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AMD Releases 12 New Chips at CeBIT 289

Posted by chrisd from the none-are-nacho-cheese-flavored dept.
SuperDuG writes "AMD now offers three categories of processor for notebooks grouped under the Athlon XP-M brand. It labels them "desktop replacement," "standard," and the new "low-voltage". AMD plans to make a desktop replacement in the notebook computer market using the Barton Core, a technology designed to double the CPU Cache. Looks like yet another case of AMD being one-up on Intel."
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AMD Releases 12 New Chips at CeBIT More

AMD Releases 12 New Chips at CeBIT

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  • Corporate Rumors (Score:5, Funny)

    by Scoria ( 264473 ) <{slashmail} {at} {initialized.org}> on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @06:19PM (#5498333) Homepage
    Rumor has it that AMD intends to begin advertising a dual-purpose "egg frying [cellar.org]" processor shortly.

  • AMD Being one up on Intel? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @06:22PM (#5498369)
    What about the Centrino processors released last night? 1.6GHz performing equal to that of a 2.6GHz P4? AMD is way behind in the Mobile race. Does anyone know what voltage the XP-M even runs on?

    Kristopher

    • Re:AMD Being one up on Intel? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @07:03PM (#5498796)
      Does anyone know what voltage the XP-M even runs on?

      It says in the article than the 'low voltage' ones peak at 25 W. (For comparison, the higher-speed Pentium-M chips peak at 24.5W; the ultra-low-voltage Pentium-M chips peak at 7W. Plus they're likely way better at staying below the 'peak' values.)

      http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.html?i=180 0&p=8 [anandtech.com]

    • Re:AMD Being one up on Intel? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Pharmboy ( 216950 ) on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @08:58PM (#5499494) Journal
      What about the Centrino processors released last night? 1.6GHz performing equal to that of a 2.6GHz P4?

      Actually, the Centrino 1.6 was faster than the p4 1.6. This links to the comparisons [intel.com], choose Compare Performance.

      It uses Mobile Mark 2002, with the p3/1.2 getting a 134, the p4/2.4 getting a 164, and the centrino 1.6 getting 189. Now just using Redneck Math(r) that would have a theorical p3/1.6 getting about 179. (compared to 189 for Cent1.6) It shows only a 18% increase in speed of the p4/2.4 over the p3/1.2. This is one reason I have been so disappointed that my dual p3/1.0 beats my p4/2.5 hands down.

      My theory is that there really is no Centrino, and its really just a P3 with a bigger cache. I mean, whose gonna look inside the chips and compare them anyway? Its not like you can SEE them circuits ;)

      Ok, conspiracy freaks, you take it from here, please...
    • SuperDug says "Looks like yet another case of AMD being one-up on Intel."(on cache size)

      Really. Centrino has a 1MB L2 cache - since the Barton core just caught up to the P4 Northwood with 512k and the new AMD mobile cpus aer based on Barton, I'd say that makes the AMD chips HALF cache size of Centrino. Why don't you try reading the specs before you make comparisons?

  • "AMD one up..." (Score:5, Interesting)

    by inflexion ( 3981 ) on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @06:24PM (#5498385) Homepage Journal
    AMD isn't "one up" on Intel until these chips are benchmarked and compared side by side with offerings from Intel. Until then, "low-voltage" is just as nonsensical as "centrino".

    • Re:"AMD one up..." (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @06:30PM (#5498451)
      Well, "low-voltage" has the obvious advantage of being a word in the English language.

    • Re:"AMD one up..." (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SuperDuG ( 134989 ) <<kt.celce> <ta> <eb>> on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @06:39PM (#5498563) Homepage Journal
      Twice the cache and half the size. OBVIOUSLY someone might have wanted to pay a little more attention.

      • Re:"AMD one up..." (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Twice the cache (Barton) or half the size (microPGA 'low voltage' chips) than previous Athlons.

        The Pentium-M has 1MB cache (compared to Barton's 512k). And Pentiums have had micro-PGA packaging since the Pentium 4 Northwood was introduced.

        • Re:"AMD one up..." (Score:4, Informative)

          by Ryan Amos ( 16972 ) on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @08:08PM (#5499229)
          Yeah, but AMD CPUs, because they don't use quite as huge a pipeline, aren't affected by L2 cache size like the P4. The 512k P4s were cache starved, where the smaller-cache Athlons weren't being held back by the cache size. None of this matters though if nobody puts them in computers though.
    • But this is Slashdot of course, where every story on the front page has to include some little bit of troll bait against Microsoft (or Intel, AMD, Sun, the RIAA, etc.) You wouldn't actually want journalism would you?

    • Re:"AMD one up..." (Score:5, Informative)

      by buffer-overflowed ( 588867 ) on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @07:14PM (#5498887) Journal
      And they're both still behind VIA and IBM on both power consumption and heat.

