Some fresh details on AMD’s Radeon GPU strategy for 2013 have arrived from HardwareCanucks which confirm that AMD would launch new HD 7000 series products in 1H 2013. Additionally it has been confirmed that AMD won’t launch its new architecture based GPU lineup for desktop till Q4 2013.

New Radeon HD 7000 Series GPUs in 1H 2013?

AMD has clarified that they won’t launch any new product till Q4 2013 and their HD 7000 series products would remain stable throughout 2013 as indicated in a previous article. This means that AMD’s Radeon HD 7970 GHz would remain the top desktop offering followed by Radeon HD 7970 and Radeon HD 7950. However, AMD won’t just halt production of newer SKUs for their HD 7000 series lineup as the company’s planned additional HD 7000 series products falling in the Radeon HD 7700 and HD 7800 lineup that would be available in first half of 2013.

Another set of AMD APU details have been leaked by OBR which further provide information of  Richland and Kabini APUs. While launch details were already available a week ago, thanks to OBR we now have much more concrete information about the upcoming AMD APUs.

Among the information provided are the release and technical details of Richland A-Series AMD APU which will arrive on 19th March for desktop. The Richland AMD APU platform would be codenamed “Annapurna” (A region of Himalayas where the 8,091 m Annapurna is situated) and will be based around the FM2 socket featuring the AMD A88X and A85X chipsets. The A-Series AMD APU lineup would consist of A10, A8 (Quad Core) and A6, A4 (Dual Core) chips, specifications are listed below:

• A10-6800K Radeon HD 8670D 844 MHz/ Quad Core 100W, 4.1 GHz/4.4 GHz
• A8-6600K Radeon HD 8570D 844 MHz/ Quad Core 100W, 3.9 GHz/4.2 GHz
• A10-6700 Radeon HD 8670D 844 MHz/ Quad Core 65W, 3.7 GHz/4.3 GHz
• A8-6500 Radeon HD 8570D 800 MHz/ Quad Core 65W, 3.5 GHz/4.1 GHz
• A6-6400K Radeon HD 8470D 800 MHz/ Dual Core 65W, 3.9 GHz/4.1 GHz
• A4-6300 Radeon HD 8370D 760 MHz/ Dual Core 65W, 3.7 GHz/3.9 GHz

Yesterday, a direct tweet from AMD confirmed that AMD won’t be launching new Radeon series for a while since their primary focus for 2013 would remain the Radeon HD 7000 series. A Radeon roadmap has been unveiled by 4Gamer which further confirms this report and shows that AMD won’t be releasing any new card till Q4 2013.

No Plans for Radeon HD 8000 In 2013, 7000 Series To Remain Stable – AMD

In December, we heard the first reports about the Sea Islands and Solar System series graphics card. 4Gamer did a brief interview with AMD’s Product manager, “Devon Nekechuk“. In the interview, he said that while the company would launch the Mobile Radeon HD 8000 “Solar System” series in Q2 2013 in which include the GCN based Radeon HD 8500M, 8600M and 8700M GPUs however the Radeon HD 7000 series would be here to stay in 2013.

AMD has just confirmed that the company would not unveil any new GPU and keep the HD 7000 series as their primary focus for a while. This was confirmed by AMD’s Radeon marketing manager “Robert Hallock” on AMD’s Radeon Twitter page.

New information and launch dates of AMD’s upcoming APUs and FX CPU lineup have been leaked by OBR. According to the details, AMD would reveal its third generation Richland APUs on 19th March while the  Piledriver FX CPU refresh is expected around June 2013.

AMD Richland APUs Arrive on March 19th

First up are the Richland APUs which would get a total of six A-Series variants as detailed below:

Press Release – AMD today announced the arrival of its Never Settle Reloaded game bundle, the sequel to last year’s monumental “Never Settle” bundle. Never Settle Reloaded delivers by bundling up to four of this year’s most anticipated PC games ─ “BioShock® Infinite” by 2K Games and Irrational Games, “Crysis 3” by Electronic Arts, “DmC Devil May Cry™” by Capcom® and “Tomb Raider®” by Square Enix ─ with select AMD Radeon™ HD 7900 and HD 7800 Series graphics cards. The bundle highlights the continued commitment by AMD to ensure an incredible gaming experience on the world’s top PC titles optimized for AMD Radeon™ graphics cards.

