CES 2019: Intel Comes Under Pressure As Big PC Brands Move To AMD
Intel who are struggling to supply PC makers with notebook and desktop process has seen several big brands switch to AMD
At CES 2019 it was abundantly clear that brands such as HP, Acer and Lenovo are now placing orders with AMD after Apple cut a deal with Intel to supply iPhone modems, the move saw manufacturing lines switched to modems as opposed to PC processors. Also contributing was a rise in demand for notebooks and gaming PC’s.
One of the markets that AMD has targeted is the growing Chromebook market.
What was not announced at CES was the much tipped high-performance 7-nanometer Navi GPUs or the rumoured Ryzen 3000-series desktop CPUs that are set to take on Intel’s top end processors.
Among the new products running AMD as opposed to Intel processors is HP’s new Chromebook 14 AMD and the Acer Chromebook 315.
The announcements are in conjunction with the new A4-9120C and its sibling, the A6-9220C, which have slower CPU and GPU clock speeds than the 15-watt full-fat versions. That allows AMD to match the 6-watt target power draw of Intel’s competing Celeron and Pentium models.
AMD claims somewhat better performance on both Chrome OS and Android apps, which is possible given that their clock speeds are still faster despite the drop.
AMD also announced that consumers won’t have to wait for manufacturer graphics driver updates, at least for any AMD laptops based on the 2000 or 3000 series mobile
CPUs. AMD will issue regular updates so that owners can take advantage of day-zero game support. Hopefully, that will fix some of the instability problems people have complained about with AMD laptops.