      VIA chips have a lot less processing power, but wow can you do some wierd and neat things with them. [mini-itx.com] Multiply the Mhz rating of a C3 by .75 and you get it's pentium equivalent. And they run as cool as a 486 (thereabouts). So they max out at 933Mhz (equal to about a 700Mhz pentium-III), they run air cooled with just a heatsink. That's just great.

      We all know how great the powerpc chip is for laptops, anyone who owns a Mac laptop can fill you in far more than I can.

      I always thought the "big boys" were more concerned with raw cpu ops/cycle or Mhz than power and heat, at least there's a shift of views in both camps. This can't be anything other than a good thing, otherwise, I predict by 2060 if processors keep getting as hot as they have been, running your PC without a coolermaster "absolute zero cryogenic cooling unit" will cause nucleur fussion to occur inside your case. Hello miniature sun. That would be AMD's model, intel's would just vaporize everything in a wide radius.

      • Re:"AMD one up..." (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        they max out at 933Mhz (equal to about a 700Mhz pentium-III)

        The 1GHz C3 is actualy slower than a 667MHz Celeron.

        http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20020605/c3-08.h tm l#applications_benchmarks

        • Re:"AMD one up..." (Score:4, Funny)

          by shepd ( 155729 ) <slashdot.org@gmai l . c om> on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @10:17PM (#5499909) Homepage Journal
          >The 1GHz C3 is actualy slower than a 667MHz Celeron.

          I call extreme bullshit. Mod the parent down.

          I have had a 666 Mhz C3 that plays DVD video and lets me do web surfing at the same time.

          Scaling Tom's numbers I would have a slower than 444 Mhz celeron. That's barely enough to play DVDs, never mind do that and surf the web.

          So, tell me Tom, how is it to bias your benchmarks so purposely? Did your "I want to have PC Chips lovechild" [tomshardware.com] article end your quality reporting? Or did it all end when you became so pathetic at identifying a processors strengths and weaknesses that you didn't even bother to check the history of the Cyrix line? The processor runs word fast as fuck. It isn't for playing quake. That's why it's so cheap it's almost free.

          Tom, you make a mockery of the entire review industry. Please, close up shop, or at least start using those PC Chips parts you love so much for everything. How's them plastic-blobs-for-cache doing, anyways?

          BTW, Tom, since you obviously have no problems whatsoever with ECS slapping your seal of approval on your box, do you have any problems with me pirating your entire site? Because that's what PC Chips does with the only code on their boards, eh? Yup, that's right, I have a PC Chips board and the only reason there's no updates is because they're pirates.

          Neither ECS nor Chaintech is known as a top motherboard company. This is certainly not because of their inability to make good products, but because they lack consistency in their product lines and usually concentrate on the OEM market as well.

          No, Tom, it's because ECS's supplier company (PC Chips) pirates their software, and their defrauds customers. A 10 second search of usenet and google would have turned this up.

          God, I hate Tom's Hardware. Sucks so badly. Worse reporting daily. Blech.
      • Um... the ezra c3 (the latest core currently available), has a half-pumped fpu. That means that a 933 c3 most definitely does not perform on par with a Pentium!!! 700Mhz in fpu intensive applications.
    • benchmarks [amd.com] comparing the XP-M to the P4-M.
    • Speaking of the centrino, I imagined it in a little foil lined package, a centurion on the label, an anti-virus component, an a nonoxynol -9 process killer.

  • Hmm... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by shayborg ( 650364 ) on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @06:25PM (#5498393)
    It would be interesting to see how the low-voltage Athlon XP-M processors compare to the vaunted Centrinos. Seems to be shaping up to be an interesting battle. Still, the categorization is a good move for AMD, I think -- it's a much more intuitive naming convention than the confusion that's doubtless going to be caused by Intel's Pentium 4M/Pentium M/Centrino names.

    -- shayborg

    • Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)

      by or_smth ( 473159 ) <[tdimson] [at] [gmail.com]> on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @07:38PM (#5499051)
      Great!
      Because we all know how good the Athlon naming conventions have been in the past!

      I mean, my 2400+ Athlon that runs at 2.0ghz? No problem! My 2700+ Athlon that runs at a higher clock speed than a 3000+ Athlon? What? No worries. Thunderbird, Barton, ThoroughBred A, Thoroughbred B? Know it like the back of my hand

      Thank god AMD is clearing up the confusion caused by intel (Oh my god! Two different processor names! ahhh!!!!) by setting an example with it's own naming conventions!

  • Yet another case? of what? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by visionsofmcskill ( 556169 ) <vision@ g e t m p.com> on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @06:28PM (#5498433) Homepage Journal
    half a year ago and prior to that id give AMD the advantage over Intel for their chips (except for the deceptivity of 2100+ chips being 1.73 Ghz).... even accepting their tendancy to overheat.

    but lately Intel has been steadily ahead with clock cycles that even AMD's "2800+" marketing cant compete with.

    luckily Intel has had a Looooooooonnnnnnnggggg track record of power hungry chips which i suppose allows AMD to give more muscle for less juice in laptops....

    but to say this is "yet another case of AMD one upping intel" is a bit too much.

