MSI's AMD-Powered U210 up for pre-order

With no official press release in sight, the MSI Wind U210 AMD Neo-based netbook is now available stateside on pre-order. This diminutive ultra-portable packs quite a punch - offering a 12.1-inch LCD, 250GB HDD, 2GB RAM, a 6-cell battery providing up to five hours of run time and a weight of only 3.2 pounds (1.45kg).

The U210 is based on MSI’s Wind U200, but runs on an AMD Athlon Neo MV-40 1.6GHz CPU instead of an Intel CULV processor. This ultra-compact netbook also squeezes in an ATI Radeon X1250 GPU, a 16:9 HD WXGA display with 1366 x 768 resolution, WiFi b/g/n, an HDMI port and a 1.3-megapixel webcam.

Measuring just 7.4″ (18.8cm) x 11.7″ (29.7cm) x 1.2″ (3.05cm) the U210 isn’t quite as slim as MSI’s X600 Notebook we saw recently - but the width, depth and weight make for a very portable netbook indeed.

The MSI Wind U210 comes with Windows Vista Home Premium and is available now on pre-order in either white (U210-006US) or black (U210-008US) for a very reasonable $429.99 from Amazon.com.

AMD's 45nm Phenoms Ride 'Dragon'

AMD has unveiled a new gaming PC platform designed to provide "elite-level computing performance for under $900."

Dubbed "Dragon," AMD's chip-chipset-graphics combo is anchored by the struggling outfit's first 45nm desktop processor: the quad-core Phenom II X4. Both the chip and the Dragon made their official debut this morning at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The Phenom II comes in two flavors: the 3GHz AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition and the 2.8GHz AMD Phenom II X4 920. The Black Edition sells for $275, the un-Black Edition for $235. Both include 6MB of L3 cache, 2MB of L2 cache, and a memory controller that plays nicely with DDR2 and DDR3 memory.

In addition to the new 45nm chip, Dragon includes ATI Radeon HD 4800 graphics card and an AMD 7 series chipset. According to the company, HP, Dell, and Alienware will animate Dragon machines in the first quarter of 2009. Dell's Dragon-based XPS 625 desktop is already on sale for $1500 (without monitor).

AMD boasts that a Dragon consisting of a 2.8GHz Phenom II X4, an ATI Radeon HD 4870 with a GB of graphics memory, an AMD 790GX motherboard, and 4GB of DDR2-1066 memory can be had for under $900 - $1200 less than an Intel-based platform delivering comparable performance on a single benchmark test carefully chosen by AMD.

Dragon also includes several AMD-built software packages, including a handful of tools for optimizing performance and a media browser for juggling music, photos, movies, TV, and something called social media. In other words, this browser includes a built-in button that lets you upload photos directly to Facebook. ®

Mac OS X 10.5.7 may have Nehalem, Radeon HD 4000 support

In addition to expected fixes, Apple's upcoming 10.5.7 update to Mac OS X Leopard is now claimed to recognize Intel's newer Nehalem architecture as well as AMD's ATI Radeon HD 4000 graphics chipsets.

The reported discovery by netkas has produced just five kernel extensions for the video cards and doesn't appear to work perfectly in a bootleg installation for 10.5.6 meant for hacked Mac OS X installations. The retrofitted version doesn't recognize DVI ports fully and doesn't even recognize widescreen resolutions without third-party utilities to force the expanded screen area.
However, the extensions are enough to not only identify the mid-range Radeon HD 4850 and high-end 4870 chipsets by name but to enable Core Image and Quartz Extreme acceleration of the Mac OS X interface, which would require the direct involvement of AMD, Apple or both firms to work. They also support the full OpenGL 2.1 specification for 3D graphics.
And while screen captures aren't available to support the claims as with the video hardware, the slip also hints that 10.5.7 is the first edition of Mac OS X to recognize Intel's Nehalem architecture.

