It's hard to believe that the best part of a decade has passed since AMD sent tremors through the industry with its multi-billion-dollar acquisition of ATI Technologies. Since that momentous deal in 2006, the much-vaunted 'Fusion' of CPU and GPU has promised to deliver "a new class of accelerated processor that combines more compute capabilities than any processor in the history of computing".

There's no questioning AMD's vision - graphics are now an integral component of nearly every consumer CPU - yet the chip manufacturer's Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) hasn't always managed to leverage its best available technologies.

Flick through the history books and you'll recall that 2011's 'Llano' brought together AMD's K10 CPU and ageing Radeon HD 5000-series graphics alongside a somewhat-inelegant Fusion Controller Hub. 2012 heralded the arrival of 'Trinity' and the amalgamation of much-maligned Piledriver CPU cores with Radeon HD 6000 graphics, while last year's 'Richland' offered little more than increased operating frequencies