amd

$379 Acer Aspire One 722-BZ608 reviewed: Affordable, portable 11-inch laptop

While it may feel like Netbooks have dropped off the face of the earth in the post-iPad era, inexpensive 10- and 11-inch laptops still lurk out there, although they're changing with the times. While many Netbooks used to be and still are Intel Atom-based, with minimal processing capabilities and hovering around $299, a few 11-inch laptops have emerged with more powerful AMD-based processors and onboard graphics.

We've reviewed several of these ultraportables with E-350 APUs, such as the HP Pavilion dm1z and Lenovo ThinkPad x120e. The $379 Acer Aspire One 722-BZ608 has an AMD APU (the company's … Read more

AMD releases its 'fastest notebook GPU' too: AMD Radeon HD 6990M

The high-end notebook graphics war is on for 2011. Nvidia was first to fire a shot a few weeks ago, unveiling the GeForce GTX 580M.

AMD has since counterpunched with the AMD Radeon HD 6990M, its new, most high-end laptop graphics card, which the company now claims, as Nvidia did weeks ago, is the "fastest notebook GPU." This time, the edge indeed seems to belong to AMD. The company boasts a 25 percent improvement over the next-fastest notebook GPU. According to slides from AMD showing head-to-head performance benchmarks versus the GeForce GTX 580M, that statement seems to hold … Read more

Gateway updates NV and ID laptop lines with new looks, updated CPUs

Far from being subsumed into the global Acer brand, Gateway continues to churn out new laptops, including a few fairly sharp-looking models. Today, Gateway has updated its NV and ID laptop lines with new looks and new features.

The thin Gateway ID47 manages to fit a 14-inch display into a chassis closer to the size of a 13-inch laptop. The minimalist, nearly monochrome design has a brushed-metal look to the flat lid, which Gateway calls "Brushed Platinum." An alternate design, called "Infinity Blue Liquid," is also available.

The ID47 has a large clickpad-style touch pad, a change from the previous generation, as well as edge-to-edge glass over the display and a USB 3.0 port that also offers a sleep-and-charge mode for powering accessories while the laptop is turned off or sleeping.

Under the hood, the biggest change is the addition of second-generation Intel Core i-series processors--pretty much a must-have for any new laptop halfway through 2011. Some versions of the ID will include discrete Nvidia graphics. … Read more

AMD releases its next-gen Lynx desktop APU

Today, AMD releases the desktop version of its Fusion laptop accelerated processing unit (APU) it launched earlier this month. The quad-core, 2.9GHz A8-3850 ($135) and 2.6GHz A6-3650 ($115) should appear in stores today, accompanied by a motherboard from multiple vendors using AMD's new A75 and A55 chipsets that are required to use the new chips.

Similar in design to Intel's second-generation Core CPUs (aka Sandy Bridge), the A-Series incorporates a graphics-processing core directly into the CPU silicon. The advantage of this design is greater power efficiency than separate CPU and GPU chips offer, as well as … Read more

AMD loses sizable market share to Intel in quarter

Advanced Micro Devices lost a considerable share of the chip market to Intel in the first quarter, as the latter rebounded easily from a chipset glitch, according to a report today from IHS iSuppli.

AMD accounted for 10.1 percent of global microprocessor revenue in the first quarter of this year, falling from the 11.8 percent share during from the same period last year and down from 10.9 percent in the fourth quarter, according to the report.

AMD's loss was pretty much Intel's gain. Intel during the first three months of this year claimed 82.6 … Read more

Sony Vaio Z 13-inch shows up in Europe

Following a few leaks, Sony's new high-end Vaio Z laptop has been announced by the European arm of the Sony Vaio group, a few weeks ahead of its expected American debut.

The 13.3-inch laptop is slim and light, under 17mm thick, but still manages to pack in a full-voltage Intel Core i7 processor (paired with an SSD hard drive). The screen has a 1,600x900-pixel resolution, which is higher than most 13-inch laptops.

But the real interesting part of the new Vaio Z is its docking station. The vertically mounted Power Media Dock not only includes an optical drive and a rarely seen Intel Light Peak port, but also a fully functioning AMD Radeon graphics card, which can be used by the laptop when connected to the dock. Sony, in its European press release, says: … Read more

Intel's 'Haswell' chip in focus: Heads up Nvidia

A technical document posted recently on an Intel software blog drops some hints about its "Haswell" chip due in 2013. The upshot, watch your back Nvidia.

Here's what we already know about Haswell, per a conversation I had last month with Intel marketing chief Tom Kilroy: The mobile version of Haswell will be Intel's first system-on-a-chip designed for the mainstream laptop market, according to Kilroy.

A system-on-a-chip, or SoC, is the de rigueur design for smartphones and tablets. All of the system's core processing silicon--typically comprised of two or more separate chips in a PC--is … Read more

AMD quits benchmark group, implying Intel bias

Advanced Micro Devices has quit a PC industry consortium, implying the integrity of a widely used benchmark is biased toward Intel chips.

In a blog Wednesday, an AMD executive provided a long explanation about why AMD has quit the BAPCo industry consortium, which develops and distributes the SYSmark benchmark.

"Customers need clear and reliable measurements to understand the expected performance and value of their systems," Nigel Dessau, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at AMD, said in a statement. "AMD does not believe SM2012 (SYSMark 2012) achieves this objective. Hence AMD cannot endorse or support SM2012 … Read more

Report: 80 million USB 3.0 devices in 2011

There should be little doubt that USB 3.0 technology has arrived on PCs after a report released today forecast that tens of millions of devices using the standard will ship in 2011.

"The primary story for USB in 2010 was the emergence of the SuperSpeed standard. 2011 should be a much bigger year for the technology, especially in mobile PCs," said market researcher In-Stat. "This has led In-Stat to forecast that nearly 80 million USB SuperSpeed-enabled devices will ship in 2011."

USB is one of the most widely used connection technologies in the world, found … Read more

AMD aims new chip at quad-core laptops

Advanced Micro Devices will bring quad-core processing and powerful graphics silicon to mainstream laptops, as it seeks to strike the right balance between the two computing paradigms.

On Tuesday, AMD is announcing the Fusion A-Series chips for mainstream consumer notebooks as well as desktops. AMD's Fusion technology puts all of a PC's computational power on one piece of silicon--what AMD calls an APU or accelerated processing unit. Chips will be offered with both two and four processor cores.

For quad-core systems, the trick is to reduce the power consumption of traditional desktop-class processing to levels that are usable … Read more