AMD laptops back in the game?

[jaydee]

They're now trying at least! Some articles on the lower powered, higher performing mainstream chips based on Danube/Champlain. Also, much lower powered chips based on Nile platform.

Could 2010 be the year AMD poses a real threat to Intel on the laptop front? Well, you know that rumor that it's gonna be powering 109 new laptops? Not only is that true, but it's also going to be in 26 more thin and light systems. Frankly, we're not all that surprised, particularly since it's been no huge secret that AMD's had a bunch of new processors floating about -- some of which have been finding homes in new HP, Lenovo, Acer, and Dell laptops. Thankfully, the silicon heavyweight is finally revealing the source of all this mojo by sharing details about these mighty, yet energy efficient slabs of silicon. Up first is the Ultrathin platform (codenamed "Nile"), which now includes the new 23w Turion II Neo dual-core, Athlon II Neo dual-core, and Athlon II Neo processors -- there's clock speed and TDP specifics of each in the gallery, if that's your sort of thing. To be found in 11- to 13- inch laptops like HP's dm1 and Acer's Aspire One 721, the CPUs can be coupled with ATI Radeon HD 5400 or Radeon 4200 integrated graphics options, not to mention DDR3 and Direct X 10.1 support. The biggest change? Apparently, the line up has been improved in terms of battery life and thermals, and AMD's promising over eight hours of usage when fully charged. Given that battery life and heat were our biggest issues with the previous Neo processors, we're happy to see those problem areas being addressed, but we'll believe it when we really test some of these bad boys in the near future.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/12/amd-promises-better-battery-life-and-thermals-with-new-neo-cpus/

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=24580

http://www.liliputing.com/2010/05/amd-introduces-nile-platform-for-thin-and-light-notebooks.html


Now waiting on prices and benchmarks....

 

[RaiderJ]

Just about any laptop needing a decent graphics core will be better off with an AMD solution. If they can compete on the CPU front, especially on the power requirements, they should do quite well. Even better will be next year, assuming they get a CPU/GPU combination out.

Anyone else wonder if Intel will eventually buy NVIDIA (or try to)?

 

[theeedude]

These are considered ultrathin?

 

[Hacp]

Well you gotta put everything into context. Back in 2005, 1 inch was considered thin

 

[theeedude]

Well you gotta put everything into context. Back in 2005, 1 inch was considered thin

And in 2010, 1.5 inch is considered Ultrathin

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=5656
Dimensions: (LxWxH) 14.96 x 9.72 x 1.33 - 1.56"

 

[Emulex]

if you love heat and no performance go AMD!

You see the new MAGNY cours 12-core amd cpu? get's smoked in 8 out 10 benchmarks by intels westmere 6 core. lol.

divide the # of amd cores by 2 and you may get intel performance in some cases

 

[Tsavo]

if you love heat and no performance go AMD!

You see the new MAGNY cours 12-core amd cpu? get's smoked in 8 out 10 benchmarks by intels westmere 6 core. lol.

divide the # of amd cores by 2 and you may get intel performance in some cases

I've got a Gateway NV with Athlon II dual core and it runs quite cool.

 

[maniac5999]

if you love heat and no performance go AMD!

I have a Wind U230. It does 1.6ghz with just 0.825v, and produces very little heat.

 

[videobruce]

if you love heat and no performance go AMD!

Wintel fan boy. While they might run a little hotter and not be as fast as a Wintel, using terms as "no performance" is a bit much.

 

[Dark4ng3l]

I have a "super netbook" with an athlon neo mv-40 and that cpu undervolts so much that the way I have it set up it eats like 30-40% less juice than stock. Great machine for the price I payed for it. The video destroys anything you can get in anything intel without a discrete video card.

 

[cbn]

Just about any laptop needing a decent graphics core will be better off with an AMD solution. If they can compete on the CPU front, especially on the power requirements, they should do quite well.

That is true, but It sounds like Intel CULV is already capable of high end video playback.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3822/laptop-buyers-guide-14inch-and-smaller/9

I’d skip ION and go for a cheap CULV machine like the 11z or 1410 for the same price. They are equally capable of HD Flash video and 1080p playback over HDMI, and offer significantly faster processors than the Atom-based ION netbooks.

This makes me wonder how much of AMD's current IGP is considered overkill? More importantly how much could any extra graphics capability be contributing to lower battery times?

Even better will be next year, assuming they get a CPU/GPU combination out.

I am really hoping Llano and Ontario have some trick power managements features we have never seen for the GPU side of things. Maybe that could help smaller AMD IGP chips become more competitive with Intel as far as power draw goes?

 

[cbn]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/01/acer-aspire-one-521-and-721-review/

Here is the Engadget review comparing comparing Nile platform Acer Aspire One 521 (10.1") and 721 (11.6") to the original Alienware M11x.

Using a 1.7 Ghz single core K125 processor the larger 11.6" Aspire manages to only get 3:30 battery time. This compared to 4:30 battery time for the original SU7300 1.3 Ghz dual core Alienware M11x.

