A few weeks ago, leaked slides came out showing AMD’s intention to cancel plans to introduce next-gen CPUs to their performance “FX” line. Moving forward, the only new desktop computing components will be APUs, which combine CPU cores with graphics cores in one package. I’m sure many of our readers were sad to discover this, but to be honest, AMD has had a tough time being competitive with Intel at the high end level. They are still using a rather large die, and crucially, Intel is leaving them behind in per-clock performance.

That isn’t stopping them completely though. Today we’re looking at the newest entry to AMD’s APU lineup – the A10 6790K. This is based on “Richland” architecture, which is a slightly updated version of Trinity. When Richland was first introduced, the top chip was the A10 6800K running at 4.1/4.4 GHz. The A10 6790K we’re looking at todeay runs 100 MHz lower, at 4.0/4.3 GHz and more importantly, is $10 cheaper. Since it is an unlocked CPU, getting that 100 MHz back is all but guaranteed. Another possible advantagfe is that the A10 6790K is possibly based on newer silicon that can go even further with a more aggressive overclock.