Acer's affordable gaming laptop gets a Ryzen processor and GPU boost

Acer has unleashed a refresh of its affordable gaming laptop, the Nitro 5, over at CES, giving the machine one of AMD’s new Ryzen mobile CPUs.

As well as stepping up to a Ryzen 7 2700U or Ryzen 5 2500U mobile processor (where previously there was a choice of AMD A-Series APUs, if you didn’t want to go with the Intel Kaby Lake-powered model), Acer has upgraded the GPU to a Radeon RX 560X (from an RX 550).

This new combination of CPU, graphics solution and faster DDR4 system memory also being introduced into the mix should boost the performance levels of the Nitro 5 considerably. Altogether this should be a more tempting solution for the casual gamers who don’t want to spend a fortune on portable PC gaming.

Users will also find Nitro Sense software pre-installed to monitor both CPU and GPU performance. These real-time metrics should help everyone get more details on exactly what’s going on under the hood.

The Acer Nitro 5 with Ryzen CPU will hit the shelves in May with the price starting at $799 (around £590, AU$1,020), just the same as the current Nitro 5’s recommended price.

Acer Predator Orion 9000

Acer also announced the Predator Orion 9000, which was first unveiled back at IFA last August, will go on sale in February. That's somewhat later than December, which was the initially anticipated date.

This PC comes armed to the teeth with an 18-core Intel Core i9 Extreme Edition processor and can be equipped with a pair of Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards in SLI configuration. It also has a rather neat all-in-one liquid cooling solution to keep these powerful components under control heat-wise. Prices start from a substantial $1,999 (around £1,470, AU$2,550).