But keep in mind the Alienware has a larger battery at 63Wh compared to the 48Wh battery found in the Acer Nile product.

P.S. As you can see the 10 watt SU7300 1.3 Ghz Intel dual core beats the 12 watt AMD 1.7 Ghz single core in PCMarkVantage. I just wonder what the difference would have been if a 12 watt AMD 1.3 Ghz dual core K325 was substituted in place of the 12 watt 1.7 Ghz AMD single core K125? How much closer would the score have been? Both AMD processors use the same amount of power.

 

[Lonyo]

As the not-very-proud owner of a Turion X2 laptop with HD3200, I hope AMD does manage to up their mobile game quite a lot.
They are decent at the lower end, but IMO for people who want a good laptop, Intel currently is the only real choice if you want battery life and performance. Much like in the desktop market, AMD is a great value champ, but it would be nice if they offered more benefits than just value.

 

[cbn]

As the not-very-proud owner of a Turion X2 laptop with HD3200, I hope AMD does manage to up their mobile game quite a lot.
They are decent at the lower end, but IMO for people who want a good laptop, Intel currently is the only real choice if you want battery life and performance. Much like in the desktop market, AMD is a great value champ, but it would be nice if they offered more benefits than just value.

Well if you look at the Engadget review I linked, it appears the new Acer Aspire One gets a hair better battery time (3:30 vs 3:27) and a higher PCMarkVantage score (1814 vs 1511) than older AMD Neo MV-40 powered Thinkpadx100 even though it has a significantly smaller battery. (48Wh vs 63Wh).

Acer Aspire One 521/721: 3:30 battery time with 48Wh battery
Thinkpad x100e (Athlon Neo MV-40) 3:27 battery time with 63Wh battery.

As far as the Intel laptops used in that review, here are their battery sizes:

ASUS UL50Vf (Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300) 6:10 battery time with 84Wh battery
Alienware M11x (Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300): 4:30 battery time with 63Wh battery
Dell Mini 10 (Intel Atom N450): 5:58 battery time with 56Wh battery
ASUS Eee PC 1005PE (Intel Atom N450) 8:10 battery time with 56Wh battery
Toshiba Mini NB305 (Intel Atom N450) 6:30 battery time with 61Wh battery

 

[frostedflakes]

if you love heat and no performance go AMD!

You see the new MAGNY cours 12-core amd cpu? get's smoked in 8 out 10 benchmarks by intels westmere 6 core. lol.

divide the # of amd cores by 2 and you may get intel performance in some cases

That's kind of unfair. It's like saying nVidia video cards are better because the GTX480 only requires 480 stream processors to do what the HD5870 does with 1600.

Who cares how many cores it has, as long as the performance is there. I mean obviously per core efficiency matters for single and lightly threaded tasks, but for highly threaded tasks, if a 12-core chip can be competitive with a 6-core in terms of performance, heat, price, etc., that's all that really matters IMO.

Anyway, nice to see more AMD chips making their way into notebooks, hopefully Llano next year will shake up this market a bit more. IIRC there were rumors about Apple possibly using AMD Fusion in some of their notebooks.

 

[Zap]

I just bought this subnotebook for my wife. It has a dual core Turion II Neo at 1.5GHz (K625). Haven't tested battery life yet, but it is quoted as 5 hour. Have tried WoW and L4D, and they can both play reasonably at full 1366x768 resolution with medium settings. Her MSI Wind netbook was hurting at 1024x800 resolution in WoW with everything turned down and the system overclocked.

 

[cbn]

IIRC there were rumors about Apple possibly using AMD Fusion in some of their notebooks.

Yeah, I am wondering if Fusion could let Apple reduce weight and/or increase battery size.

In this ifixit 15" Mac Book Pro Unibody teardown the Nvidia chips seem to take up a good deal of PCB real estate (see step 23 in the teardown) and the extra cooler for them increases interior volume.

More compact AMD hardware vs possibly more efficient Intel CPU + bulky Nvidia GPU? Which will Apple prefer?

 

[cbn]

I just bought this subnotebook for my wife. It has a dual core Turion II Neo at 1.5GHz (K625). Haven't tested battery life yet, but it is quoted as 5 hour. Have tried WoW and L4D, and they can both play reasonably at full 1366x768 resolution with medium settings. Her MSI Wind netbook was hurting at 1024x800 resolution in WoW with everything turned down and the system overclocked.

That has a pretty strong IGP if the HD4250 runs at 500 Mhz for 40 flops.

According to this this 9400M/Ion only has 54 flops.

Should AMD's Nile laptops really be classified as "light gaming"? ASUS 1215N competitor? If so, then maybe AMD could consider releasing lower powered IGP products for people that don't want anything more than 1080p video playback and HD flash?




EDIT: I made a mistake with the IGP. The specs say HD4225, not HD4250. According to the Wikipedia link that would be a 380 Mhz GPU with 30.4 flops.