    -- enter the sig --

    • So, wait... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      AMD is deceptive for telling people their 1.7ghz chips perform at Intel 2.1ghz speeds? Wouldn't it be more deceptive to let people believe a 2.0ghz Intel chip out-performs an AMD 1.7ghz chip?
      • It's deceptive because their name doesnt sat AMD 1.7 Ghz performs like a 2.1 PIV.... Their name implies that THEIR chip IS a 2.1Ghz Chip....

        To give your product a name that implies it ITSELF is of that Mhz is misleading... although it may perform as well as a competing product of said MHZ the joe consumer is being led to believe that he has a chip that runs at THAT Mhz.

        This my fried is deceptive...

        -- enter the sig --

    • Nope (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bogie ( 31020 ) on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @08:02PM (#5499190) Journal
      "but lately Intel has been steadily ahead with clock cycles that even AMD's "2800+" marketing cant compete with. "

      That's where your wrong. The new 3000+ Barton is faster then the Intel 3.06. The same will be true of a 2800+ Barton vs. a P4 2.8. The fact that a P4 3GHz gets beat by a chip running almost a 1GHz slower is embarassing for Intel to say the least and most certainly confirms AMD's "number+" processor naming convention. It's Intel marketing that doesn't live up to the hype, not AMD's.

      http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,109580 ,0 0.asp

    • Re:Yet another case? of what? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Pharmboy ( 216950 ) on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @08:21PM (#5499292) Journal
      half a year ago and prior to that id give AMD the advantage over Intel for their chips (except for the deceptivity of 2100+ chips being 1.73 Ghz).... even accepting their tendancy to overheat.

      Overheat? with all due respect, I dont understand the modding here. AMD chips run HOT. Very hot. But if you DONT crack the damn ceramic and run a properly rated fan, they do NOT overheat. They run within the tolorances that the specifications call for.

      Just because the spec for AMD is a higher temperature than Intel does NOT imply 'overheating'. I get tired of this FUD. I don't talk AMD down even tho I prefer Intel. Doesn't change the fact that this is FUD.

      Hotter != Overheating

      Ok, I'm done.

  • The real question is "who will make them?" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gato_mato ( 572107 ) on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @06:29PM (#5498447)
    Not to be too much of a pessimist but lets face it. The mobile market is dominated by Intel. I would love to buy an AMD based laptop when it comes time to replace my current trusty Dell 8100 but Who will make the laptops with these processors? Certainly not Dell, HP, IBM or the likes of any Tier 1 supplier that wants to keep on receiving their share of the Intel Processor Yields.
    When I went looking to replace my old laptop a year & a half ago there was not a single tier 1 hardware maker that would dare put out an AMD based laptop in the market in fears that they might make mad the bear that Intel is.
    Until the industry stands up to Intel in the same way that they need to stand up against M$ this will continue to be the case.
    Simple enough to ask (This is a serious question) What if any current Tier 1 hardware manufacturer sells any Athlon based system for "Office" use? What about "Home" use. I dare say that the Home is the only one likely to have an answer. Are laptops devices mainly used in an "Office" or a "Home" environment? (Meaning you don't buy your kids a laptop to do their homework on, but you do have a laptop to "extend" your office to outside your place of work.).

    Gato
    • Stand up to? Floating point bug aside, Intel chips are reliable and fast, why would you risk guaranteed profit to switch to another brand and possibly wreck your whole operation? Seems silly to me.
      • As we all hopefully know, when ever a market is monopolized the consumer loses out.

        However, the same is true for any buissness who needs to buy supplys in order to make it's product.

        If you only have one supplyer, then your pretty much locked into whatever they want to charge you. Having two is good, having three or more is even better.

        While I have been buying AMD since my 486DX/66, I look forward to a day when we have even a greater selection (Thanks to VIA and the Dragon.) that will encurage true compitition and lower prices.
        • If you only have one supplyer, then your pretty much locked into whatever they want to charge you. Having two is good, having three or more is even better.

          Then you wind up with two or three somewhat different architectures, and have to design two or three different products, R&D costs go up, one design might not even sell... ...or you could stick with a known and trusted brand like Intel, focus on R&D on a single architecture and reasonably expect a better quality product...
          • Well it's pretty obvious that your a Intel fanboy so I'm not going to try and get into the "better quality product" nonsence with you. (For the record, even though I buy AMD, I will run Intel or VIA or whatever if it works. AMD simply offers the best price/perforamce ratio IMO.)

            But we arn't talking about a RISC vs x86 here. These are chips that pretty much run on the same spec hardware as everything else out there. I can pull my WD HD from my box here and take it down to the office and stick it in a Intel box w/o a problem.

            And again, economics come into play again. Regardless how how you slice the fact that some costs will go up if you have multiple supplyers, in the long run you will be able to save money by not letting that manufactor dictate what you can buy. Last time I checked, plenty of people have accepted AMD as a viable CPU and I'm sure the same will be said for VIA's and the Dragon over time.