Radeon HD 4800 series cards in the OpenGL Extensions viewer and Apple System Profiler. | Image credits: netkas.

The structure is a major overhaul of Intel's approach to processors and abandons the conventional system bus in favor of an interface that lets the processors talk directly to memory, peripherals and each other.
While it's not known when or even if Apple will definitively expose the new hardware support in the formal release of 10.5.7, such add-ons will eventually be necessary. It's commonly thought that Apple will use Nehalem-based Xeon processors at the heart of its next Mac Pro workstations and will eventually filter the technology down to its portables and mainstream desktops through Core i7 processors, which share the same essential design.
Apple has also remained comparatively dormant in its support for AMD's ATI Radeon graphics and hasn't used hardware newer than the Radeon HD 2600 found in the iMac and as an option for the Mac Pro; the technology is now approximately two generations old. (story Link)

AMD Cuts Phenom II X4 920-940 Price

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has quietly cut prices on two of its high-end Phenom II X4 chips to counter Intel's own price cuts, a spokesman confirmed on Wednesday.

The price cuts have yet to appear on AMD's own site, however. They will be made official most likely within 48 hours, the company spokesman said.

E-tailers such as Newegg.com began advertising that customers could buy the 3.0-GHz AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition for $235, versus the $275 AMD said it publicly charges on its Web site. Newegg also said it would charge $195 for the 2.8-GHz AMD Phenom II X4 920, down from the advertised price of $235. The discounts represent cuts of 15 percent to 17 percent.

AMD spokesman Matt Davis confirmed that the price reductions were authentic and had been approved by AMD. The moves were made from a "price-competitive standpoint," he said.

On Monday, Intel drastically reduced the price of its quad-core processors by as much as 40 percent, which in turn affected the price-performance equation those chips offered.

AMD's Davis said that the moves were not publicly announced, as AMD is in its SEC-mandated quiet period; the company announces its fourth-quarter results Thursday, after AMD preannounced lower fourth-quarter revenue in December, due to weakened demand. "We have embargos, but once something like this is in the hands of retailers..." Davis said.

"The important changes are the ones you're seeing – that customers can get out and buy these," Davis said.  (story Link)

AMD Sells Handheld Graphics Unit to Qualcomm

AMD continued its previously-announced strategy of streamlining its business by agreeing to sell its handheld graphics unit to Qualcomm for about $65 million in cash.

According to the companies, the deal has already signed and closed as of Jan. 19. Under the agreement, Qualcomm will hold back an undisclosed amount for indemnification expenses, plus and make adjustments for employee-related expenses. Qualcomm has already made offers to several of AMD's handheld design teams, as part of the deal, the companies said.

The deal comes as no surprise; said in its fall analyst meeting that it was trying to sell its handheld business, as part of an overall strategy to concentrate on its core microprocessor and graphics businesses; for the graphics portion, the handheld business was not as important. Rival Nvidia also owns a handheld graphics processor, the Tegra, which the company continues to sell.

For Qualcomm, the graphics technology will be integrated into the company's other integrated cores, providing additional capabilities to Qualcomm's system-on-a-chip products. (full Story)

Technorati Tags: AMD,nVidia,Graphics Card,Entertainment

Dell XPS 625 – Phenom II X4

Based on our review of AMD's latest Phenom II processor, we noted that the new processor could make up the core of a fairly low cost gaming system. Dell has stepped up to the plate, adding an all-AMD system based on the "Dragon" platform. The Dell XPS 625 joins the XPS line of gaming rigs, and features an AMD 790GX ATX motherboard, AMD Black Edition CPUs, and Radeon HD 4000 series graphics.

The mix of components is a little odd, however. Since Dell has chosen to go with all Black Edition CPUs, you can find it equipped with the Phenom II X4 940, Phenom X4 9850+, Phenom X3 8750+, or Athlon 64 X2 5600+. You won't be able to get one with a Phenom II X4 920, however.

