Updated 26 May, 2012, 4:18 pm IST

AMD Trinity reference Ultrathins are a sight for sore eyes

04 Feb, 2012, 7:20 pm IST | by Roydon Cerejo |

If you thought Intel’s Ultrabooks were ubercool, then wait till you get a hold of AMD’s reference design for their Ultrathin notebooks. Engadget managed to get some good alone time with Compal’s reference design of AMD’s upcoming Trinity-based notebooks, that’s sure to give Ultrabooks a run for its money. For those who aren’t aware, Compal is the second largest ODM (Original Design Manufacturer) for notebooks in the world and basically, they come up with a bunch of reference designs for their clients and then pass it over to OEMs (like Dell, Acer, Toshiba, HP, etc) to manufacture. The one on the images was one of several designs to show manufacturers what AMD and Compal have planned for 2012.

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Images courtesy: Engadget

This anorexic reference design is nothing short of stunning from every angle. It appears to be sporting a 14-inch screen, Chiclet keyboard and a generous trackpad. On the sides, we have a couple of USB 3.0 connectors, HDMI, mini-DisplayPort and a LAN jack. Notice the cool, lattice shaped exhaust vents. What’s really interesting is the new Trinity APU powering the notebook. This new APU is built on the same 32nm fabrication, but will feature four Piledriver cores, which is an enhanced and tweaked version of Bulldozer. The notebook will feature one of the low voltage Trinity APUs and a Radeon HD 7000M graphics chip. We still don’t have any model name or specifications of these chips right now, but we should know more in the coming months. The icing on the cake, however is the pricing. Unlike Intel’s elite Ultrabooks, which are mostly in the $1000 and above price range, AMD’s Ultrathins are targeted between $500 - $600, which make them more affordable and feature rich at the same time. Clearly, where these notebooks have cut cost is in the chassis, which from the reference design seems to be made out of plastic, instead of aluminium (which most Ultrabooks use). This is not necessarily a bad thing, though, as long as the plastics used are of good quality, I don’t see a problem with that.

Intel may have had a head start in this new segment that they created, but it seems AMD once again has the upper hand in the segment, where Intel just can’t seem to compete, and that’s value for money.

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