      • Perhaps because they could cut costs and earn more money? AMD chips have traditionally been less expensive (comparing similarly performing CPUs). Companies are known to be interested in getting bigger profit margins you know, and getting price of one of costlier components should help.

    • HP is (Score:3, Informative)

      by asv108 ( 141455 )

      Who will make the laptops with these processors? Certainly not Dell, HP, IBM or the likes of any Tier 1 supplier

      Actually HP will be offering [digitimes.com] these chips soon and already sells AMD based laptops and desktops. I don't forsee Dell or IBM offering AMD based laptops anytime soon.

    • I had an HP laptop sitting right next to me a couple of days ago that was running a mobile Athlon 1800+. With Dell, it's pretty much a given that they'll only sell Intel, especially in notebooks (I mean, they don't even sell AMD in desktops). I would give IBM a little more benefit of the doubt, they aren't under the will of Intel in every case.

    • Re:The real question is "who will make them?" (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      pfffftttt. you obviously didn't know that 20 different tier 1 & 2 notebook retailers are supplied with their notebooks by just four MANUFACTURERS.

      these 4 MANUFACTURERS (names you probably never heard of) make notebooks for EVERYONE.

      the only thing you are getting from IBM over an ASUS notebook is "value added"

      value added is in the eye of the beholder.

      • Re:The real question is "who will make them?" (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        You're right that most notebooks are made by around 4 tiawanese companies (wistron, quanta, ???) but there are a few others that make superior notebooks...

        I believe Sony and Panasonic have their own manufacturing lines, and that's why their products can be a little thinner and lighter than the generic tiawanese computers... But Samsung and LG in Korea are also starting to make new laptops (the Samsung P10 and Compaq Evo n800 series (by LG) are among the best desktop replacements around, with much higher build quality and thinner/lighter form factors than any Tiawanese laptop...

    • "Certainly not Dell, HP, IBM or the likes of any Tier 1 supplier that wants to keep on receiving their share of the Intel Processor Yields"

      I have a 1GHz Duron laptop from HP. Plays DVDs just fine. Guess you're a bit off the mark.
    • Umm... wtf? I have a Compaq laptop that has an AMD chip in it. I bought it solely because it had and AMD chip in it. Of the various models I looked at, most things that I cared about were about the same, so the choice for me was easy. I have two desktop machines that both have dual AMD chips in them and have had much better luck with AMD than Intel so I wanted to stick with AMD in my mobile unit. You can buy AMD products in notebook computers, you just have to do a bit of searching.

  • Thanks (Score:4, Insightful)

    by NotAnotherReboot ( 262125 ) on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @06:30PM (#5498450)
    First of all, thanks for the helpful links to AMD's and Intel's websites.

    Second of all, Intel has been "one up" on AMD for quite some time now, being at least a couple of months ahead in terms of performance (3.06Ghz with HyperThreading is out now and available to buy). As always, it's great to see that AMD is hanging in there, but there's no need to toot their horn no matter how they're actually doing.

    • Re:Thanks (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Cyno ( 85911 ) on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @07:56PM (#5499164) Journal
      True, but Intel does not have as significant a lead as one might think. They may be releasing 3Ghz CPUs but they cost twice as much as an AMD CPU which is clocked at a lower speed but performs on par. And Intel's 64-bit chips are going to have the same problems cluster and supercomputer makers had in the last few years. There just isn't enough software available to justify the costs. I bet most consumers don't want expensive fast chips, they want a bunch of cheap fast chips that are backwards compatible with what they are running today.

      But there are so many new emerging markets in supercomputing that its hard to tell who's going to sell well.

    • Re:Thanks (Score:3, Informative)

      by evilviper ( 135110 )
      Intel has been "one up" on AMD for quite some time now, being at least a couple of months ahead in terms of performance

      Well, if you are talking about the MHz rating, we all know how useless that is as a comparison, especially since the P4 came about. If you are talking about actual perfarmance, I'd like to see how that was determined, because I've seen the exact opposite.

      For instance, DVD to MPEG4 encoding using Mencoder runs nearly as fast on my 750MHz AMD as it does on my 1.2GHz P3 Celeron... They even have identical memory configurations. For example, I can expect to average about 15fps on my Intel 1.2GHz, and 12fps on my AMD 750MHz. (comments on other's experiences are welcome.)

  • Tenuously On-Topic (Just) (Score:5, Funny)

    by fatgav ( 555629 ) on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @06:32PM (#5498475) Homepage
    Forget Barton Core, I want to get hardcore with their Grand Prix Models [racing-live.com] ;-)

  • *hammer mobile (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rickbrodie ( 535715 ) <{gro.irasmas} {ta} {drahcir}> on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @06:32PM (#5498477)
    If AMD plans to bring it's desktop hammer chip out later this year, I assume that it also plans a mobile version. Does it have a timeframe for this yet?

