AMD doubles the number of processor cores offered for Chromebooks

AMD is raising the bar when it comes to Chromebooks. While Chrome OS devices with the mobile capabilities of Ryzen 6000 processors are still a long way off, Team Red announced the Ryzen 5000 C series for Chromebooks on Thursday. The top chip in the series has eight AMD Zen 3 cores, giving systems using it more x86 processor cores than any other Chromebook. Chips are not just a good idea; HP and Acer have already detailed the Chromebooks they plan to release this year.

The 7nm Ryzen 5000 C-series processors range from the Ryzen 3 5125C with two Zen 3 cores and a base and boost clock of 3GHz to the Ryzen 7 5825C with eight cores and a base clock of 2GHz that can boost up to 4.5GHz. In comparison, the Intel Core i7-1185G7 processor found in some more expensive Chromebooks has four cores and a base clock speed of 3GHz, which can be boosted up to 4.8GHz. You can check out the full specs of the Ryzen 5000 C-series below:

The chips themselves aren’t all that interesting. They appear to offer similar performance to the already-released Ryzen 5000 U-series chips. The Ryzen 5000 C-series also uses integrated Vega graphics, rather than the updated RDNA 2 used in the Ryzen 6000 mobile chips, which AMD says after release “up to 2.1 times faster”.

But for those who constantly force their Chromebook to do more than just open one or two Chrome tabs, the chips offer potentially better performance than what’s currently available. Like Chromebooks, the Ryzen 5000 C-series, for example, aren’t designed to play at 1080p in some titles. More attention is paid to productivity, especially multitasking. AMD claims the new chips deliver twice the multitasking performance of the latest generation Chromebook chips.

Specifically, AMD stated that the top-end Ryzen 7 5825C will provide a 107 percent improvement in multitasking performance over the Ryzen 7 3700C and up to 25 percent over the i7-1185G7 based on Geekbench 5 testing.

Web browsing performance is estimated to be 67% faster than the previous generation AMD and 7% faster than the i7-1185G7, according to WebXPRT 3.

In terms of graphics, AMD claims performance is up to 85 percent over the last generation and 10 percent over the Intel chip, based on Motion Mark 1.2 testing.

But since all of these tests are supplied by AMD without information about things like test conditions, take them with a grain of salt.

Zen 3 Chromebooks

The HP Elite c645 G2 Chromebook and the Acer Chromebook Spin 514 and their corresponding enterprise version use the new AMD chips in a 14-inch design. With respective starting prices of $559 in early June and $580 in the third quarter, they’re more expensive, but not the most expensive Chromebooks out there. Remember that Chromebooks cost four figures.

AMD claims the Zen 3 Chromebook chips can provide up to 13 hours of battery life. HP didn’t list battery life for the Chromebook c645 G2, but the Chromebook Spin 514 claims up to 10 hours of battery life.

As HP and Acer are set to launch Chromebooks with more x86 cores than ever, we should expect more mid-range and high-end Chrome OS devices to use AMD’s new chips as well.