Sony offers Vaio laptops with AMD CPUs for first time since 2005

Call it a comeback. After a couple of years where it seemed like AMD had all but abandoned the laptop processor market to rival Intel, the company is roaring back with its Vision platform of new notebook chips. The biggest laptop makers, like Dell and HP, have already added these new parts to their 2010 portable lineup. Now you can add Sony to the tally.

After going five years without using AMD for its Vaio laptops, Sony has two systems currently available that feature new AMD mobile processors. The Vaio VPC-EF22FX comes with an Athlon II X2 P320 dual-core processor running at 2.1GHz, while also packing ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250 graphics. It also has a 17.3-inch LED-backlit display, 4GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard drive. It's available online for $719.99.

Then there's the 15.5-inch VPC-EE25FX (pictured above), with the same processor and graphics, but with a smaller hard drive (320GB). What it offers that the VPC-EF22FX doesn't is a Blu-ray drive, along with a lower price: $699.99 at most places online, but $649.99 at Best Buy.

AMD's 2010 mobile processors are too new to have received thorough testing on the bench, so we don't know how they compare to Intel's Core i3 and i5 CPUs. But as more companies announce new laptops with AMD inside, it's only a matter of time before we see how well they stack up in performance and battery life.

[Via Engadget]