    I have been entertaining the idea of replacing my desktop with a laptop for a while now but have also been lusting after the advance reports of the hammer line. As my current desktop is a non-DDR 1 Gig Athlon, just about any laptop around today could probably knock my socks off; However the battery times on the current generation counts against them.

    I appeal to anyone with knowledge in this department: would the mobile hammer suck up even more power than the current gen? (I also have a reluctance to try explaining third degree burns on my balls to the doctors in casualty)

  • BLUETOOTH.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by johnjones ( 14274 ) on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @06:33PM (#5498490) Homepage Journal
    come on AMD you have 802.11b via the alchemy boys and girls

    no NEW networking chips and NO gigabit ethernet....

    what I would like to see is a bluetooth chip (or licence one) that also sat on the motherboard

    they are not expensive at $5

    On the motherboard so I can sync my phone/palm/life

    regards

    John Jones

  • YOU HAVE BEEN PRE-APPROVED!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Clockwurk ( 577966 ) on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @06:33PM (#5498495) Homepage
    AMD needs to cement some deals with some major OEMs and fast. They released a mobile processor before, but I can't name anyone that sells athlon laptops. Hopefully somebody big like gateway or hp, etc. will pick these new chips up post haste. AMD is still lagging in the desktop world (Hammer where are you?) and they are bleeding cash like a sieve, hopefully, they can gain some footing here and give intel a run for their money.
    • Compaq/HP is just one company that does:

      HP Shopping [hp.com]

      processor Mobile AMD Athlon(TM) XP Processor 2000+ (1.67GHz) with PowerNow!(TM) Technology
      memory 512MB DDR SDRAM (2x256MB) at 266MHz; maximum 1024MB DDR SDRAM (2x512MB)
      hard drive 60GB enhanced-IDE [gigabyte is defined as 1,000,000,000 bytes, accessible capacity may vary]
      multimedia drive DVD+CD-RW Combo (CD-read 24x; CD-write 8x; CD-rewrite 8x; DVD-read 8x)
      display 15.0" XGA TFT (1024 x 768)
      communications Integrated v.90/v.92 56K modem (RJ-11 connector)
      video ATI MOBILITY RADEON(TM) AGP 4X and 3D architecture
      sound 16-bit Sound Blaster Pro-compatible audio; internal stereo speakers
      weight 7.25 lbs (weight may vary due to vendor component changes)
      dimensions 12.96" (L) x 10.72" (W) x 1.57" (H)
      operating system Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition

      Hopfully there's no session cookie.

      • These are the "consumer" notebooks, not the "business grade" versions. Similar story holds for desktops from HP/Compaq -- you can get Athlons in "home" use models, but not the corporate ones.

        It's a consipiracy, I'm sure of

        • what's the difference (Score:3, Interesting)

          by prisoner ( 133137 )
          between consumer and business "grade" anymore. Except maybe winXP pro vs. home. I've got a "consumer grade" HP laptop (athlon) and it has integrated 100bt, cd burner, etc, etc. Tons of businesses buy the "consumer" versions as they are cheap. Is the stuff that *most* people do at work that different from what they do at home so as to require a better computer? Quite the contrary, in my (consulting) experience, most home pc's are faster than the machines people use at work. Doesn't hold true for companies with a bazillion computers that want some kind of management capability but those companies don't make up the majority of businesses anyways...
        • Consumer or business is not relevant in this case. The poster said that there are no major OEM's with AMD laptop, several posters have pointed out that there are.

  • I've said it before (Score:4, Interesting)

    by intermodal ( 534361 ) on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @06:35PM (#5498519) Homepage Journal
    all I want out of a mobile chip is these three things:

    -large cache
    -customizability of the laptop from non-proprietary vendors
    -efficiency to allow decent power consumption at a fair clock speed (preferrably user-tweakable on the fly; I don't need 800 MHz if i am typing something in vi or pico).

    number 1 has always been an issue for low-end processors like the duron and celeron. Number two is tough, usually reserved for the PCMCIA market when it comes to mobiles. Centrino does nothing for me in this aspect, while the new Athlon M chips allow for it. And number three may exist, I honestly don't know as AMD's site won't load right for me (in windows at work, no less). But I do know that my 400 MHz clocks down to 100 when on battery, and suits me fine for most on the go tasks like typing and excecuting short perl and python scripts. If i could do that with a laptop designed for 1800 mhz designed to battery at ~800 for 2 hours and manually told it to underclock to 200, imagine the improvement in battery time.

    • Re:I've said it before (Score:3, Informative)

      by tshak ( 173364 )
      As far as power efficiency, it's called PowerNow from AMD. My Sony Vaio w/XP2000+ seems to stay around 500mhz and drops to the high 300's during really idle times. The clock adjustment happens 30 times per second, so there is no noticeable lag when you need the performanc. For example, the second I hit "compile" I immediately get a full 1.67Ghz of speed.

    • Re:I've said it before (Score:4, Insightful)

      by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @08:50PM (#5499452) Journal
      1800 mhz designed to battery at ~800 for 2 hours and manually told it to underclock to 200, imagine the improvement in battery time.

