Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced Tuesday that it is bringing its powerful Kaveri desktop processors to laptops in a move that actively differentiates AMD from its biggest competitor Intel.
While Intel's focus is on the development of chips to power computers that can understand its user's gestures and recognize commands given using other interfaces, AMD is going the other direction with its latest line of laptop processors that aims to deliver powerful graphics capabilities.
The new Kaveri processors for laptops and mobile devices, which go by the official names of AMD FX Series for consumer machines and AMD Pro Series Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) for commercial devices, have four central processing units (CPUs) and eight graphics processing units (GPU), which amounts to what AMD calls 12 compute cores that can run up to 818 gigaflops. The chips also have 2.4 billion transistors, the basic building blocks of a computer, almost half of which are designed to support high-end graphics.
The new processors also provide support for UltraHD or 4K resolution, which ramps up the resolution up to four times more pixels on the screen, and AMDs 32-channel surround sound TrueAudio technology, which makes listening in headphones sound like the sound is coming from all directions without putting too much pressure on the CPU.
On the performance side, AMD claims a device running on its Kaveri laptop processors can run Adobe Creative Cloud Photoshop up to 59% faster than a device powered by Intel's Core i5. AMD also says the processors can load JPEG images 80% faster than a standard Windows decoder, which means users can view their images much faster with the FX Series and APUs. And while all this makes it seem like AMDs newest chipsets are energy-guzzlers, users can expect to keep their laptops running on battery life for up to 9 hours if they are browsing or 11 hours if they are working offline.
What this means is that the FX Series and APU processors, which combine incredible graphics with surround sound and high performance, is going to be a gamer's delight.
"With a combination of superior total compute performance, stunning graphics and efficient power use alongside industry-first technologies, these new APUs set a new bar for cutting-edge consumer and commercial PCs," says Bernd Lienhard, vice president and general manager of AMD's client business unit.
AMD continues to assault Intel with competitively-priced systems on a chip (SoCs), but Intel is not giving up anytime soon. In fact, Intel has also launched a line of processors combining CPU and GPU, the most notable of which are its fourth-generation Haswell processors, which continue to receive rave reviews from critics and users despite Intel's higher price tags.
