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All posts tagged "amd"


Tuesday, May 15, 2012

AMD Fires Back At Intel

Posted by Hooch Tan in "Laptop Thoughts News" @ 02:00 PM

http://www.amd.com/us/press-release...-2012may15.aspx

"AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced the widely anticipated launch of its 2nd-Generation AMD A-Series Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) for mainstream and ultrathin notebooks, All-in-One and traditional desktops, home theater PCs and embedded designs. The 2nd-Generation A-Series APU, codenamed “Trinity”, is a grounds-up improved design over the previous generation, enabling a best-in-class PC mobility, entertainment, and gaming experience."

For decades, we have seen AMD and Intel fight each other over the x86 CPU market. Intel will produce a blazing fast CPU, AMD will release one that's even better. This flip flop happens every so often, but it has now become more complicated with the inclusion of integrated graphics. Integration was bound to happen, after watching all other components like hard drive controllers, lan controllers and sound all being folded into smaller and smaller circuitry. Ignoring price, Intel seems to be holding down the fort in terms of CPU performance, however, the increasing utilization of the GPU means that AMD's solutions are very compelling. Ivy Bridge does show that Intel is slowly catching up in thsi space, but when it comes to graphics or parallel processing, the Radeon graphics that AMD offers still bests Intel. If you are looking to build your own computer, or even deciding what to pick out, the choice of which company to go with keep getting harder.

Tags: hardware, amd, apu, trinity

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Ultrabooks: Meet AMD's Brazos 2.0 (?)

Posted by Michael Knutson in "Laptop Thoughts Talk" @ 09:30 AM

http://www.netbooknews.com/41254/am...ith-brazos-2-0/

"AMD maybe readying to enter the Ultrabook game in January 2012 with their own Ultrathin devices according to a report from The Australian."

Quite a bit of speculation, but it does appear that AMD wants to tap into the "ultrathin" market, and there are several manufacturers interested, but no concrete details, other than the fact that AMD will call their products something else, since Intel's marketing juggernaut has "Ultrabook" sewn-up. It'll be interesting to have alternatives in the Ultrabook space.


Monday, June 13, 2011

AMD Llano (Fusion-A Series) Goes Head-to-Head With Intel Sandy Bridge

Posted by Michael Knutson in "Laptop Thoughts News" @ 11:00 PM

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/13/...cial-10-5-hour/

"AMD's Llano platform has been on our radar for more than two years, and finally, the company has come clean with its latest class of hybrid CPU / GPU chips, officially dubbed the Fusion A-Series. Unlike the low-power flavor of Fusion (sic) accerlated processing units already on the market, these 32-nanometer APUs were designed with desktops and mainstream laptops in mind, taking direct aim at Intel's Core 2011 processors with the promise of superior processing and discrete-level graphics, and 10-plus hours of battery life."

AMD appears to be finally ready to continue the platform wars with Intel with Llano, or Fusion-A. In fact, they are making some direct comparisons with Intel's processors, and, according to their numbers, are better, faster, and more power efficient across the board. Claims of 10-hours runtimes for batteries seem very optimistic, and, let's hope that they're close - but what is "resting battery life?" AMD uses the term "supercomputer" and "personal supercomputing" in their press release, so they're setting the bar pretty high! Fusion-A will be ultimately found in more than 150 laptops and desktops starting the second quarter of 2011. Gotta love choices!


Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Quad-Core AMD Llano APUs Coming Soon to a Laptop Near You

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Laptop Thoughts News" @ 12:39 PM

http://blog.laptopmag.com/quad-core...ile+Technology)

"AMD has started shipping its Llano APU (accelerated processing unit) to OEMs, which means we should start seeing it for sale in systems in the coming months. What makes Llano special is that it's one of the first quad-core processors from AMD to include both the processor and graphics chip on the same die."

At CES 2011, high-performance computing was all about Sandy Bridge - Intel's impressive second generation of Core i-series processors. AMD was showing off their APU chips as well, but they were only found in the low-power units such as the HP dm1z. Now the "APU big guns" are coming from AMD, and if the above video is accurate, it looks like Intel may have a few things to worry about. This is great news for anyone who's looking for a new laptop in 2011: there will be some excellent options to choose from!


Monday, January 31, 2011

AMD's 5 Watt CPU Wants to Be In Your Next Windows Tablet

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Laptop Thoughts News" @ 10:53 PM

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/31/...blet-of-choice/

Engadget has a brief news item that says AMD has a 5 watt version of their Fusion APU (that's a CPU plus a GPU for those of you who haven't been paying attention lately) designed for x86 tablets. Meaning, tablets and slates running Windows. With Microsoft's move to port Windows to ARM, is AMD too late? I don't think so - there's a pressing need for low-power hardware to run Windows in a variety of form factors, and x86 compatibility it still critical for application use. What I haven't seen anyone do yet is do a power consumption comparison between AMD's new low-power APUs and the comparable offering from Intel in the form of an Atom CPU and an Intel HD GPU. I'd guess AMD would win that, but I'd like to know for sure. Anyone seen anything like that yet?


Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Next Round of Chip Wars Heats Up: AMD Fusion APU

Posted by Michael Knutson in "Laptop Thoughts News" @ 11:00 PM

http://blog.laptopmag.com/amd-launc...s#axzz1A5ykCbBo

"Intel isn't the only company putting the CPU and the GPU on a single chip. AMD today announced its new Fusion APU (Accelerated Processing Unit), which combines the two in a low-cost, low-power design."

Coming soon and utilizing a single chip (like Intel) combining CPU and GPU, the Fusion APU hopes to provide battery life of about ten (10) hours, and is said to offer support for 1080p video, DirectX 11 graphics, 3D gaming, video conversion. AMD is initially targeting the mainstream consumer market, with many of the main vendors already onboard, and some products already announced.