      Did you happen to have a hard drive in this theoretical notebook? How about chipsets? Maybe a display as well? Guess what, the CPU power consumption is the least of your worries. The CPU doesn't eat enough power that slowing it down will extend the battery a significant ammount. You'd probably see better results just by dimming the backlight on your display a little more.

  • Laptop OS! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sporty ( 27564 ) on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @06:38PM (#5498554) Homepage
    Problem is, OS's are developed to desktop standards, not laptop ones. Granted, my 400mhz may run OSX nicely, It'd prolly crawl on an iBook of the equiv. Mind you, I understand the ramifications of a low power chip, but shouldn't the goal of a chip maker to make the coldest, fastest chip and the OS maker to make the fastest, smallest OS?

    C'mmon people.. get on the ball here!
    • OSes are never developed to be run on only the latest and greatest. A somewhat new laptop can always run the newest OS from Apple or Microsoft extremely well. The only problem is that it doesn't have the type of upgrade life that desktops might have, so you're often lucky to get more than one OS upgrade.

      The goal of the OS maker is to put in more and more features that require better and better CPUs, thus making their product better (not because of bloat, I mean come on, Windows XP is DEFINITELY much better than Windows 95, and a lot of it is in the features).

      New OSes sell new computers.

      • Re:Laptop OS! (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Pharmboy ( 216950 ) on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @08:36PM (#5499378) Journal
        The goal of the OS maker is to put in more and more features that require better and better CPUs, thus making their product better (not because of bloat, I mean come on, Windows XP is DEFINITELY much better than Windows 95, and a lot of it is in the features).

        Actually, the goal of any company is to make money, whatever it takes. If people think a 'hotter' cpu is better for whatever reason, lets make that baby cook.

        As to XP being better....no, I would disagree. For what I do, its slower. dialog boxes take forever, it wants to figure out everything I am doing before i do it. saving files on 95, the dialog pops up instantly on 500mhz. on my 2.5ghz, it takes several seconds to check all the drives. XP is constantly hitting my firewall trying to call home, trying to seconds guess me. Not everyone WANTS everything integrated. I would prefer to use products other than MS without it breaking some damn feature. I can give lots of examples, but I dont need to.

        I don't need a 'smarter' OS. I need an OS to get the fuck out of my way and let me get my job done. Just be a thin layer between Photoshop/Sound Forge/Flash/Mozilla and the hardware. When I want to listen to music, I will start a player. XP insists on starting a dialog menu asking me what to do every time I put in a music cd, even tho I always select 'do nothing' and 'remember my preferences'.

        XP is suck ass slow. It just looks pretty doing it. I would gladly pay the same $ for 95 if they would simply keep it SIMPLE and updated. And fix the 256mbram bug. Gladly. I might even pay more. 98, SE, ME, dont get me started.....
    • Granted, my 400mhz may run OSX nicely, It'd prolly crawl on an iBook of the equiv.

      Actually OS X does quite well on laptops. My G3/400 iBook isn't going to win any speed records, but it runs OS X just fine.

      While an OS vendor could make a desktop-oriented OS and a separate laptop-oriented OS, the problem is that people these days use laptops as essentially mobile desktop computers. They expect to do as much with their laptop as they can with their desktop machine.

      So if a vendor comes out with a "laptop-optimized" OS, odds are laptop users wouldn't use it, because they don't want the stripped-down OS, they want all the features of the desktop OS.

      If the "fastest, smallest OS" won, do you think Microsoft would control even a fraction of the OS market?

  • Lets get it out of your system (Score:4, Funny)

    by ilsie ( 227381 ) on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @06:40PM (#5498577)
    Ok, let it out. We all think it's quite funny that you're the first person to think up that you can fry an egg on an Athlon, or use it as a tanning bed, or whatever.

    Fact is, Barton 3000+ dissapates 74W max, while Intel's P4 3gig dissapates 82W max. SO SHUT UP ABOUT IT ALREADY!

  • Fujitsu s2000 starts at $1100 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by asv108 ( 141455 ) <asv@@@ivoss...com> on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @06:41PM (#5498585) Homepage Journal
    The Fuitsu S2000 [fujitsupc.com] is using these new chips from AMD. These laptops are under 4 pounds without a media drive, and just 4.5 with a DVD/CDR combo. Even their high-end configuration is under 1500 with built-in wireless. The biggest oversight is the lack of a firewire port. USB 2.0 is nice, but a lot of video and other media devices require firewire.

    I bought a p-2000 from fujitsu last year and one odd thing is they charge sales taxes for all 50 states(I doubt they are giving that money back to the states). So expect to pay 100+ more for anything you buy from fujitsu direct.

    The centrino based X31 [ibm.com] from IBM is new release too. Thinkpads cost more but they are built like tanks and come with a 3 year warranty compared to the usual one year from many other manufactures. The X31 would be a much more attractive package with 802.11G and legacy free. Who the hell needs a parallel port on a subnotebook?

