First of all, you’re probably wondering – what is an APU?   To many readers it may be stating the obvious, but it may be helpful to explain the existing technology first. If you haven’t heard of CPUs before, you’ll likely recognise their brand names; Athlon, Phenom, Pentium, Celeron. CPU stands for Central Processing Unit, and it’s essentially your computer’s brains. It’s a massive electronic circuit, with millions of components – miniaturised down into a couple of centimetres square. It gives your computer the ability to make calculations; making all of your programs, games and applications work. The CPU has to communicate with all of the other hardware on the machine, and it uses ‘Buses’ to do that. A bus is essentially a channel for data.  A faster, more efficient CPU allows your system to run more efficiently – but you probably already know all of that.

An APU is a new type of processing chip that will seriously improve the performance to price ratio (or, as it’s commonly known, “bang for your buck”) on your new system. First off, let’s clear up the ambiguous acronym. APU stands for Accelerated Processing Unit and it really is that – an accelerated processing unit.

There are three main reasons why the APU is faster and more efficient than your existing CPU. First of all an APU includes an onboard graphics chip, removing the bottleneck between the graphics processor on the graphics card and the CPU socket – bypassing the speed-limited PCI express bus. This allows your computer to work faster because less time is spent waiting for the graphics chip and the CPU to communicate.

Secondly, the APU uses less power than the comparative CPU and Graphics card system. A system featuring an AMD APU uses around 40-60 watts for the APU core. A comparative graphics card and CPU would use around three times that.

You also have all the benefits of multi-core technology, giving you unrivalled multi-tasking ability – you can now watch 1080p video, whilst editing your spreadsheets, and rendering 3D graphics, with no slowdown whatsoever. Are you taking that with a pinch of salt? If so, watch this video from AMD comparing a high end AMD notebook APU with a high end Intel Core i7 notebook CPU.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70Yr1uV3-pA  – the performance difference is unreal.

Ok, so you understand what an APU is – so now you ask; why should I choose one from AMD? There are a number of excellent reasons. Firstly, in 2006, AMD merged with the well respected graphics card manufacturer ATI. This has allowed the AMD processor team access to the ins and outs of the most powerful graphics chips on the market today. In case you haven’t figured, they’ve used this technology in the new APU. The entire AMD APU range has support for 1080p High Definition video playback, straight out of the box. No graphics card required.

Secondly, AMD has a reputation for producing high quality processors at a fraction of the price of competitor’s models. AMD haven’t let you down with their latest release. The AMD A-Series APUs are available in Dual (Two), Tri (three) and Quad (four) core models, and the chips themselves are priced at a much lower point than the competing Intel models. We’re not kidding you – you can pick up the top end AMD APU – the “AMD A8 3870K” four core model designed for overclocking – for just £103.98 including VAT, and the lower end 2 core “A4-3400” version for just £49.98 inc VAT (prices correct as of 20/03/2012). See this for yourself by browsing our Components>Processors range.

Novatech, has produced a range of award-winning desktop computers suitable for home and business featuring these great new APU chips. You can see our entire PC range here: http://www.novatech.co.uk/pc. They are priced very competitively and built to the highest standard – and you already know about our world-class Aftersales support. If you’ve never used us before – just see what consumer review magazine Which? said about Novatech in 2011.

If you want to read more about AMD APUs, you can do so, here: http://fusion.amd.com

AMD. Novatech. Worry Free Computing.

Written by Ryan-Luke Drake, Novatech Technical Support.