Thursday, December 30, 2010

Laptop and Netbook Battery Usage: The Breakdown

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Laptop Thoughts Talk" @ 08:00 AM

For the life of me, I can't find the article that I pulled this graphic from! I seem to recall it was on a Microsoft blog, but every search I use fails to find it. Regardless, it's legitimate and quite enlightening I think. It demonstrates the reality of battery/power usage on current laptops/netbooks, and busts the myths that some people still cling to, such as:

  • "If I switch from a hard drive to an SSD, I'll get better battery life!". Nope, not really - modern hard drives are ultra-power efficient and assuming your system has sufficient RAM, switching to an SSD won't do much for your battery life.
  • "Turning off Wifi and Bluetooth will get me better battery life" Perhaps, but only slightly - at only 4% of power consumption, networking technologies being turned on or off won't make a big dent in power consumption.

The biggest thing that will allow you to eek out maximum battery life on your laptop? Turning down the screen brightness. Nothing else you can do will make as big of a difference as that one change. The good news is that as we see more integration of chipset functions and GPU functions into the CPU, the overall chipset and GPU chips will use less power, and ultimately give us better battery life. That's why the new AMD Fusion APUs (CPU + GPU) and Intel's Sandy Bridge CPU + GPU chips are so interesting...they will bring about a level of chip-level power savings that we haven't seen thus far.

I think 2011 is going to be a great year for laptops and netbook!


Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Finally! Competition with the Atom!

Posted by Hooch Tan in "Laptop Thoughts News" @ 02:00 PM

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4023/...350-benchmarked

"The system I tested had AMD’s E-350 processor, the highest end APU you’ll find on a Brazos. This is the chip you’ll find in $400 nettops and notebooks in the $400 - $500 range. This puts its direct competition as really expensive Atom based netbooks, Pentium dual-core notebooks and low end Core i3 notebooks. While the latter two should easily outperform the E-350 in CPU intensive tasks, the GPU comparison is another story entirely."

It has been a few years, but it looks like Intel's competitors have finally put some attention to the netbook and related markets and presented some decent competition. Both VIA and AMD have their own entries, with AMD's Brazos Lineup appearing to be quite a beast. It does appear to be a bit more of an energy vampire, but with those few extra watts comes a lot of extra oomph. I am really pleased to see that while the CPU is no slouch, they have not ignored the GPU. Even without an interest in gaming, a powerful GPU is useful for a lot of other tasks such as video editing and playback. Now that Flash supports hardware acceleration, a decent GPU only becomes more important. The numbers tell an interesting tale, and it almost suggests that the Atom is really becoming long in the tooth, and if Intel improved their Core i3 line a bit, it would actually be the best competitor for the netbook space.

Tags: hardware, amd, e-350

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Lenovo X100e: Small, But Still a ThinkPad

Posted by Michael Knutson in "Other Laptops & Netbooks" @ 12:00 PM

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3886/...-thinkpad-x100e

"First things first: regardless of pricetag, Lenovo's ThinkPad X100e is a pretty nice ultraportable. Performance is solid if unexceptional, and the Radeon HD 3200 can even handle some mild gaming if you ask it nicely. What you're really looking at with the X100e is the superior keyboard and build quality, and these things really go a long way."

AnandTech's review pretty much parallels my own experience with the Lenovo X100e, both love it and hate it. Love it: it provides the illusion of true "Thinkpadedness" by offering arguably the best keyboard in its class, coupled with a very good trackpad, and the ubiquitous trackpoint nestled within the keyboard. Millions of Thinkpads have been sold just for the superior keyboard experience and solid build quality. It's also light and easily transportable. Hate it: the AMD processor is a generation old (Athlon Neo MV-40), somewhat slow, and heats up the left side and bottom nicely. The screen is perfect for writers and authors, handling text and simple graphics with aplomb, but with rather small onscreen standard fonts (at 1366x768) make it less than ideal for more intensive graphics activity and light gaming. And battery life disappoints: I get barely more than three hours of untethered usage. And then there is that heat.

All that being said, the X100e can be easily upgraded with an SSD to improve performance, along with adding additional RAM. But still, the "older" AMD platforms come out second-best in comparisons with anything (current generation) Intel inside, and the cost quickly increases with upgrades. That takes me back full-circle to the keyboard and trackpad, still amongst the best in the business. Lenovo's online outlet may be a good choice for finding a reasonably-priced (refurbished) X100e, many with the "newer" AMD Turion Neo X2 processor. I really do like my X100e, but wish that the processor were a bit more robust, and that the heat problem would go away (SSD?).


Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Which is More Important to You? Battery Life or Graphics Performance?

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Laptop Thoughts Articles & Resources" @ 09:00 PM

http://blog.laptopmag.com/which-tos...e-intel-version

"Overall, we love this lightweight notebook's gorgeous design, snappy performance, and amazingly comfortable keyboard. But which of these two configurations is best? While both received a "highly recommended" rating of 4 stars, we gave our coveted Editor's Choice award to the Intel-powered T235 because it lasted 50 minutes longer (6:10 versus 5:20), it had better Wi-Fi connectivity, and it copied files faster than its AMD-based counterpart. Overall performance was pretty much a wash, though the T235D did a little bit better in graphics tests and gaming."

It's always interesting when two laptops have identical parts but differ on CPU and chipsets; you get to see how each CPU and chipset change factors that are otherwise virtually impossible to measure head to head. In this case, going with an Intel CPU and GPU gets you 50 minutes of extra battery life for $20 more. The AMD option brings better graphics performance to the table, and a savings of $20. Which is more important to you? Battery life or better graphics performance? For me, it's better battery life - hands down.


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