Laptops with AMD processors are not very popular nowadays, but some brands still have strong lineups of AMD-powered laptops: HP, Asus, Toshiba and MSI, among others. In case you are looking for a laptop with an AMD processor, you can find useful information here. Or you can go straight to the featured laptops
What are the current AMD processors for laptops?
Most AMD processors for laptops are dual-core CPUs (Athlon X2, Turion X2 and Turion X2 Ultra; AMD dropped the “64” used in older models), but you can also find a few single-core CPUs (Sempron and Athlon Neo).
empron: single-core processors found in low-cost laptops. Current laptops usually use the SL-40 model, running at 2.0 GHz.
thlon X2: dual-core processors running from 1.9 GHz (QL-60 model) to 2.1 GHz (QL-64 model). Both models have a TDP of 35 W, while the QL-62 (2.0 GHz) has a TDP of 25 W.
urion X2: very similar to the Athlon X2 CPUs, they run at frequencies from 2.0 GHz (RM-70 model) to 2.2 GHz (RM-74 model). TDP is 31 W for the RM-70 model, at 2.1 GHz, and 35 W for the RM-72 and RM-74 models.
urion X2 Ultra: they sport a larger L2 cache than the Athlon X2 and Turion X2 processors (2 MB instead of 1 MB), and they run at frequencies from 2.1 GHZ (ZM-80 model) up to 2.4 GHz (ZM-86 model). TDPs are 32 W for the ZM-80 model and 35 W for the faster models.
thlon Neo: this new processor is a single-core, low-power processor aimed at small laptops (around 12″ or similar). The current model (MV-40) runs at 1.6 GHz and has a TDP of 15 W. Both performance and power usage are in between of Intel Atom and Core 2 Duo processors.
For more detailed information see the AMD site and Wikipedia.
How do AMD laptop processors compare to Intel alternatives?
Intel Core 2 Duo processors are built on a 45 nm process, while AMD processors are built on an older 65 nm process. In addition, Intel Core 2 Duo processors have optimizations for HD video encoding. These factors give an edge to Intel processors. I found some benchmarks comparing AMD Puma vs Intel Centrino 2 platforms months ago. There are also some interesting benchmarks at Notebookcheck: I’m summarizing the most relevant ones in the following chart:
Laptop CPU benchmarks
Please note that many tasks are limited by the hard drive performance and other factors, so the differences in performance will be smaller when performing such tasks. All in all, real-life differences are:
AMD laptop processors cannot achieve frequencies as high as Intel Core 2 Duo laptop processors. So the top performing laptop processors are from Intel.
AMD laptop processors are slightly slower than Intel’s when running at the same frequency.
AMD laptop processors are noticeably slower than Intel Core 2 Duo processors when encoding HD video.
Laptops with AMD processors have a shorter battery life than comparable laptops with Intel Core 2 Duo processors (the difference was of 22% in the Laptop Magazine test).
It is quite clear that, if you are going to do a lot of HD video encoding or you need a long battery life, an Intel Core 2 Duo processor is the best alternative for your next laptop. But if you are an average user and you do not perform processor-intensive tasks often, a laptop with an AMD processor is going to serve you well, and make perfectly sense as long as you can find them cheaper than similar Intel alternatives.
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