AMD Carrizo-Based A-Series Powered Laptops From HP Now Shipping
We gave you a detailed introduction to AMD’s sixth generation A-Series (Carrizo) APU back in early June. Carrizo is taking direct aim at Intel in the notebook market, specifically targeting the mid-range ultrabook market and Intel’s bread and butter mobile Core i5 processors.
Under the surface, the 28nm Carrizo-based APUs feature four Excavator cores and eight third-generation GCN graphics cores (which of course are DX12 compatible). The new GCN cores promise a 65 percent graphics performance boost over the previous generation Kaveri APU, all while operating within a 15W TDP.
Now, notebooks featuring AMD’s sixth generation A-Series processors are shipping — more specifically, all of the products that are shipping contain AMD’s A10-8700P APU which features Radeon R6 Graphics. The first crop of notebooks (nearly all of them from Hewlett-Packard) start at a rather reasonable $429 and top out at $899.
HP Pavilion 17z
On the low end, the 4.89-pound HP Pavilion 15-ab053nr ($429.99) features a 15-inch (1366x768) display, 8GB of RAM, a 1TB hard drive, a SuperMulti DVD burner, and Windows 8.1. Moving up the pricing ladder, the 6.84-pound HP Pavilion 17z ($699) brings with it a 17-inch 1600x900 touch screen display, 12GB of RAM, 1TB HDD, SuperMulti DVD burner, backlit keyboard, Bang & Olufsen audio, and Windows 10 Home.
Of the new A-Series notebooks that AMD is currently promoting, the most expensive by far is the range topping version of the Pavilion 17z. It boosts the amount of installed RAM from 12GB to 16GB and swaps out the 1600x900 touch screen for a sharper 1920x1080 touch screen display. Those two upgrades jack the price up by $200 to $899.
There are numerous other notebooks spread between the $429.99 and $899.99 bookends, including a lone Dell Inspiron 15 1500 priced at $555.31 (1366x768, 12GB RAM, 1TB HDD, Windows 10 Home).
Needless to say, AMD needs a winning formula when it comes to competing with Intel in the notebook space. AMD’s recent earnings show that the company still has a lot to do to step out from under Intel’s shadow, but Carrizo at least looks like it’s a step in the right direction.
