AMD A10-8700P "Carrizo" Linux Laptop Testing

As a follow up to What Sub-$500 Laptops Are You Most Interested In For Linux?, one of them has been chosen so far and will satisfy the many from the dozens of comments wanting to see an AMD Carrizo laptop tested under Linux.

The first of two laptops ordered so far is the Toshiba Satellite L55D-C5269. For $449 USD, this laptop provides a 15.6-inch display, AMD A10-8700P APU, 8GB of DDR3L memory, and 1TB SATA HDD. The most interesting part of that for the forthcoming tests is the A10-8700P -- a Carrizo APU. The A10-8700P is a Carrizo APU with two Excavator CPU modules and Radeon R7 graphics with six compute cores.

I've been dying to test a Carrizo APU under Linux and next week once this laptop arrives from Amazon I'll be able to do so. It should be interesting to see the A10-8700P for others interested in a budget AMD Linux laptop.

The second sub-$500 laptop to be decided for this December article is likely going to be one with an Intel Core i5 5200U "Broadwell" processor. In the same price range as this Carrizo laptop, the i5-5200U seems to be popular. In fact, for just $25 less is this Toshiba laptop that's almost identical (15.6-inch, 1TB HDD, 8GB RAM), but with this Core i5 Broadwell CPU. The i5-5200U is dual-core with Hyper Threading, 2.2GHz with 2.7GHz Turbo, 15 Watt TDP, and HD Graphics 5500.

Comparing the AMD A10-8700P Carrizo and Intel i5-5200U Broadwell laptops with them being quite similar and both coming in at under $450 USD could be quite interesting... Given that the laptops both ship with Windows 10, I'll also do some Windows vs. Linux benchmarks on both laptops for the compatible cross-platform test profiles.

I'll likely firm up my decision on the 5200U laptop tomorrow once looking out for any other Cyber Monday deals. If anyone has any feedback or thoughts to share, please comment on this article in the forums.