AMD’s “Fusion Accelerated Processing Units” (APUs) combine the CPU and discrete Radeon graphics on the same die. There’s three tiers: C-Series (netbooks/tablets), E-Series (12.1- to 14-inchers), and the A-Series for bigger laptops and PCs. We’ve already seen AMD’s C-50 and E-350 chips, and here come the big guns. The dual-core A4 and quad-core A6/A8 APUs roughly target Core i3, i5 and i7 laptops, respectively — so get ready for a Sandy Bridge stoush. In Australia: HP, Sony, Dell, Samsung, Acer, Toshiba and Asus have already signed on.
Samsung’s new 15.6-inch 305v will actually be its first AMD laptop in Australia.
The $599 base model has the 1.2GHz dual-core A4-3310MX chip (which includes Radeon HD6480G graphics), while the $1199 option packs the 1.8GHz quad-core A8-3510MX. This model features Radeon HD6640G2 dual graphics, taking advantage of the A-Series dual-graphics capability — stacking APU performance with a second dedicated Radeon chip.
As you can see in the table below, A-Series laptop APUs also have a “Turbo Core” feature, which works much like Turbo Boost on Intel’s Sandy Bridge chips.
Looking it all over, A-Series chips seem to have the battery life and graphics potential to be AMD’s best crack at Intel’s laptop dominance for quite a while. But we’ll have to wait a weeks for the new laptops to hit shops, and for benchmarking to take place. I’m looking forward to seeing how the numbers stack up.
More: HP Arms 11 Laptops With AMD’s Sandy Bridge-Esque Fusion APUs
Click on image to view table full size…
Will
Tuesday, July 26, 2011 at 9:17 PM15.6″….
if only it was a 13″
Danny Allen
Tuesday, July 26, 2011 at 9:33 PMThe 300V — an Intel based Series 3 — is 13.3 ;)
Ha
Tuesday, July 26, 2011 at 9:37 PMAnd nooooow you change the title/body to include laptops.
Thank you! :)
Stefan
Tuesday, July 26, 2011 at 10:06 PMCorrect me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure they’re consistently weaker then Notebook Sandy Bridge processors. The only places where they excell are power and graphics.
Cameron
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 8:31 AMWhat every happened to 13″ laptops? Why is everything this hideous 15.6″ these days? Urgh, I just want a small laptop that I can play a few games on.
Dan
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 11:39 AMDells’ Alienware 14″….
Cameron
Thursday, July 28, 2011 at 2:44 PMThat thing is about the same size as a 15.6″ laptop anyway!
Will
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 12:18 PMfor the a8 which CPU wise is as fast as the SB i3 with a gpu better than the intel hd 3000 yet it costs as much as a i7 with discrete graphics?
Australia gets pwned once again with prices.
and all the requests for 13″ are for AMD systems not intel.
Cameron
Thursday, July 28, 2011 at 2:47 PMI’d be happy with either an AMD or Intel 13″, just so long as it has half decent graphic capabilities. Now days processor and RAM are secondary, a low to mid range processor will handle most things you’ll throw at it, and you’re hard pressed for find a lappy with less than 2GB of RAM these days. So for me it’s all about form factor and graphics.
olearymo
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 3:37 PMDid they really need to give them the exact same naming convention as Apple’s chips?