AMD Announces Tri-Core A6 3500 APU

August 18, 2011 · by John Ponio

The rumors are true! AMD released a new tri-core APU, the A6 3500. It’s a tri-core processor with 3MB of L2 cache and a TDP of 65W that runs at 2.1 GHz with a 2.4Ghz turbo-boost speed. The desktop APUs that are already available, for comparison, follow:

AMD A8 3850: Quad-core (2.9GHz), Radeon HD 6550D (600MHz), 400 GPU cores, 100W TDP, $135
AMD A6 3650: Quad-core (2.6GHz), Radeon HD 6530D (444MHz), 320 GPU cores, 100W TDP, $115
AMD A6 3500: Tri-core (2.1GHz), Radeon HD 6530D (444MHz), 320 GPU cores, 65W TDP, $95

Is it really worth it, though? For only $20 more you can get a quad-core processor that, albeit has a higher TDP, runs faster. AMD said the processor will be available immediately, but I couldn’t find it through a quick Google search. It should be out in a few days.