Equally quirky is the choice of graphics hardware: You can get your choice of a single Radeon HD 4670 or Radeon HD 4850 or dual Radeon HD 4670s or HD 4850s in CrossFire mode. What you can't get is any flavor of the Radeon HD 4870, nor can you get an X2 card (either the 4850 X2 or 4870 X2.)

Most of the other component choices are pretty straightforward, including an array of optical drives, various hard drives, and so on. Memory configurations range from 2GB to 8GB. Also available are various audio options (integrated, X-Fi, etc) as well as the somewhat controversial Killer NIC K1. You only have one choice for the operating system: Windows Vista Home Premium, but it's the 64-bit version, which we applaud. (full Story)

Technorati Tags: Dell,ATI Radeon,Graphics Card,Windows Vista

AMD Phenom X4 Normal & Wide Screen Wallpapers

AMD Phenom X4 Wide Screen 1920×1200 Wallpaper

You can find more HQ HD wallpapers "Here" and more Dual Screen wallpapers "Here".

AMD Phenom X4 Normal Screen 1600×1200 Wallpaper

You can find more HQ HD wallpapers "Here" and more Dual Screen wallpapers "Here".

Intel Cuts Quad Core Chip Prices by 40 Percent

Intel on Monday announced price cuts across a wide range of chips used in mobile and desktop PCs, including cuts of up to 40 percent for its quad-core chips.

Intel's Core 2 Quad Q9650 processors are now priced at US$316, a 40 percent drop from December. Other Core 2 Quad chip prices were cut between 16 percent and 20 percent. The quad-core chips are used in high-end desktops like gaming systems.

Intel's move could be a response to increasing price pressure exerted by rival Advanced Micro Devices, which recently announced the Phenom II quad-core chips for high-end desktops. AMD has priced its Phenom II quad-core chips between $235 and $275.

Intel also cut prices of its Xeon chips for servers and Celeron processors for mobile devices by up to 48 percent. The quad-core Xeon 3370 is now priced at $316, a 40 percent drop from December, while the Celeron 570 chip was cut by 48 percent from $134 to $70.

Amid the price drops, Intel also introduced three power-efficient quad-core chips with the "s" moniker. The Core 2 Quad Q9550s processor includes 12MB of L2 cache, runs at 2.83GHz and draws 65 watts of power. The chips are priced at $369. The chip is power-efficient version of the Core 2 Quad Q9550 chip, which draws 95 watts of power.

Intel also introduced the Core 2 Quad Q9400s processor, which runs at 2.66GHz, and the Core 2 Quad Q8200s, which runs at 2.33GHz. This chips are priced at $320 and $245 respectively. (story Link)

Intel’s CULV to Come in Q2

Intel’s new platform for thin and light ultraportables should appear as early as Q2 2009, according to Digitimes. The new platform, dubbed CULV for consumer ultra-low voltage, is a tweaked ULV Core series architecture, designed to take on AMD’s Neo platform.

According to reports, the top three notebook vendors are working on CULV based products, and expect to sell as many as 10 million CULV based units before the end of the year. As the platform is scheduled for launch in Q2, this is quite an impressive number, but the $699-899 price tag of upcoming CULV notebooks is quite tempting.

Intel apparently plans to divide the notebook market into four segments. Everything above 12.1-inches will be traditional notebooks, it will have a Atom netbook segment, Menlow MID segment and the new, thin and light 11 to 13.3-inch market segment.

Intel’s CULV platform should fill the gap between Atom based netbooks and ultraportables, or even classic 12.1-inch machines, mainly due to its competitive pricing. Intel’s decision not to allow Atoms in machines over 10 inches also makes sense, as it would hurt its own upcoming platform and further lower the average selling price of its mobile CPUs.

Recently it was reported HP would ash Intel to allow it to build 11.6 and 13.3-inch Atom based machines, but it seems HP has opted for the CULV platform instead, following pressure from Intel.

