AMD introduces new E-series chips aimed at sub-$600 notebooks

AMD revamped their mainstream and ultrathin APU offerings last month with Trinity but those looking for a more budget-minded chip were left in waiting. Fortunately that wait has now expired as AMD unveiled their updated E-series APU lineup during Computex.

The 1.4GHz E1-1200 and the 1.7GHz E2-1800 are both dual-core parts from the low-cost / lower-power Bobcat family of APUs. Engadget says that both chips bring a range of improvements over last year’s models that they replace and will be used primarily for sub-$600 notebooks and possibly even nettops.

Both chips still carry the same 18W TDP as their predecessors as well as the same 11 hours of battery life while sitting idle in Windows despite the increased clock speeds. Run time drops down to around 4 hours when playing flash-based games, however.

Speaking of gaming, the new E-series chips contain a revised Radeon HD 7000 series GPU that ushers in DirectX 11 and OpenCL 1.1 compatibility. The publication notes that there is also USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/sec support as well as functionality for SD card readers, HTML5 acceleration and Metro UI optimization for systems running Windows 8.

Aside from clock speed, the main difference between the two chips is the fact that the E1-1200 only supports memory speeds up to DDR3-1066 and a GPU clock of 500MHz. The speedier E2-1800 works with DDR3-1333 and features a GPU clocked at 680MHz.

AMD expects global OEMs such as Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba to offer AMD E-Series APU-based systems although no timetable for release was given.