AMD 2013 A & E-Series Kabini and Temash APUs

For the purposes of this article, AMD supplied us with a Kabini-powered whitebook, running Windows 8 Enterprise 64-bit. The machine had no particular markings, and won’t be made available at retail, but we thought you’d like to see what we used to test AMD’s new mobility platform anyway.

The machine you see pictured here is powered by an AMD A4-5000 quad-core APU, paired to 4GB of DDR3-1600 system memory set up in a dual-channel configuration. The system features a 14” screen with a full HD resolution of 1920x1080, a multi-touch capable Touchpad, a built in SD card reader and optical drive, and a 1TB 5400RPM hard drive. All of the other typical accoutrements are present as well, such as built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, audio, and so on.

Aesthetically, there’s not much to talk about, since the machine bore no identifying markings whatsoever, other than a few stickers with serial numbers and AMD owner information. The whole machine was covered in a brushed-metal type finish, but only the backside of the lid was actually metal. The rest of the machine is made of a plastic composite material that was lightweight, but also fairly flexible.

The keyboard sports standard chiclet-type keys and the mid-sized touchpad—which featured independent right and left buttons—is centered right under the space bar. The machine’s power switch is at the top left of the keyboard and at the bottom left, just above the card reader, are four indicator LEDs for power, drive activity, Wi-Fi status, and Cap Lock status.

The left side of the machine is home to the power jack; a large air vent; and LAN, VGA, DisplayPort, and USB 3.0 ports. The right side has headphone and microphone jacks, two USB 2.0 ports, an optical drive, and a lock port. The back side of the machine (which is where the removal battery plugs in) is devoid of any markings or ports.

Although this particular machine won’t be made available at retail, we want to give some general impressions after using it for the last week or so. Generally speaking, we found the machine to be responsive and particularly adept at video-related tasks. The slow hard drive in the system meant it didn’t have that snappy SSD-like responsiveness, but for CPU- and GPU-bound workloads, the machine felt surprisingly smooth.