AMD launched its Neo platform on CES, and at least on paper it is in the lead, but we have still to see actual product announcements or any word from AMD on the number of design wins. When Puma was launched some six months ago, AMD boasted 90+ design wins at launch day, and we all know Puma didn’t manage to make much of an impact on the market. (story Link)

Foolish Forecast: AMD Is Stronger Than It Looks

Semiconductor underdog Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) will report fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday night. The last few quarters have been disastrous, and AMD's share price has shrunk to microscopic levels. Is this where the proverbial rubber hits the road, or will long-suffering investors continue to suffer? Let's have a little chat about all of that.

What Fools say
Here's how AMD's CAPS rating stacks up against some of its peers and competitors:

Company	Market Cap (billions)	Trailing P/E Ratio	CAPS Rating
Intel (Nasdaq: INTC)	$73.42	14.3	****
Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN)	$19.2	7.8	****
NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA)	$4.0	11.9	****
Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: JAVA)	$2.73	N/A	**
AMD	$1.26	N/A	**

Data taken from Motley Fool CAPS on 01/20/2009. Financial data courtesy of Yahoo! Finance.

CAPS member skymutt2 wrote the following in bearish volley in early December: "Burning thru cash, loads of debt, no end in sight for the losses." Ouch.

"This is a big one for a come back," says all-star member Vet67to82, who has an "outperform" rating on AMD. "Intel's only competition ... AND saving Intel from regulatory heat as a monopoly. Intel needs AMD to survive and prosper. ... Less price competition will be good for both companies bottom lines. Sooo, I'm looking for AMD to go from $2.00 to $10 to $20." (Story Link)

Qualcomm Grabs AMD Handheld, Graphics Tech

Qualcomm has picked up handheld assets from Advanced Micro Devices, including graphics chip technology.

San Diego, Calif.-based Qualcomm and Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD announced on Tuesday that Qualcomm has acquired graphics and multimedia technology assets, intellectual property and resources that were "formerly the basis of AMD's handheld business."

The acquisition includes "graphics cores that we have been licensing for several years," said Steve Mollenkopf, executive vice president of Qualcomm and president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, in a statement. The agreement provides Qualcomm with "vector graphics and 3D graphics technologies and IP," AMD said in response to an e-mail query.

AMD would not provide further details on what Qualcomm got but said that AMD's handheld graphics is centered on "unified shader architecture" technololgy that has been used in Microsoft's Xbox, for example. "We have not disclosed the specific assets and technologies that Qualcomm has acquired. Our Handheld 3D graphics technology is based on unified shader architecture," the AMD spokesperson said. AMD, however, did make it clear that the agreement does not include its Imageon processors. "The agreement does not include the AMD Imageon processor products, the Imageon brand, or any existing Imageon customer commitments," an AMD representative said.

"AMD will retain rights to the AMD Imageon products," the spokesperson said. "We intend to honor existing customer commitments for the currently available AMD Imageon products, including the A250 application processor and the M180 media processor, for the remaining lifecycle of these products."

AMD added that it will not update the Imageon road map. "We will not add any new AMD Imageon products to the road map," according to the representative. (full Story)

HP Unveils TouchSmart TX2 Multi-Touch Tablet

For years, the computer industry has been pushing the concept of the tablet PC, but save for a small percentage of professionals in specialized fields, the form factor has largely failed to catch on.

Hewlett-Packard is looking to change that with the Wednesday introduction of the TouchSmart TX2, the first multi-touch tablet for Windows.

HP took some interesting baby steps with touchscreens with the launch of the TouchSmart IQ816 all-in-one "kitchen" PC. Designed for family use, the PC proved its usefulness when it came to multimedia, letting users get more hands-on with things such as digital photos.

Like its predecessor in the TouchSmart line, the TX2's touch capabilities are largely focused on multimedia--flipping and expanding digital pictures and things of that nature. Some of the touch functionality extends to other apps, but it's fairly limited.