“AMD knows gaming and in 2013 we plan to make a huge mark on the industry. Today we begin that journey by showing the world that the best PC game developers are AMD Gaming Evolved partners,” said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager of AMD Graphics. “The ‘Never Settle: Reloaded’ bundle clearly stands apart from anything else in the market. Gaming has always been, and will remain, the core of the AMD Graphics strategy and success. In 2013, we plan to forge greater inroads into the gaming industry and it begins with packaging this year’s biggest games with the best graphics hardware from AMD.”

AMD is planning to launch its latest Never Settle Reloaded bundle, an update to the original Never Settle bundle promotion with which you can get four of the latest gaming titles with the purchase of Radeon HD 7000 series.

The original Never Settle bundle included four game promotions with the purchase of Radeon HD 7000 series. The bundled was launched a little over three months ago and now AMD is reloading it by announcing the Never Settle Reloaded Bundle. The new Never Settle Reloaded Bundle includes the following games:

AMD Never Settle Reloaded Bundle – The Way Its Meant To Be Bundled!

• Crysis 3
• Tomb Raider
• Bioshock Infinite
• Devil May Cry (Tomb Raider replacement for APAC region)

Sweclockers, in a news report suggest that the next generation of NVIDIA and AMD GPUs have been delayed to Q4 2013. Do note that by next generation we mean the upcoming Kepler 700 series and AMD Sea Islands HD 8000 series.

According to the source, both NVIDIA and AMD decided to postpone their next generation GPUs and would not make an appearance until October 2013. This means that the GeForce GTX 680 and Radeon HD 7970 are here to stay for quite sometime and only after two years of their launch would their actual replacement launch. However we are quite skeptical about this report since AMD’s CEO, Rory Reach said the following in a conference call with financial analysts:

“We are introducing strong new APU and graphics offerings in the first half of 2013 that will accelerate our AMD business with the ultimate goal of returning AMD to profitability and positive free cash flow in the second half of this year,” Xbitlabs

AMD has launched its latest FX-4130 processor today which further expands its FX-Vishera CPU lineup. Based on the x86 Piledriver architecture, the FX-4130 delivers better performance coupled with lower power consumption and low cost.

AMD FX-4130 – The Cost Effective Vishera Processor

The Quad Core FX-4130 based on the x86 Piledriver architecture is clocked at 3.8 GHz base and 3.9 GHz Turbo Core clock speed. Each core is associated with 2 MB of L3 cache giving the chip a total of 8 MB cache, a unlocked design offers better overclocking and supports the latest instruction set which includes AVX, AES and FMX. The FX-4130 has a rated TDP of 125W but consumes the same amount of power as its predecessor ”FX-4100″ due to the much efficient Piledriver core architecture.

Over the last week, we reported the first detailed specifications of AMD’s upcoming Richland APU lineup. Planned to arrive in Q2 2013 while already shipping to OEMs, the Richland APU lineup would consist a total of  six A-Series APUs including the flagship A10-6800K.

AMD Richland APU – All Set to Break 4 GHz Clock Barrier

Chinese portal of VR-Zone further details the specifications of the upcoming Richland APUs and has revealed the clock frequencies of these models. The clock speeds are quite a surprise as AMD has planned to boost its flagship APU past the 4 GHz barrier. You heard that right, the AMD A10-6800K Richland APU has a base clock of 4.1 GHz and boosts upto 4.4 GHz with AMD’s TurboCore 2.0 technology. Not only the flagship model but the other APU’s too seem to shatter the 4 GHz barrier with Turbo Boost. In addition to clock frequencies, VR-Zone specifications also list the iGPU frequencies as listed below: