Advertisement

AMD details next generation of E-series chips for sub-$600 laptops

Sharif Sakr
Updated ·4 min read

We've already covered AMD's premium Trinity processors, but today the company got specific about what we can expect from its more price-conscious E-Series chips. These are the 1.4GHz E1-1200 and the 1.7GHz E2-1800 -- both dual-core Bobcat APUs that bring a range of improvements over last year's E-series, and which are intended for sub-$600 laptops plus perhaps the odd nettop. Despite having slightly higher clock speeds than their predecessors, the new models consume the familiar 18W TDP and still manage to claim a battery life in excess of 11 hours with Windows in idle, or around four hours of solid flash gaming (as unhealthy as that sounds).

On the graphics side, the APUs contain updated Radeon HD 7000 series GPUs, which makes them DirectX 11 capable and also compatible with OpenCL 1.1, thus allowing certain software titles to use the GPU for computation tasks. Other improvements include integrated support for SATA III 6Gb/s, USB 3.0 and SD card readers, plus HTML 5 acceleration and Metro UI optimization for Windows 8. As for what distinguishes the two options: the E1-1200 can only take DDR3-1066 memory and its GPU is clocked at 500MHz, whereas the E2-1800 can take speedier DDR3-1333 memory and deliver a maximum GPU clock speed of 680MHz. As for availability, AMD expects E-Series APU-equipped machines to roll out from OEMs such as Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba. Check out the slide deck below for more details or jump past the break for the full press release.%Gallery-157217%

AMD details next generation of Eseries chips for sub$600 laptops

Show full PR text

New AMD E-Series APUs Set the High Bar for Essential Notebook Battery Life
2012 AMD E-Series Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) Leads by Enabling up to 11 Hours of Battery Life and Best-in-Class Entertainment and Media Experiences

COMPUTEX TAIPEI, Taiwan -6/5/2012
AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced the launch of its latest AMD E-Series Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) platform. Designed for essential notebook and desktop personal computers which meet basic performance needs at accessible price points, the 2012 AMD E-Series APU enables long battery life and a best-in-class entertainment and media experience, while striking a balance between energy efficiency and unique innovations for brilliant high definition (HD) entertainment.

"In 2011, we showed the industry you could get discrete-level GPU power in a notebook without added power consumption or cost, resulting in the most successful notebook platform in AMD's history," said Chris Cloran, corporate vice president and general manager, AMD Client Business Unit. "Today we raise the bar even higher with our latest APU offering. Our 2012 AMD E-Series APU gives consumers a visually superior choice for everyday performance with the latest graphics technology and nearly three hours more battery life than the competition."

Formerly codenamed "Brazos 2.0," the 2012 AMD E-Series APU is the feature-rich update to the most successful AMD notebook processor platform ever. Unique benefits of the new platform include:

  • Improved mobility with up to 36 percent longer battery life compared to the competition2 . Systems based on the 2012 AMD E-Series APU can deliver up to 11 hours of resting battery life1 and up to a 90 minute competitive advantage in Web browsing and online flash gaming3;

  • Enhanced video experience with technology to help remove shakes and jitters from online or other video files through AMD Steady Video technology4, which has plug-in support for all major Web browsers along with Windows® Media Player and the open source VLC player;

  • Leading-edge gaming experience. The 2012 AMD E-Series APU platform is the only essential notebook platform that offers built-in AMD Radeon™ HD 7000 Series graphics with DirectX® 11 and DirectCompute for a more feature-rich experience on the latest games;

  • Superior online experience with AMD Quick Stream technology which prioritizes Internet bandwidth towards video stream buffering or online gaming for a smoother, virtually uninterrupted browsing experience5;

  • 10x faster data transfer speeds (5Gbps) with external hard drives and cameras thanks to two SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports6;

  • Increased performance through Central Processing Unit (CPU) and Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) frequency boosts;

  • The capability to project to external 3D displays for the latest 3D video and gaming.

Accelerated Experience
Thanks to the compute capabilities in AMD Radeon™ HD graphics, major Web browsers such as Internet Explorer 9, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome offer an accelerated Web experience on the new AMD E-Series APUs. AMD has collaborated with Microsoft to optimize the new AMD E-Series APUs for key features in Microsoft Windows® 8 to help improve the overall experience. Optimizations for HTML5 and full support for the new Metro user interface will help accelerate new Metro-based apps developed for Microsoft's newest operating system.

Availability and Technical Details
AMD expects global OEMs such as Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba to offer AMD E-Series APU-based systems.

Developer Community Engagement
For developers who want to engage in the industry's move toward heterogeneous computing and GPU compute, the upcoming AMD Fusion12 Developer Summit will offer them a unique opportunity to enhance their knowledge base. More information on AFDS 12 can be found here.