PC Magazine got some hands-on time with the computer earlier this week, and the first thing HP showed us was the ability to launch HP MediaSmart by drawing an "M" with two fingers (even this simple gesture took some getting used to, however).

HP is also being a bit generous with the multi-touch classification. While it supports more fingers, the gestures at this point are still limited to two. An HP rep suggested that there were limited functions that might require more than two fingers, but Apple's new multi-finger trackpads for the Macbook certainly make a different case.

Otherwise, the tablet is a lot like its predecessor, the Tx2000z. It features a 12-inch widescreen, a stylus, a dual-layer DVD burner, three USB ports, and a multi-card reader. Inside the tablet has a 250GB, 5400-rpm hard drive, a 2.2-GHz AMD Turion X2 ZM-82 processor, and 4GB of memory. Pricing starts at $1,149. (full Story)

Intel Pledges 80 Cores in Five Years

SAN FRANCISCO--Intel has built a prototype of a processor with 80 cores that can perform a trillion floating-point operations per second.

CEO Paul Otellini held up a silicon wafer with the prototype chips before several thousand attendees at the Intel Developer Forum here Tuesday. The chips are capable of exchanging data at a terabyte a second, Otellini said during a keynote speech. The company hopes to have these chips ready for commercial production within a five-year window.

Intel uses its twice-yearly conference to educate developers on its long- and short-term plans. Over three days, hardware developers and partners get a chance to interact with Intel employees and take classes on new technologies.

As expected, Intel announced plans to have quad-core processors ready for its customers in November. An extremely fast Core 2 Extreme processor with four cores will be released then, and the newly named Core 2 Quad processor for mainstream desktops will follow in the first quarter of next year, Otellini said.

The quad-core server processors are on a similar trajectory, with a faster Xeon 5300 processor scheduled for November and a low-power Xeon slated for the first quarter. Intel's first quad-core processors are actually two of its dual-core Core architecture chips combined into a multichip package.

"Performance matters again," Otellini said, disclosing that the quad-core desktop processor will deliver 70 percent faster integer performance than the Core 2 Duo, and the quad-core server processor will be 50 percent faster than the Xeon 5100 introduced in June.

One reason performance didn't matter to Intel during the last couple of years was because it was getting trounced on benchmarks at the hands of Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron and Athlon 64 server and desktop processors. That all changed with the introduction of the Core 2 Duo chips this year.

"With this new set of dual and quad-core processors, we've regained our leadership," Otellini told developers. The growing Internet video phenomenon, as evidenced by the spectacular rise of Web sites like YouTube, will keep these processors busy during intensive tasks like video editing, he said.

Road to Santa Rosa
Notebooks will get a face-lift next year with the Santa Rosa platform, which will provide notebooks with new technologies like 802.11n wireless and flash memory. Intel believes that it will be the first to add flash memory to a notebook motherboard, which will improve boot times and reduce power consumption, Otellini said. (full Story)

AMD Plans Graphics Supercomputer

AMD announced plans to develop, along with software company OTOY, what he called the "fastest graphics supercomputer" in the world in the second half of 2009. It will be known as the Fusion Render Cloud. It's unclear whether the rendering services will be used for game creation, delivery, or both.

LAS VEGAS, Jan 8 (Reuters) - U.S. chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc, facing a slump in demand for personal computers, is hoping the old adage that entertainment is recession proof will prove true this year.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Thursday, AMD Chief Executive Dirk Meyer showed off new technology for advanced computer graphics in video games and films, in what the company called the convergence of the "cinematic and the interactive."

Meyer said AMD's new chips will help blur the lines between games and films, helping them look much more life-like.

He also announced plans to develop, along with software company OTOY, what he called the "fastest graphics supercomputer" in the world in the second half of 2009. The supercomputer could help film studios make movies more interactive and gaming companies increase realism, Meyer added.

