Someone made an effort to work out which are the latest AMD chips that were released just prior to the PSP (iow, they discovered the non-spy chips). The linked article gives a list resulting from their efforts. This is interesting because intel began their spy chips in 2008. So an AMD from 2013 likely well outperforms the last of the spy-chip-free intels.
The author ended with:
Conclusion: You can choose any CPU/APU of the leftmost list to get the „latest“/last CPU without a PSP builtin.
What is meant by “leftmost list”? I just see a single list in my browser. And the sequence seems to be the opposite of what is claimed. Bulldozer seems to be older than Piledriver.
This is also just the 1st step. It would be useful to know which devices contain these AMD chips from 2013. In particular, laptops and mini PCs would be interesting. The search must be painful because ads for hardware tend not to mention the code names. In fact, h/w makers were not proud of their AMD selection and might altogether not mention AMD.
Where do I start? Anyone know which makers of laptops and mini PCs made heavy use of AMD in 2013? Searching for AMD mini pc 2013 gets a lot of hits mentioning “Ryzen”, which did not exist in 2013.
(update) Bulldozer was for the desktop and server markets. So probably safe to assume it would not be found in a mini PC or laptop. Worth noting that in 2025 there were FOSS firmware updates for piledriver and bulldozer.
(update 2) It is strange and annoying that Thinkpad timelines and history pages deceive readers into thinking AMD chips did not appear in Thinkpads until 2017. The 15h.org page reveals that the Thinkpad e545 not only has an AMD chip but it is pre-spychip. Searching specifically for Thinkpad e545 shows this.
(update 3) The author (“ro”) relied heavily on the cpu list in Wikipedia. But Wikipedia is incomplete. E.g. the AMD A4-9120e (code named “Stoney Ridge”) is unknown to wikipedia. It likely has PSP b/c it was designed 5 yrs after the first spy chip. But it’s hard to know what other CPUs were overlooked by Wikipedia around 2013.
Yeah, that page renders with a single column of lists for me too, and is also written in a bit of a confusing way. The author is definitely infinitely better at English than I am at German, but it’s clear it isn’t their native language.
Anyway, I have an Asus KGPE-D16 with a couple of Opteron 6272 (Bulldozer) CPUs in it, but I think that was because Libreboot had problems with the 63XX (Piledriver) at the time (since resolved), not because Piledriver was off-limits due to the inclusion of a PSP.
My goal was to get the fastest fully-trustworthy computer ever made [or reasonably close to it: IIRC, 6272s were much cheaper than similar chips with a few hundred more MHz], and that’s basically it. The absolute fastest would be a KGPE-D16 paired with Opteron 6386 SEs, I think. (Also, the reason for that motherboard specifically is that it’s the only Libreboot-compatible dual socket Opteron board.)
That said, you asked about a laptop or mini PC. Brute-forcing performance with 32 cores of server hardware is one thing, but I’m not sure a 2/3/4-core desktop or mobile Bulldozer-family chip is going to have acceptable performance in 2026.
I think for people who don’t use highly multi-threaded tasks, the lower core count Piledriver CPU’s may be a better choice, as the 6272 is likely going to use a bit more power at idle, and each core is clocked significantly slower than a lower core count chip, exacerbating the already low single thread performance of the architecture.
The desktop chips also overclocked quite well, I recall pushing my FX-6300 to 4.5ghz without much issue, and the same for the 8-core FX-8320. Though I’m unsure if Libreboot/coreboot supports overclocking (if not, than having higher default clocks would be even more important, IMO).
but I’m not sure a 2/3/4-core desktop or mobile Bulldozer-family chip is going to have acceptable performance in 2026.
According [to this video](but I’m not sure a 2/3/4-core desktop or mobile Bulldozer-family chip is going to have acceptable performance in 2026.), the FX CPU’s are still okay-ish, at least in gaming. I imagine with a modern-ish GPU, web browsing would be fine.
You accidentally pasted my quote again where you meant to put the link URL. What video were you trying to cite?
Ah sorry, I meant to link this video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6M53LdJcvOo
In the meantime I also found this video by Phil’s computer lab where he tests your CPU, and at the end concludes that, at least for gaming, the desktop CPU’s are better (but also assumes over clocking is an option, and I have since learned it’s not terribly viable to do on coreboot).
