Acer Preparing AMD-Powered Version of the Helios 500 Laptop

AMD CPU and GPU on High-End Gaming Notebook

Acer recently introduced their new Helios 500 high-end gaming laptop. As expected, it comes with top of the line mobile parts including a 4K UHD 17.3-inch IPS 144Hz panel with NVIDIA G-sync technology. It even comes equipped with an NVIDIA GTX 1070 GPU and Intel’s i9-8950HK. The latter being a 6-core 12-threaded mobile monster CPU.

Now Acer has updated the landing page for the Helios 500 to include an AMD variant. This not only lists the GPU as being AMD Radeon-based, but the CPU being AMD Ryzen-based as well. In place of the GeForce GTX 1070 is AMD’s latest Radeon RX Vega 56. Furthermore, instead of G-Sync, it will come with FreeSync technology support.

Oddly enough, the CPU it lists on the landing page states an AMD Ryzen 7 2700. This is the 8-core 16-threaded version and not the 4-core 8-threaded Ryzen 7 2700U mobile version.

Other than those differences, it comes with the same features, memory and storage options as the Intel version. With the exception of Intel Optane support.

How Much is This AMD Version of the Helios 500?

Acer did not reveal pricing or release date information yet. Only the 1080p i7-8750H version of the laptop is currently listed on the models section so far.

However, we can extrapolate from pricing trends that this is going to cost less than the NVIDIA version. NVIDIA G-Sync alone adds several hundred dollars to the price. Whereas AMD’s FreeSync solution does not require special additional hardware like NVIDIA does. AMD’s Ryzen 7 2700 processors also costs less than Intel’s i9-8950HK by almost $200 USD.