But the upbeat tone of his presentation was at odds with the half-empty Las Vegas Hilton Theater and the chip industry's somber mood.

Just a day earlier, AMD's chief rival Intel Corp (INTC.O), the world's largest chip maker, stunned the market with its second revenue warning on the fourth quarter, saying demand for personal computers was even worse than it feared. Intel and AMD make nearly all the microprocessors for the world's 1 billion PCs.

Meyer said the consumer electronics industry is in the middle of a "sea change" and called the current economic situation "challenging," "volatile" and "unprecedented."

"Optimism has been a little more difficult to achieve these days," he said.

AMD laid off 600 workers in its most recent quarter from a total workforce of about 15,500 as the sector started to contract.

The company has posted losses for eight consecutive quarters, in part due to delays in rolling out new chips that resulted in AMD falling behind Intel technologically.

But AMD is hiving off its manufacturing plants into a joint venture with Abu Dhabi to cut costs and get a cash injection, and its last quarterly results were better than Wall Street had expected thanks to a new graphics chip.

In difficult times, Meyer said AMD can set itself apart because it is the only chipmaker that can deliver both x86 and graphics chips, which is the key to its Fusion chip platforms.

Fusion is AMD's name for technology that merges a graphics processing unit and central processing unit on a single chip. The effort springs from AMD's $5.4 billion purchase of graphics chipmaker ATI Technologies in 2006. (full Story)

AMD Introduces New Mobile GPUs at CES 2009

Las Vegas—AMD is beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel. At CES 2009, soon after launching its netbook-like Yukon platform, the manufacturer's graphics division unveiled an assortment of graphics chipsets for laptops. The ATI Mobility Radeon 4000 series will eventually replace the current 3000 series, although AMD hasn't officially named any partners who plan to use these chipsets yet.

For gamers, the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 are high-end graphics cards, with a thermal envelope of 35 watts. So yes, you'll probably find them in gargantuan gaming systems like the Alienware M17 or any other laptop frame with a 17-inch screen or larger. These particular models can be used in a CrossFireX configuration, meaning they can be paired with each other, similar to Nvidia's SLI brand.

The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4670 and 4650 are mid-range graphics cards aimed at casual gamers and HD video enthusiasts alike. These cards dissipate less heat than the 4800 line, and thus will work for thin-and-light systems and portable desktop replacements. They, too, can be arranged in a CrossFireX configuration.

Lastly, the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4500 and 4300 series will start making their way into thin-and-light, mainstream, and ultraportable laptops. The cards work with small form factors because their thermal envelopes are particularly low, ranging from 10 to 20 watts. (full Story)

Stream This: AMD Teases Cloud Computing Game Revolution

Remember last March when I mentioned video games you could stream from a server to a thin client? Here's some of what I wrote:

Imagine buying or subscribing to a game online that pipes nothing more than visual information to your local view screen, reconfigures the interface dynamics of the game to match the size and interactive capacity of said interface, then lets you engage at whatever level you like without worrying whether you have the latest graphics processor or sound card or CPU.

"This is likely to never happen," responded one user.

"There is no way that there will be a company that can provide bandwidth of that magnitude," warned another.

Ready for infernal regions to get frosty and battalions of pigs with wings?

Looks like it is going to happen after all, courtesy a little cloud supercomputing wizardry at AMD.

At the Consumer Electronic Show presently unfolding in Las Vegas, AMD divulged plans for a client-server solution that would deliver "graphically-intensive applications" to "virtually any type of mobile device with a web browser without making the device rapidly deplete battery life or struggle to process the content."

According to AMD:

The AMD Fusion Render Cloud will transform movie and gaming experiences through server-side rendering -- which stores visually rich content in a compute cloud, compresses it, and streams it in real-time over a wireless or broadband connection to a variety of devices such as smart phones, set-top boxes and ultra-thin notebooks.

