Dell gives in … AMD’s new Ryzen and APUs are just too good.
Despite Dell not believing in an imminent “AMD-Intel duopoly” despite the green team having some very interesting products in its portfolio, Dell has silently launched some Inspiron laptops that are powered by AMD’s latest architecture. The total number of AMD-powered laptops reaches four in their Inspiron 17 5000 line, with a mix of AMD’s latest Ryzen 3 and Ryzen 5 APUs with Vega integrated graphics.
Dell has chosen to pair the same overall system configuration with AMD’s Ryzen 3 2200U and Ryzen 5 2500 U APU solutions, with two models based on each processor offering some differing specs when it comes to their storage and memory configuration. All four models sport the same 17.3″ 1080p display, with a port configuration of 2x USB 3.1 (Gen 1), 1x USB 2.0 port, 1x HDMI 1.4b interface, and an SD card reader.
The entry-line Ryzen 3 version sports 8 GB (1x 8 GB) of DDR4-2400 and a 1 TB 5,400 RPM SATA HDD starting from $679.99. The same CPU then is offered with a bump to 12 GB (1x 4 GB, 1x 8 GB) memory while keeping the same HDD, for $729.99 – a strange memory configuration that’s hardly ideal.
The Ryzen 5 models, on the other hand, feature 16 GB (2x 8 GB) of DDR4-2400 and a 2 TB 5,400 RPM HDD – the only difference between the two higher-end models is that the $999 version comes with Dell’s Premium Support Plus coverage for 1 year, whereas the $899 model does not. All other specs are equal. Puzzlingly, Users looking for an SSD-powered Ryzen APU system need look elsewhere.
Source: Dell, via Tom’s Hardware and TPU
