A quick look at the Desktops category's numerous Top 10 charts reveals a rather stark preference from manufacturers for Intel processors. This isn't entirely surprising -- while rival AMD has long offered strong, competitively priced CPUs, Intel wares have consistently proven to be more powerful, negating AMD's cost-advantage in all but a few categories.

For higher-end machines (specifically, our and desktop categories) that isn't about to change. But AMD's new A-Series APUs are positioned to make a very sweet deal for who want to save a bit of cash, but don't want a subpar experience.

Let's get some of the jargon out of the way. AMD's A-series APUs -- previously codenamed "Llano" -- signal AMD's shift down to the 32 nanometer process, chipping away at power consumption while boosting performance. "Lynx" is the codename for Llano's desktop iteration; in notebooks, it was codenamed "Sabine." An "APU" is a new termed coined by AMD, meaning "Accelerated Processing Unit." It means that the CPU and GPU are combined onto a single chip -- akin to .

Both Intel and AMD have implemented a form of automated overclocking -- Intel calls it Turbo Boost, AMD calls it . Both technololgies work similarly: when the processor has some spare thermal headroom, it overclocks a few notches, delivering an extra bit of speed when circumstances allow. Neither of the two processors I looked at offer these technologies however. AMD will be reelasing a model later on -- the 2.4 GHZ A8-3800 -- that will offer Turbo Core, but no pricing or availability has been announced yet.

For the full technical breakdown on the A-series APUs, be sure to . I've put the hardware through its paces, and the results are impressive, if not especially surprising.