By delivering remotely rendered content to devices that are unable to store and process HD content due to such constraints as device size, battery capacity, and processing power, HD cloud computing represents the capability to bring HD entertainment to mobile users virtually anywhere.

What's that mean to gamers like you and me?

Streaming video games would upend gaming as we know it. For starters, the technology would challenge the need for offline retail sales, eliminate lengthy software downloads, spiraling local storage requirements, messy DRM software, expensive computer components, and reduce PC hardware driver and code compatibility quirks.

It would theoretically decrease game bugs (see again: "reduce PC hardware driver and code compatibility quirks"), scupper the distinction between "PC" and "console" games entirely, and arguably relegate standalone consoles to dumb set top boxes. (full Story)

AMD Officially Releases Phenom II and Dragon Desktop Platform

AMD’s 45nm quad-core Phenom II processors get an official unveiling.

The Phenom II comes in two flavors:

• X4 920 - 2.8GHz - $235
• X4 940 - 3.0GHz - $275

The price and performance of these pieces puts them roughly in the middle ground between Intel’s Core 2 Duo and the Core i7 - around the Q9400 mark. Certainly these new processors beat the original X4’s hands down, and give Intel’s mid-range Core 2 Duo’s a run for their money. However, despite having a clock speed of 3.0GHz, don’t be fooled into thinking that these CPUs come close of the Core i7 - they don’t.

Along with being based on 45nm architecture, the Phenom II processors also have 6MB of L3 cache, and have a DDR2 and DDR3 compatible integrated memory controller (although this first batch only support DDR2).

These processors sound promising, and certainly have a fair amount of overhead when it comes to overclocking, but ultimately the initial reviewsare somewhat understated. The main advantage of the Phenom II seems to be that you can drop them into any 125W TDP Phenom compatible motherboard, whereas Intel’s i7 means a whole new platform. My guess is that over the next 12 months AMD will release more Phenom II parts with faster clock speeds.

The Dragon platform is basically a combination of a Phenom II processor, a 7-series chipset motherboard and a Radeon 4000 series GPU. These parts actually come together quite well to create a well-rounded, balanced platform that doesn’t feel CPU top-heavy like most Core i7 systems do. (full Story)

AMDs New Athlon Neo Enters the Netbook Matrix

Intel-based netbooks are arguably the most talked-about platforms to date. AMD finally has an answer to them: the Athlon Neo.

Monday night, AMD launched its Yukon platform at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), consisting of the AMD Athlon Neo processor and either an ATI Radeon HD 3450 discrete GPU or the X1250 integrated graphics.

While the platform won't compete with the likes of the MSI Wind, the ASUS eeePCs, and the rest of the netbook market. AMD has said it believes that there's a void that needs to be filled in the 12- and 13-inch space (referring to the size of the screens), and netbooks are too small and aren't providing the profit margins the company needs to succeed in this space. In layman's terms, AMD wants to offer its customers an oversized netbook for under $1,000.

The Athlon Neo is supposed to be the equivalent of the Intel Atom processor, only it's much larger and less energy efficient, which is why the company is targeting laptops that are bigger but are still considered ultraportables. It will designate a line of "slim and stylish" notebooks, according to Bahr Mahony director of notebook product marketing for AMD.

The Neo's footprint measures 27 mm by 27 mm and has a thermal envelope of 15 watts. Compared to the Atom's 22-by-22 mm footprint and its 2.5W thermal envelope, you can see why the Athlon Neo's not really meant for anything that has a sub- 12-inch screen. At this launch, there will be a single Neo variant—the 1.6GHz Ahtlon Neo, and one of the first laptops to showcase it is the HP Pavilion DV2. Similar notebooks will cost between $699 and $899, Mahony said.

Since the Neo is a larger package than the Atom, expect performance scores to be better than those of netbooks: 2.5 times faster than a 1.6-GHz Atom and GMA 950 platform, although 30 percent slower than a 1.6-GHz Core 2 Duo, which is also considerably more expensive.