  • Go AMD (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PostConsumerRecycled ( 653177 ) on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @06:49PM (#5498669)
    I'm currently using a laptop with an Athlon XP-M chip and I love it, better price and great power management. I'm glad to hear that AMD is continuing to inovate in the mobil processing arena. If this continues, I'll definitly purchase another AMD based laptop.

  • Low voltage chips in a desktop. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MisterP ( 156738 ) on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @06:53PM (#5498699)
    I would like to see some of those 1400+ and faster low voltage chips in a desktop machine. I know there are relatively low power alternatives like the VIA C3/EDEN processors and the tualatin-based Celerons, but for some things like games and high-res video, those processors are kind of lacking oomph.

    As a rather frivolous example, with neither mplayer+Quicktime dlls, nor the Quicktime player for Windows, my 1.0 GHz Celeron could not play the 1024x464 trailer of the Matrix Reloaded without dropping every 2nd or 3rd frame. A 1.533GHz (1800XP) Athlon chewed through the Quicktime with mplayer without any problems at all.

    That machine however, uses significantly more power, generates way more heat and requires more noisy cooling gear.

    Those low voltage cpus would be the cats ass for building a small, quiet, cool and still very powerful desktop machine that is a little easier on the power bill. Anything that uses less power is good in my mind.

    • As a rather frivolous example, with neither mplayer+Quicktime dlls, nor the Quicktime player for Windows, my 1.0 GHz Celeron could not play the 1024x464 trailer of the Matrix Reloaded without dropping every 2nd or 3rd frame. A 1.533GHz (1800XP) Athlon chewed through the Quicktime with mplayer without any problems at all.

      Well, apparently Celerons aren't all that great. My 500MHz PIII Xeon handled that trailer without a problem, at least that I noticed, but I did have to play it from a hard drive and not a CD-R.

      Actually, the system is a dualie, but only about 50% of the total CPU power was used. I really don't know how much heat the CPU makes, but the heat sink barely gets warm.

  • SUN using AMD XP-M in their Sun Blade B1600 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @06:55PM (#5498719)

    Not sure which of the 3 flavours they will be using but probably the low power version.

    Now some of you may say; so what thats not mainstream SUN aren't selling ANYTHING at the moment. But we've got a Sun Blade B1600 in a rack at work and it looks damn nice - I'd buy one just to brighten the room up.

    I just wonder when AMD are going to make the switch to multi-core cpus ... SUN are planning to release UltraSPARC VII (Niagra) in a couple of years but I haven't seen a roadmap from AMD that suggests they have anything definite planned over the comming quarters. I would be a shame if AMD lost the SUN supply further down the line - Intel needs to be kept in line.

  • Mobile Market (Score:3, Interesting)

    by wwelles ( 621959 ) on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @07:03PM (#5498795)
    I am glad to see that AMD is responding to Centrino. I heard a rumour going around that AMD was getting out of the PC x86 Chip market. Being an AMD fan, I'm glad to see this is not true!

  • They had a 13th chip to release... (Score:5, Funny)

    by SensitiveMale ( 155605 ) on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @07:11PM (#5498858)
    with the code name 'Judas' but they decided to hold that one back for a later show.

  • Power consumption still too high (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PetiePooo ( 606423 ) on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @07:34PM (#5499035)
    The power consumption of AMD's mobile processor is still much much higher than Intel's. Tom's Hardware says here [tomshardware.com] that the power-saving features of the Pentium M are supposed to ensure that Pentium-M has an "average power consumption" of less than 1 W, while still delivering satisfying performance. PCWorld corroborates that here [pcworld.com] stating that the 1.3-GHz, 1.4GHz, 1.5-GHz, and 1.6-GHz Pentium M chips draw an average of less than 1 watt of power.

    Compare that to the advertized draw of AMD's low-voltage chips including the 1800+, 1700+, 1600+, 1500+, and 1400+ models which dissipate 25 watts when operating at maximum power. If that's the maximum draw, the average is not likely to be less than 10..

    The caveat is that the other laptop conponents, most notably the backlit display, consume the lion's share of the battery life anyway. Lord knows I support the underdog (I even bought a Cyrix instead of an original Pentium), but this Centrino chip is good.. damn good.
    • If that's [25W] the maximum draw, the average is not likely to be less than 10...

      The P-M's "thermal envelope" is 25W for the 1.6G version - if its average power consumption is 1W, how do you figure the Athlon's will be 10 times that much? I know AMD hasn't put as much engineering effort into their mobile chip as went into the P-M, but a 10:1 difference seems more than a bit off.

      Re: LCD power consumption.
      I'm just waiting for OLEDs to start being mass produced in sizes large enough for laptops. If the P-M can really deliver 8 hours runtime under normal usage, adding an OLED should push us up to 8 hours runtime while watching a DVD or using the wireless network - really using the machine. That would be superb.

