Computex is still days away but the parade of notebooks has already begun. Late Wednesday, Acer introduced two AMD-powered laptops to its lineup with new versions of the Nitro 5 gaming notebook and Swift 3 ultrabook.
The 15.6-inch Acer Nitro 5 pairs AMD’s 2nd-gen Ryzen 7 3750H processor with an AMD Radeon RX 560 GPU. The laptop looks to be built on the same chassis as the existing Acer Nitro 5 that’s running a Ryzen 5 2500U and a Radeon RX 560X GPU.
Although both CPUs pack four-cores with symmetrical multi-threading (AMD’s version Hyper-Threading), the key change between the two is the higher wattage. The Ryzen 7 3750H is rated at 35 watts of thermal dissipation while the Ryzen 5 2500U is rated at 15 watts. In non-nerd talk, that means the Ryzen 7 should run at higher clock speeds for a longer period of time.
The company didn’t reveal much more, but if it’s based on the previous design, the latest all-AMD Nitro 5 likely features a 15.6-inch 1920×1080 resolution IPS screen. It probably won’t win any weight contests either as the previous model is about 5.95 lbs.
Pricing on the new Nitro 5 also wasn’t disclosed, but we’d expect to play in the sub-$900 category, where it can compete with laptops based on Intel’s quad-core Core i5 chips. Despite having long had an edge in core count over Intel CPUs on desktops, AMD has been trailing Intel in laptop wins.
Acer’s new Swift 3 will features a 2nd-gen Ryzen 7 3700U and optional Radeon 540X GPU.
For people who want something lighter, Acer also announced a new Swift 3 model that uses AMD’s 2nd-gen Ryzen 7 3700U. For visuals, the Swift 3 will rely on the CPU’s integrated Radeon Vega graphics or an optional discrete Radeon 540X GPU.
The Swift 3 features a 14-inch, 1920×1080 IPS display. The 18mm laptop weighs 3.2 lbs. The new laptop looks to be an evolution of the existing $750 AMD-based Swift 3.
Acer’s laptop splash is likely just a precursor of what’s coming next week when the Taipei-based Computex technology show kicks off. With both AMD and Intel scheduled to show off new hardware, you can expect a boat load of new laptop and PC news.
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