AMD A10 9700E 4-core AM4

The A10-9700E is a cool-running budget APU with a great AM4 upgrade path, but its 2MB L2 cache and weak single-thread performance hold it back hard. Feature-wise it's top-tier for the price, but raw speed is near the bottom of our charts. Worth it only if you need a new AM4 chip with integrated graphics and don't care about performance.

With a 3.0GHz base and 3.5GHz boost, the A10-9700E posts a PassMark of 3250 multi and 1511 single. That's enough for web browsing, office work, and light multitasking. The Radeon R7 iGPU handles older titles and indie games at low settings, and owners report it's fine for software development, including parallel Linux kernel compiles. The 2MB L2 cache is a real bottleneck though. Older APUs like Kaveri and Trinity had 4MB, and the cut here shows up in anything cache-hungry. The 35W TDP means it sips power and stays cool, which is the one performance-adjacent win worth mentioning.

Stacked against the competition, the A10-9700E is a niche pick. The Intel Core Ultra 7 265KF is in a completely different universe performance-wise, but it's also a different price class and has no iGPU. The Dell Xeon E5-2637 V2 is an old server chip that beats it in some multi-threaded workloads but lacks the AM4 upgrade path and integrated graphics. The Phenom II X6 is even older and slower per-core. Honestly, the real competitor here is a used Ryzen 3 2200G or Ryzen 5 2400G, which offer better CPU and GPU performance on the same socket for similar money. The A10-9700E only makes sense if you specifically need a new-in-box AM4 APU at the absolute lowest price.

At around $128 USD or $119 CAD, the A10-9700E is a weird value proposition. For a brand new AM4 chip with an iGPU, it's not terrible. But you're paying for the socket and the integrated graphics, not the CPU performance. If you already have an AM4 board and just need something to boot it, this works. If you're building from scratch, you can often find used Ryzen 3 or even Ryzen 5 chips for similar money that absolutely demolish this thing. The value score of 54.5 out of 100 in our database feels about right.

The AMD A10-9700E is a budget APU from the Bristol Ridge era that still hangs around because it's cheap and runs cool. It's a 4-core, 4-thread chip on socket AM4 with a 35W TDP and Radeon R7 graphics baked in. Nothing about it screams modern, but for a basic desktop or a Linux box, it gets the job done without drama.

Our database puts its feature set at the 89th percentile, which sounds impressive until you realize that's mostly about having an iGPU and AM4 compatibility. Raw performance is a different story. Single-thread lands at the 35th percentile and multi-thread at 29th. This is not a chip for heavy lifting.

Skip this if you need any real CPU performance. The single-thread and multi-thread scores are near the bottom of our charts, so video editing, heavy multitasking, or modern gaming are out. Also skip it if you're building a new system from scratch, a used Ryzen 3 or Ryzen 5 APU on the same socket will run circles around it for similar money.

Buy this if you need a cheap AM4 chip with integrated graphics for a basic desktop, HTPC, or Linux box, and you don't want to gamble on the used market. It runs cool, it's quiet enough with an aftermarket cooler, and it'll handle everyday tasks without complaint. Everyone else should look at used Ryzen APUs or save up for something newer.