The chips promise both higher performance and lower power consumption

Jun 6, 2012 07:48 GMT  ·  By

The line of processors that the E1-200 and E2-1800 chips are part of has now been officially launched by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

All those rumors that AMD would launch the Brazos 2.0 platform in June, 2012, have finally come true, not that it's a surprise.

After all, even before the announcement came out, the E1-1200 and E2-1800 were added to the company website.

Brazos 2.0, or the E-Series, is AMD's set of chips for netbooks, nettops and affordable notebooks or desktops.

They are overhauled Zacate APUs based on the 40nm manufacturing process, but the x86 Bobcat cores and the Radeon HD 7000 graphics are better compared to preceding technology.

What's more, the Hudson D3L, the new input/output controller of the A68 Fusion controller hub (FCH), offers support for USB 3.0, SATA 600 and optimizations to the ULV platform (ultra-low voltage).

“In 2011, we showed the industry you could get discrete-level GPU power in a notebook without added power consumption or cost, resulting in the most successful notebook platform in AMD’s history,” said Chris Cloran, corporate vice president and general manager, AMD Client Business Unit.

“Today we raise the bar even higher with our latest APU offering. Our 2012 AMD E-Series APU gives consumers a visually superior choice for everyday performance with the latest graphics technology and nearly three hours more battery life than the competition.”

The first E-Series APUs will have a TDP (thermal design power) of 18W. Laptop battery life should reach up to 11 hours, or 90 minutes of online web browsing, video playback or flash gaming.

Speaking of which, AMD tossed in the AMD Steady Video technology, which removes jitters from online video, and locally-stored video for that matter, as long as the media player has support for its associated plugin (VLC and Windows Media Player are immediate examples).