a grain of salt for the moment. In any case, if performance doesn’t meet your needs, the APUs can also be paired with the Radeon HD 6500 line of graphics cards for a claimed performance boost of up to 144 percent. AMD states that systems using the new chips will be appearing in the coming weeks — perhaps we’ll see some at CES?