AMD Ultrathins to Knockout Intel Ultrabooks on Price

News
By Jane McEntegart, Kevin Parrish
published

We might not see any for a few more months, but AMD's Ultrathins promise to be cheaper than Intel's Ultrabook notebooks.

This year's Consumer Electronics Show showed us more Ultrabooks than we could shake a stick at. Intel isn't alone in its endeavors to enter the super-thin laptop space, as AMD also targeting the slim notebook market with its new Trinity APU. That said, we didn't exactly see a boatload of AMD's 'Ultrathins' on the show floor last week in Vegas. Though the company announced its intentions to rival Ultrabooks with its own Ultrathins, the company isn't scheduled to launch the Ultrathin platform until this summer. However, the latest reports say that when we do see Trinity-powered Ultrathins, they'll be significantly cheaper than Intel's Ultrabooks.

AMD is reportedly set to launch the Deccan platform with Krishna and Wichita APUs to better compete with Intel's Ivy Bridge this June. The company will then upgrade to the Kerala platform with the Kabini APU in 2013 to take on Intel's Haswell platform. However AMD supposedly decided to shift in gears and attack Intel on the "ultra" front head-on by using Trinity-based APUs and pushing a low-price strategy.

Digtimes is reporting that 2012 will bring just 20 AMD-powered Ultrathins, and that these will not have any significant advantages over Intel's expected 75 new Ultrabooks in terms of performance and function. That said, one area they will improve upon is price. While Intel's next generation Ivy Bridge is expected to drive the price of Ultrabooks down from over a thousand bucks (well over a thousand bucks in some cases) to between $800 and $1000, it's thought AMD's Ultrathins will be up to $200 cheaper than comparable offerings from Intel.

But as seen with the tablet sector after the launch of Amazon's Kindle Fire, the "ultra" segment may also see a shift once the cheaper AMD machines begin to hit the market. DigiTimes reports that many notebook vendors are voicing their concerned over this, indicating that Intel's Ultrabooks could see a rapid price drop to combat AMD's competitive price point.

According to Digitimes, HP, Acer and Asus are among those expected to produce Ultrathins. Check out the full story here.

Jane McEntegart
35 Comments Comment from the forums
  • someguynamedmatt
    Now THIS I have faith in. Not that 'ultrabooks' hold that much market share, but I feel that AMD could pull this off quite nicely with their APU lineup and beat out Intel.
    Reply
  • megamanx00
    Promises promises. We'll see how they do once they are available. In the mean time Intel will be unopposed in that space.
    Reply
  • spookie
    Can't wait!! Go make us proud AMD, make affordable ultrathins and drive the price of ultrabooks down
    Reply
  • Borisblade7
    After having both mobile amd llano and mobile intel IB, ill take amd anyday in a system that wont have discrete graphics to make up for the god awful performance of intel in that area.
    Reply
  • AMD also claims that the 17w ULV Trinity chips for the ultra thins will be about as powerful as 35W LLano mobile chips today. That performance level at $200 less then an Ivy Bridge laptop does not seem like a great deal to me unless IVB simply can't play games, but it can, although not as well.

    Also if you are looking for a gaming machine then a $500 35w Trinity machine makes a hell of a lot more sense then a $600-800 17w Trinity ultrathin anyway. Or a $800 IVB setup with a dedicated gpu.

    As long as its significantly cheaper I think AMD will sell a decent amount of ultra thins to the Best Buy type shopper who favors price>form>brand>performance. Yet I dont think they would be a good choice from a performance>form>price>brand perspective.
    Reply
  • g4114rd0
    +1  pushing a low-price strategy.

    recommended and useful, AMD should try to do something very similar on BD.
    Reply
  • kawininjazx
    AMD can't beat intel at anything, only on processors under $100 maybe.
    Reply
  • SteelCity1981
    Competition means everything. Thank you AMD without you Intel cpu's would avg over 400 dollars. right now.
    Reply
  • bigdragon
    At Intel's Ultrabook price point I expect discrete graphics. Intel's graphics performance is abysmal, and I do not see that changing with Ivy Bridge given how they fudged that CES demo. I have been very surprised by AMD's APU products. They could actually put this off. Their price point, graphics performance, and spec flexibility is much more appealing.

    AMD drove themselves into the ditch with Bulldozer. I hope they give Intel a run for their money with Trinity.
    Reply
  • A Bad Day
    Intel's Plan B:

    Publicity smear, hyping on the importance of processing power and bashing Trinity's weaker CPU power, while completely ignoring graphics performance.
    Reply