  • Swell, but... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ..I would rather see AMD keep working on desktop chipsets. I was recently looking at dual-Athlon-MP motherboards and noticed they are lagging a bit behind in terms of buzzword-conformance and features, compared to single-XP and P4 boards. No Nvidia-dual-channelled-RAM, no DDR400 (ok, so fast DIMMs for DDR400 aren't out yet, but they will be soon), not even DDR333. And no PCI-X!!

    C'mon, AMD, make an updated MP chipset.

    For all the stuff AMD and Intel are coming out with for "mobile computing", there is no way they will ever be competitive with whatever Apple is using. When it comes to notebooks, Powerbooks just wipe the floor with any x86 notebook, it's not even close. Not even in the same ballpark. Give up, AMD and Intel, and leverage your good strengths instead of your pathetic weaknesses.

  • How much power do chips consume, exactly? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by vga_init ( 589198 ) on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @08:31PM (#5499346) Journal
    It seems like power consumption in notebook chips is a huge issue, but do they really consume that much power?

    Considering what I know about chips and power, they probably really do munch a lot of energy, but if you were to ask me which parts I thought most drained a notebook computer of its valuable energy resource, I would have been more quick to suggest something like a backlit LCD display or things with moving parts such has the hard dissk and other peripheral devices.

    Out of all laptop devices, is it the CPU that consumes the most? I would appreciate it if somebody could clear me up on this. :)

    • Re:How much power do chips consume, exactly? (Score:4, Informative)

      by dutky ( 20510 ) on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @09:18PM (#5499601) Homepage Journal
      I've been doing some research on just this topic, and you are right about the LCD, but wrong about the peripherals. Even small LCDs (I've been looking at 6"-10" models with resolutions of 640x480 or 800x600) consume 8W-10W. Disk drives consume only a few Watts in normal operation, most of the models I've looked at (2.5" laptop HDs and the IBM microdrive) consume 1W-2W in normal operation and less than 1W in standby.

      The real killer is going to be the CPU: Intel (and Intel compatible) devices tend to consume anywhere from 10W-25W in full operation. Their standby modes may be much lower, but what do you care how much power the thing draws when you aren't doing anything? PowerPCs are much better (5W-12W) and ARMs are just astonishing (one of the ARM chips I'm looking at draws less than 1W at full speed)

      For must purposes, you can consider that the CPU and LCD consume 80%-90% of the power in your laptop, pretty much evenly divded between the two. If we are talking about a handheld device, the LCD probably eats 60%-70% of the power all on its own.

  • "yet another case of AMD being one-up on Intel" (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 12, 2003 @08:34PM (#5499364)

    If you measure quality with a thermometer [digit-life.com], I suppose you're right.

    The AMD Athlon XP lacks for any integrated overheating protection means, and the most of systems based on it do not have any correct thermocontrol mechanisms. At present Athlon XP based systems do have thermal problems and are not protected from serious failures of cooling systems.

  • latest news on the hammers (Score:3, Informative)

    by 7-Vodka ( 195504 ) on Thursday March 13, 2003 @05:35AM (#5501678) Journal

    When AMD launches the 64-bit AMD Opteron(TM) processor for servers and workstations, AMD will introduce a new 3-digit model numbering strategy for these processors. The current model numbering plan for AMD Athlon(TM) processors is not changing.

    AMD designed the AMD Opteron processor model numbers to communicate the scalability of each series and the relative performance within that series. The first digit in the model number communicates scalability, and represents the maximum number of processors supported by that model number:

    * AMD Opteron processor 100 Series (Example: Model 1XX) = 1-way server
    * AMD Opteron processor 200 Series (Model 2XX) = 2-way server
    * AMD Opteron processor 800 Series (Model 8XX) = supports up to 8-way servers

    The second and third digits communicate relative performance within each product line:

    * Example: Model 244 will offer higher performance than Model 242.
    * Model numbers are not directly related to frequency.
    * AMD started numbering the last two digits at 40.

    This gives AMD flexibility to describe AMD's server processor performance without potentially confusing end users by starting at 10, 20, or 30, because users might mistake "Model 224" with a 2.4 GHz processor. AMD developed its model numbering strategy in consultation with end users and customers. AMD found that most enterprise users of server technology understood the design of the 3-digit model number strategy and responded favorably to its clarity. They could also distinguish that the AMD Opteron processor model numbers do not directly refer to frequency, or clock speed, which have less relevance to advanced server applications.

    The AMD Opteron processor model number strategy extends AMD's efforts to change end users' focus from frequency to application performance. With such architecture enhancements as a 64-bit processor core, an integrated high-bandwidth memory controller, and HyperTransport(TM) technology links for easy multiprocessor scaling, AMD expects the upcoming AMD Opteron processor will be among the highest performing server processors available. AMD will provide benchmark data at launch to demonstrate how the AMD Opteron processor compares to other server processors on both 32- and 64-bit applications.

    In other words. Shit we can't get our hammers out in anywhere near a competitive frequency so we're gonna confuse the fuck out of people and hope they never find out what frequency we're releasing them at.

    Quote from hardocp.

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