There is an ungreen revolution taking place in enthusiast game PC circles.

The eye-opening graphics possible on today's game PCs come at a cost: light-dimming power consumption. The trend, rooted in the perennial quest for more speed, bucks the overall greening of the PC industry.

Green PC designs have become more than just practical; they're cool. Power-sipping Netbooks are in, as are small desktops like the Dell Studio Hybrid and Hewlett-Packard Pavilion Slimline.

This is not the case for high-end gaming PCs, where bigger is better. How far this trend can go isn't clear, but a seminal … Read more

Solid-state drives, if not yet ubiquitous, have arrived. You can find them in laptops big and small and as a high-octane storage option for gaming PCs.

SSDs made their mark by appearing in the trendiest ultraportables like the Apple MacBook Air and Asus Eee PC--typically as stratospherically priced options, fashion statements rarely seen in the real world.

These drives are now coming off their rarefied shelf space and appearing across a wider range of laptops and ultraportable computers.

Any new, lightweight enterprise laptop worth its salt comes with a large-capacity solid-state drive option now. Hewlett-Packard recently introduced the 3-pound EliteBook … Read more

As it kicks off its Nvision conference Monday in San Jose, Calif., chipmaker Nvidia must be hoping that the N stands for "new" and "now"--and not "no thanks."

Nvidia is trying to shake off a tough second quarter and is staring down a slump in earnings tied to chip glitches and stiffer competition from rival Advanced Micro Devices. The home page for the Nvision 08 conference urges interested parties to "join the visual revolution" and promises attendees two days' worth of "jaw-dropping visual wonderment" in the realms of games, movies, and science.

A big chunk of the graphics chip supplier's woes stem from a $196 million second-quarter charge taken for defective graphics processors. Though Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has said that the "failures are only seen in a small percentage of all the chips," Hewlett-Packard and Dell have listed a number of models affected by the glitch.

A possibly bigger challenge is AMD's resurgent ATI graphics chip unit. Huang said in the second-quarter earnings conference call that his company had "underestimated" the price and performance of AMD's latest graphics chips, leading Nvidia to "to misposition our fall lineup" of chips.

(See: "AMD reclaims the high-end 3D card belt.")

AMD's recently introduced midrange and high-end graphics boards have been well-received and typically come at a discount to Nvidia boards that are roughly equal in performance. This forced Nvidia to cut prices on its performance graphics chips.

What does Nvidia think about AMD's new products? "Our competition has built a nice product but...the nice things that people write about their product is that it's well-priced," according to Huang, speaking during the earnings call.

Analysts confirm that AMD is making inroads. "(It's) pretty discernible. Certainly desktop standalone graphics, they've seen improvement there," said Dean McCarron, the principal and founder of Mercury Research, a company that tracks chip market movements. … Read more

Update with Dunnington and Core i7 photos, text.

The latest and greatest silicon and derivative products is what the Intel Developer Forum is all about. Moorestown, Tolapai, and Canmore are just a few of the chips detailed at IDF this week, while UrbanMax, new netbooks, and the first laptops based on the quad-core mobile processor were among showcased products.

Intel Chairman Barrett brought out Carnegie Mellon University's Johnny Chung Lee, who demonstrated how cheap, off-the-shelf technology--in this case a makeshift whiteboard--can go a long way. "To be interesting today, technology has to be the fastest, the best, the brightest, the lightest, but here you can see if you sacrifice a little bit of capability and performance for dramatic savings in cost, you can have a pretty dramatic impact," Chung said.

One of the more novel devices demonstrated was the 10-inch Intel UrbanMax a computer that can switch between a laptop and tablet. This by itself isn't groundbreaking because tablet PCs from Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba already do this. The novelty is the size and design: it is smaller than an ultraportable--like the Toshiba Portege--yet is designed like an oversize mobile Internet device such as Compal JAX 10. When configured as a tablet, the keyboard is hidden but can morph into a laptop by sliding out the keyboard, which tilts the screen.

An Intel official demonstrating the device said that "UrbanMax is an innovation platform from Intel. This is a product-ready concept." UrbanMax uses "Montevina" Centrino 2 small form-factor (SSF) silicon. SSF chip packaging is used in the MacBook Air and results in lower voltage and smaller size than typical Intel low-power mobile processors.

It is interesting to note that major PC makers have adopted Intel concept designs in the past. Last year, Intel offered a ultra-thin laptop concept design that was eventually adopted by HP for its Voodoo Envy 133 notebook. … Read more

Hewlett-Packard on Monday announced three notebooks, one as light as 3 pounds, that will use upcoming Intel low-power chips and solid-state drives.

The EliteBook 2530p and 2730p replace the current 2510p and 2710p models. The biggest changes are a brushed, anodized aluminum exterior casing, new wireless broadband modules, the use of upcoming Intel 45-nanometer ultra-low-voltage (ULV) processors, and the option for an 80GB solid-state drive.

HP will replace current low-power Intel processors with upcoming 45nm processors, said Keith LeFebvre, vice president and general manager for business notebooks, HP PSG Americas. However, LeFebvre did not specify which low-power processor models it … Read more

Hewlett-Packard will launch a 4-pound "ultralight" business notebook line based on Intel's Centrino 2 silicon this month.

The 12.1-inch HP-Compaq 2230s series packs Centrino 2 processors and Intel's newest GMA 4500MHD integrated graphics, which HP lists as "Microsoft DirectX 10 capable."

The weight is listed as starting at 4.07 pounds. By comparison, the Via processor-based HP 2133 Mini-Note (8.9-inch screen) is listed at 2.63 pounds.

Models start at $999 with a T5670 (1.80GHz) Core 2 Duo processor and range up to $1,649 for a model with a … Read more

Hewlett-Packard lists 24 laptop model variations affected by a widely reported Nvidia graphics chip defect. HP said the flaw has been a warranty issue since November of last year.

Dell made a statement Friday regarding the same graphics chip issue. Nvidia published a "Business Update" on July 2 that addressed the problem. The Nvidia defect is centered on a "weak die/packaging material" in certain versions of Nvidia graphics silicon used in laptops. The die refers to the chip itself and the packaging is what encases the chip.

HP has published a list of potentially affected … Read more

AMD thriving in Intel Centrino 2 notebooks? At Hewlett-Packard, the world's largest PC maker, the answer is "yes."

Although consumer notebooks get most of the press, business notebooks get most of the sales. "The prime purchaser of notebooks still remains, as a segment, business," Intel CEO Paul Otellini said during the Intel earnings conference call earlier this week.

Among Hewlett-Packard's slew of upcoming business notebooks (HP Compaq 6730s, 6830s, 6530b, 6930b) with Centrino 2 processors, Advanced Micro Devices' ATI graphics chips figure prominently. And notebooks such as the HP Compaq 6830s and EliteBook 6930p … Read more

There was relatively little said Monday at the Centrino 2 launch about new processors. Almost as little as was said about side shows such as a "Montevina" desktop design. The main attraction was the Centrino 2 chipset.

Why? There's not a whole lot that's new about the processors other than faster speeds and improved power efficiency: the new "P" series chips have a thermal envelope of 25 watts versus 35 watts for the previous generation.

The focus of the Centrino 2 launch returned repeatedly to the chipset and accompanying silicon: namely, the Intel 4 … Read more