The single-core Athlon Neo processor features a 512MB L2 cache, Direct X 9 graphics, and support for 667MHz DDR2 memory.

Like all platforms, whether AMD or Intel, the processor makes up a portion, albeit a huge one, of the Yukon platform. The graphics subsystem is the other part. A Neo laptop will be paired either with the ATI Radeon HD 3450—a discrete GPU for light 3D applications, games, and high-definition video—or ATI Radeon X1250 UMA graphics, for better battery life. There isn't a wireless component, as is common in Intel platforms. As always, AMD will leave it up to third-party players like Atheros and Broadcom to address this void. (full Story)

Phoenix's Hyperspace Pre-Boot Shell

Many laptops are now advertising secondary operating systems that boot up in a matter of seconds. You might have seen one, and if so, there's a good chance that it is a Linux environment—one that works in tandem with a version of Windows Vista or XP.

These pre-boot environments are simplistic and quickly accessible, with low power consumption and correspondingly enormous battery benefits. Until now, these Linux environments were custom-tailored to a specific laptop and haven't been available as separate install files.

At CES 2009, Phoenix launched downloadable versions, dubbed Hyperspace Dual and Hyperspace Hybrid, which can be installed on any laptop. There are limitations, though.

Phoenix sent me two test laptops, one with Hyperspace Dual and the other with Hybrid. The concept is simple: Since most users primarily use their laptops for web surfing, why go through the trouble of booting into Windows? A minute of your life is wasted, and it eats up the laptop's battery life.

Hyperspace resides as a layer underneath Windows and boots up in a matter of seconds. Once you're in, there's a left pane made up of settings and customizable icons, the latter of which are entirely made up of shortcuts to popular Internet sites such as Gmail, YouTube, meebo, Amazon.com, and Flickr, to name a few. The network settings are at the top of the pane, which you'll need to access the Internet. There are three options here: Wired, Wi-Fi, and WWAN (if a 3G card is detected). Both the wired and Wi-Fi settings worked flawlessly with PCMag.com's networks.

Hyperspace is fast and easy to grasp, but its functionalities are limited. For instance—at least for now—physical drives in Windows aren't accessible, reading and writing data files with a Linux application like OpenOffice is not supported, and music and videos residing on the hard drive are off limits. Phoenix is working on other features at the moment, so it's limiting Hyperspace to just Web navigation.

One's choice of Hyperspace version is based on system requirements. Hybrid has the most potential, because it utilizes the virtualization technologies of Intel and AMD processors. Users can instantly toggle back and forth between operating systems, with battery savings of up to 25 percent if you're in Hyperspace, according to Phoenix. While using Hyperspace, you can put Windows in Sleep or Hibernate modes, or shut it down completely.

There is a catch, however. Installing Hybrid requires that your laptop uses Intel's or AMD's virtualization technology, and from my findings, not many laptops do. GRC has a free downloadable application that detects if your laptop has virtualization, and you can also check your BIOS for this setting. For laptops that don't support virtualization, Hyperspace Dual is your only option, which involves shutting down the inactive operating system.  (full Story)

New AMD Quad-Cores Start Shipping Early

In a surprising move, online vendors have begun to offer AMD’s latest quad-core processors a while before they have been actually displayed to the public. The new processors on offer are the quad-core Phenol II chips, designed to run at at speeds from 2.8GHz to 3GHz and come with 8MB of cache. Among these the Phenom II X4 920 runs at 2.8GHz and is being retailed for between $271 and $317 USD while the Phenom II X4 940 which runs at 3GHz is being sold for anything between $304 and $373 USD, depending on the online store. They run on DDR2 platforms and will be moved to DDR3 platforms based on the AM3 sockets, later this year.
This move comes as a big surprise, because AMD has not yet introduced these processors. Their launch is earmarked for CES 09, which will be held in January ‘09. (story Link)