These AMD Chromebook Processors Promise Bigger Battery Life

amd has announced Four new (the good kind) processors are marketed for Chromebooks: the Ryzen and Athlon 7020C series.

The release includes two Ryzen processors (a Ryzen 5 7520C and a Ryzen 3 7320C) with AMD Radeon 610M graphics, with four cores, eight threads, and 15W TDPs. The Ryzen 3 has a base of 2.4 GHz with a boost frequency of up to 4.1 GHz, while the Ryzen 5 has 2.8GHz and 4.3 GHz respectively.

Both the Athlon Silver 7120C and the Athlon Gold 7220C have two cores and two and four threads, respectively. Both have a base frequency of 2.4GHz; Silver boosts up to 3.5GHz, gold up to 3.7.

As is often the case with these Chromebook-specific CPU releases from AMD, “new” is a bit of a misleading term. The 7020c series is built on the company’s Zen 2 architecture, which dates back to the good old days of 2019. (We’re on Zen 4 now, for those not obsessively following along at home.)

If you compare the specs, these are basically the same chips that AMD released last September to target budget Windows laptops. In the past, the justification AMD has given for doing such rebrands is that Chromebook-branded processors better help people find a Chromebook that will best suit their computing needs. Regardless, potential buyers should note that there’s nothing particularly new about these chips.

Still, AMD is making big promises for the C-series. For example, the company claims the 7320C “delivers up to 1.6x higher average performance across tested workloads”, as well as “up to 3.5 hours longer battery life” than competing MediaTek (Kompanio 1380) and Intel’s previous generations. (Core i3-N305) System. Users can, per AMD, expect up to 19.5 hours of battery life on the Athlon Silver and up to 17 hours on the Ryzen 3. CrXPRT synthetic benchmark, which may or may not reflect your real world usage. (It’s safe to say that 19 hours would be an incredibly long lifetime in the real world.)

“We’ve been impressed by the combination of raw power and efficiency that AMD has brought to a variety of Chromebooks,” John Solomon, vice president and general manager of ChromeOS, said in a statement. “We’re excited for AMD’s 7020 C-Series processors to continue that outstanding track record.”