Zacate will be the peak of AMD’s new mobile platform and will be a direct competitor to Intel’s energy efficient Core processors with a TDP rating of 18W. When AMD showed the new Zacate circuit outside of IDF 2010 it showed about twice the perforance of Intel’s competing model.
AMD showed a test platform with Zacate that ran the game City of Heroes and Internet Explorer 9 where the FPS was about twice that of an equivalent computer with an Intel Core i5 CPU. Both processors where using the integrated graphics processors and it shows that there is a lot of power in the GPU inside Zacate, beating the Intel GPU with a more than safe margin in graphically intense benchmarks.
Unfortunately AMD did not reveal the frequency of the Zacate APU, or for that matter which mobile Core i5 processor it was using, but we can presume an Arrandale Core i5-5xxUM model that like Zacate is rated at max. 18 watt. At the same time we should be on the clear with the fact that AMD made all tests and that all of this should be considered with a load of salt.
AMD Zacate test platform (Picture by Anandtech)
The CPU performance is harder to predict, but we look forward to more benchmarks, especially Ontario vs. Atom, which should be a good match for AMD.
In Q1 2011 the first Zacate and Ontario systems will be hitting stores and AMD also promised battery times up to 8 hours with some systems, which gives you a hint of how much more efficient Ontario netbooks will be compared to current AMD models, but on the other hand they seem to consume a bit more power than Intel Atom.
