Intel's Kaby Lake G CPUs make an unexpected return in Acer's Aspire 7 notebooks

The Acer Aspire A715-73G-75BW is powered by the Core i7-8075G CPU with integrated AMD RX Vega M GL GPU, making it a decent budget gaming laptop. (Source: Acer)

The Kaby Lake G CPUs with integrated AMD RX Vega graphics seemed to be exactly what budget gaming laptops needed, but the initial supply and the 14 nm CPU shortages lead to very limited support from laptop OEMs. Surprisingly enough, when no one seemed to be giving these CPUs a chance anymore, the Kaby Lake G processors are now expected to make a return in select Acer Aspire 7 notebooks.

by Bogdan Solca, 2019/04/02

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Intel surprised everyone when it introduced the Kaby Lake G CPUs that integrate AMD Radeon Vega GPUs back in early 2018. These promised to deliver a considerable performance boost for laptops and mini PCs compared to Intel’s own iGAMD’s RadePUs, however, due to the 14 nm shortages, the Kaby Lake G processors were featured in very few products such as Intel’s NUC lineup and certain laptop models from Dell and HP. The CPU shortage might be approaching its end, as the Kaby Lake G CPUs are now scheduled to be featured again in select Acer Aspire 7 models. The laptops in question can be now pre-ordered from Amazon for US$1,499 and are expected to ship on April 8.

Acer’s Aspire 7 lineup features thin and light chassis with a 0.67-inch profile and 3.3 lbs weight. The Kaby Lake G models available for pre-order on Amazon come with a 1080p 15.6-inch IPS display that has thin lateral bezels. It is powered by the Core i7-8075G quad-core CPU clocked at 3.1 GHz (4.1 GHz turbo), which also integrates AMD’s Radeon RX Vega M GL GPU with dedicated 4 GB of VRAM and 20 compute units. Also included are 16 GB of DDR4 RAM along with a 512 GB NVMe SSD, plus the usual connectors like USB-A and USB-C, HDMI, audio jack, and SD card reader. The backlit keyboard integrates a fingerprint reader compatible with Windows Hello.

Due to the thin-profile magnesium alloy chassis, Acer could only fit this model with a 3,220 mAh battery that theoretically lasts for up to 7 hours. Nevertheless, with a GPU that potent, gaming sessions may drain the battery in less than 3 hours.