AMD scours parts bin for old CPUs, GPUs to put in Chromebooks

To meet Chromebook users' most discerning needs, AMD has Frankensteined together a line of chips built from cast-off CPU and GPU architectures. AMD's 7020C-series parts — the "C" standing for Chromebook — announced today stitch together the chipmaker's four-year-old Zen-2 cores with an over two-year-old RDNA-2 GPU, and a …

[revdjenk]

Old or New?

Since you can run Android apps, Linux apps, and with WINE you could even use some Windows apps, having a better and newer CPU/GPU would be advantageous.

[JoeCool]

Re: Old or New?

Chromebooks CPU, right ?

[Lee D]

"over two-year-old [GPU]"

Look, I know tech moves fast, but really it's a cheap low-end device, so it using "over two-year-old" chips of any kind is actually really to be expected.

And the 3D performance obviously isn't going to match a dedicated desktop GPU at all, why would it.

However, you mention the Steam Deck (based on similar tech)... and if you don't have one I suggest you look at what it's capable of. Because "for a handheld", it's incredible.

Two years is not old. Four years in terms of chips isn't old (only in terms of "a four-year-old device", mainly through how they're handled). At the bottom line, all of those kinds of ages are actually quite good.

[doublelayer]

"However, you mention the Steam Deck (based on similar tech)... and if you don't have one I suggest you look at what it's capable of. Because "for a handheld", it's incredible."

As they pointed out, though, it isn't the same GPU as that has. It's just using the same technology. The Steam Deck's GPU has four times as much of everything as the GPU in these chips. It has more levels of cache and larger amounts at higher levels. It has a theoretical performance of 3.277 FP16 TFLOPS compared to the Radeon's 972.8 FP16 GFLOPS. The devices will also have different levels of memory, as both GPUs are sharing main memory and Chromebooks aren't generally optimized for gaming use. Just because the cores are of the same age doesn't mean the GPUs are equally powerful.

[Chz]

Zen 2 is still a massive improvement over the Celerons that most low-end Chromebooks ship with. As ever, pricing will determine whether these are great or underwhelming.

[IGotOut]

Meh...

I've just in the process of swapping out my dad's old P4, yes a P4, for a i5 from about 2016.

He watches YouTube and does a bit of web surfing and that's it. I'm only swapping out because it sounds like concord taking off and it takes forever to boot. He doesn't care.

So not everyone needs a pc that can watch a 4k video with Dolby Atmos surround sound while playing Final Fantasy 15 on secondary a 72" 8k monitor.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Meh...

I'm definitely a techie, but my home laptop is a 2013 model that was referred to as a "budget" device at the time. Sure, it's slow to boot, and some pages with lots of AdblockPlus-blocked items (looking at you, Citi!) are slow, but everything else works fine - websurfing, LibreOffice, games run through Wine, etc. A machine from 2020 would probably keep me going for the next 5 years.