Asus Announces AMD-powered X102BA Ultraportable

[JMcEntegart]

Asus has a 2.4 lb AMD-powered ultraportable headed for market.

Asus Announces AMD-powered X102BA Ultraportable : Read more

 

[beta212]

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_(microarchitecture) the A4-1200 is a 3.9 watt dual core TABLET processor, that said it's still probably more powerful than the majority of the ARM tablets out there. Add a <350 price tag and it'll be a hit.

 

[teh_chem]

An Atom Z2xxx is more powerful than the A4-1200. With the atom baytrail's coming to devices, it'll be an even bigger gap. I would hope that this ultraportable to have mega battery life, otherwise I wouldn't bother touching it. The dual core A4-1200 and 2GB of RAM is far too underpowered for any practical use.

 

[jimmysmitty]

I will have to play with one. I can already say I am weary of its performance as I have messed with their other ones like the E-350 which was just slow as dirt and not even good for a HTPC since it was sluggish.

Might be good for Android though.

It will help push ARM a bit as I feel their stuff is not nearly powerful enough for a nice tablet with a full blown OS.

Plus with Atom this will push prices for SoCs down a lot.

 

[w8gaming]

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_(microarchitecture) the A4-1200 is a 3.9 watt dual core TABLET processor, that said it's still probably more powerful than the majority of the ARM tablets out there. Add a <350 price tag and it'll be a hit.

It should be. The components are all of the lowest end. Like other poster has noted, the CPU will be underwhelming. Not sure how much the better GPU in this config will bring. Atom based computer has been mostly held back by the lackluster GPU in the past.

 

[Guest]

The HD8180, while not winning any awards, should be capable of playing older games at the lower settings, and much better than Atom GPU, of course it would have been nice if ASUS had various CPU options, mainly for the graphics

 

[aggroboy]

An Atom Z2xxx is more powerful than the A4-1200. With the atom baytrail's coming to devices, it'll be an even bigger gap. I would hope that this ultraportable to have mega battery life, otherwise I wouldn't bother touching it. The dual core A4-1200 and 2GB of RAM is far too underpowered for any practical use.

When is baytrail coming?

 

[InvalidError]

When is baytrail coming?

Somewhere around September 11th from what I read.

 

[teh_chem]

The HD8180, while not winning any awards, should be capable of playing older games at the lower settings, and much better than Atom GPU, of course it would have been nice if ASUS had various CPU options, mainly for the graphics

The bay trail atom will have the HD4000 GPU. While also nothing to brag about, the HD4k will play fairly recent games at low settings and around 720p. It doesn't look like the 8180 will have much of an advantage in the A4-1200. (TBH, they're probably pretty equivalent) Here is a review of the more-powerful A6-1460, which is a scaled up version of the A4-1200: http://www.umpcportal.com/2013/05/amd-temash-is-official-our-test-results-and-summary-too/ The A6 has the HD8250 GPU, which is a good 2x more powerful than the 8180 in the A4-1200, is about twice what the HD4000 delivers--so I wouldn't think that the 8180 to delivery any better performance than the HD4k. The benefit to bay trail is that it has much more advanced power-saving features compared to the A4. Don't get me wrong, I'm not some Intel fanboy or shill--on the contrary, I'm hoping AMD's market share improves in the very fast-paced mobile markets. But the A4-1200 is not the answer.

This is a funny situation to me. Netbooks were mostly a flop (and were probably the sole reason why the Atom line got a very bad reputation). They were incredibly slow, underpowered, short on storage, and didn't even have that great of battery life. Fast forward 4 years, and the same thing is true, only manufacturers are calling them "ultraportables" and offer slightly more storage space. There's virtually no difference between this ASUS X102BA, and the original ASUS EEE PC line. Still very low-end components, only now there's a touch screen. Netbooks were a flop last time. Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome--what's that called again? Oh yeah, insanity.

 

[Wisecracker]

The HD8180, while not winning any awards, should be capable of playing older games at the lower settings, and much better than Atom GPU, of course it would have been nice if ASUS had various CPU options, mainly for the graphics

The bay trail atom will have the HD4000 GPU....

No. It will not.

 

[InvalidError]

The bay trail atom will have the HD4000 GPU....

No. It will not.

Bay Trail will have some variant of Ivy Bridge-generation IGP in it but nobody appears to have the specifics about where it stands between HD2500 and HD4000.

 

[Wisecracker]

Bay Trail will have 4 execution units.

HD2.5k has six. HD4k has 16.

Want to try, again?

 

[Thorfkin]

It's about time! It has taken them practically forever to produce an ultra-portable machine based on an AMD chipset. I'm just not comfortable spending money on a machine based on Intel graphics. Now they just need an AMD answer to the ultrabook. Maybe something based on Kaveri.