AMD PRO Blitzes Professional PC Market With 7th Generation Bristol Ridge Pro Architecture

These latest PRO processors are very similar to AMD’s latest, seventh generation Excavator-based A-Series processors. Codenamed Bristol Ridge Pro, these chips will be offered for both desktop and small form factor desktop platforms.

The four desktop AMD PRO processors have a 65-watt TDP, and are headlined by the “Performance” AMD PRO A12-9800. This quad-core chip has base and max clocks of 3.8GHz and 4.2GHz respectively. 2MB of L2 cache is along for the ride, as is a Radeon R7 graphics core and support for DDR4-2400 memory. AMD is aiming this processor squarely at the Intel Core i5-6500.

AMD offers two “Mainstream” processors courtesy of the A10-9700 and A8-9600, which are positioned against the Core i3-6100 and Pentium G4400 respectively. The lowest cost offering is the “Basic Task Worker” A6-9500, which includes dual cores, 1GB of L2 cache, and a Radeon R5 graphics core.

On the small form factor side of things, AMD has three 35-watt SKUs, which are capped off by the A12-9800E. The lower TDP means that base and core clocks are reduced slightly from its desktop counterpart and the GPU clock has also been pared back. Compared to the Core i5-6500T, AMD says that the A12-9800E offers up 17 percent greater system performance in PCMark and up to 88 percent better graphics performance in 3DMark 11.

AMD’s Secure Processor is available on all of its new seventh generation PRO APUs, which employs hardware-based security, ARM TrustZone Technology Security Open Standards, and independent hardware-based root trust for Secure Boot. The AMD Secure Processor also fully supports Windows 10 Technologies like Microsoft Device Guard, Bitlocker, Enterprise Data Protection along with biometric authentication methods. All AMD PRO APUs also support DASH remote desktop management.

So far, AMD has only confirmed that HP will be embracing AMD PRO with its EliteDesk 705 G3, which will be available in three form-factors (Mini, Small Form Factor and Mini-tower). We should be hearing a lot from other vendors in the next few weeks and months about their AMD PRO plans.