AMD is bringing Ryzen laptop processors to Chromebooks

AMD is releasing some of its existing laptop processors with Zen and Zen + cores for Chromebooks. The 14nm and 12nm APUs are given a C-designation, which should make it clear that the devices they are in are Chromebooks.

The processors announced by AMD are not new chips, but variants of the eponymous APUs that have a U designation. Two Athlon processors and three Ryzen variants will appear in Chromebooks. These are the Ryzen 7 3700C, the Ryzen 5 3500C and the Ryzen 3 3250C. These are 12nm made processors with up to four Zen + cores. The Ryzen 4000U variants, which have up to eight Zen 2 cores and are made at 7nm, are not coming to Chromebooks yet.

Two new Athlon variants have been positioned under the Ryzen apus. The Athlon Gold 3150C and Silver 3050C. At the beginning of this year, AMD announced those processors with U designation. These chips still have the original Zen cores and are made at 14nm.

AMD admits that they are not new processors, so it is one rebrand, but so far there are no Chromebooks on the market with Ryzen processors. AMD already made the Athlon A6 and A4, which can be found in Chromebooks since the beginning of 2019. These are the slowest processors in AMD’s Chromebook line-up and come in low-cost models. The Ryzen variants should also come to higher-positioned performances.

According to AMD, the share of its processors in Chromebooks is increasing rapidly. That was 5.2 percent last year and in the second quarter of this year it would already be at 21 percent. In the Benelux, AMD processors are not yet common in laptops with Google’s Chrome OS. Of the 268 Chromebooks in the Pricewatch, 23 versions have an AMD processor at the time of writing.