Hasta La Gadget!

AMD has always been one to play the pricing card in its never-ending tussle with Intel, but we get the feeling this introduction may pack more of a punch than any before it. It’s a simple concept — the $99 quad-core CPU — and given just how in love we Americans are with value menus, you can bet new PC builders will at least give the new Athlon II X4 620 ($99) and 630 ($122) a look. Reviews around the web essentially came to the same conclusion: it’s not the fastest quad-core chip around, and the lack of L3 certainly doesn’t make it the most attractive, but the 620 somehow manages to compete with all of the processors in its price range while being the cheapest. The “cut-down Phenom II,” as HotHardware calls it, suffers a bit on the gaming side due to the L3 removal, but in general scenarios it was plenty potent. Hit the links below if you feel like digging in way, way deeper.

Read – HotHardware
Read – TechSpot
Read – MaximumPC
Read – PC Perspective
Read – TweakTown
Read – PC Pro
Read – AMD Zone

Filed under: Desktops

AMD pops out sub-$100 quad-core Athlon II X4 CPU: review roundup originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Sep 2009 08:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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An AMD Athlon X2 3250e Dual-Core Processor clocked at 1.5GHz isn’t going to be churning through the next Pixar masterpiece anytime soon, but it might just make for a passable (and certainly cheap) all-in-one PC in HP’s new MS200. HP has paired the chip with 2GB of RAM, a 320GB HDD, DVD burner and ATI integrated graphics (which wasn’t running Aero when we spotted this thing) and a fairly low resolution 18.5-inch LCD. The upside is of course the $599 pricetag, but you’ll have to wait until October 22 to buy and behold the glorious visions of Windows 7. PR is after the break.

Continue reading HP MS200 all-in-one barely putters past nettop status, saves face with Windows 7

Filed under: Desktops

HP MS200 all-in-one barely putters past nettop status, saves face with Windows 7 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Vision rebranding wasn’t AMD’s only big unveil yesterday, as the company had on display a number of different stations for its ATI Radeon Eyefinity technology. Sure, there’s three-monitor Google Earth and airbrushing, but the real kicker, in case you doubted earlier claims that playing Left 4 Dead on three 30-inch screens “absolutely changes the experience for the better,” is footage of the game being playing on a 175-inch display, comprised of six HD projectors and boasting 5,500 x 2,000 pixel resolution. Sure, it’s not the greatest gaming screen we’ve seen, but short of having access to your own football stadium, it’s mighty impressive. See for yourself after the break.

Continue reading Video: ATI Radeon Eyefinity eyes-on, featuring Left 4 Dead on a 175-inch display

Filed under: Desktops, Displays

Video: ATI Radeon Eyefinity eyes-on, featuring Left 4 Dead on a 175-inch display originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At a press event today the gang at AMD unleashed their newest graphics technology on the world. To be incorporated in the next generation of ATI Radeons, Eyefinity can rock up to six displays (DisplayPort, DVI, HDMI, etc.) with a single card, thanks to a new 40-nm graphics chip that contains 2 billion transistors, capable of 2.5 trillion calculations every second. Monitors can be configured to make up either one contiguous display or six separate ones, and the card can create 268 megapixel images. That means, according to Venture Beat, that it will deliver games with “12 times the high-definition resolution.” And the gang at Hot Hardware, who reports that the new graphic cards will come with either three or six display outs, put a prototype through its paces. We’re pleased to report that playing Left 4 Dead on three 30-inch displays “absolutely changes the experience for the better.” No word yet on a release date, but apparently Acer, Dell, HP, MSI and Toshiba already have Eyefinity notebooks in the works. We’ll take two! More shots after the break.

Read – AMD introduces a graphics chip that can power six computer displays at once
Read – AMD Eyefinity Multi-Display Technology In Action

Continue reading ATI Radeon Eyefinity unveiled: up to six monitors on a single card

Filed under: Displays

ATI Radeon Eyefinity unveiled: up to six monitors on a single card originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Stop the presses! AMD has kept to its roadmap. Alright, start the presses up again. The Tigris laptop platform, announced today, is all set to become AMD’s “mainstream” weapon of choice, with the centrally touted features being full 1080p, DirectX 10.1 support and offloading video encoding to the Radeon HD 4200 GPU. Add in the new 45nm dual core Caspian CPUs, with speeds ranging up to 2.6GHz, and the result is a substantial 42 percent improvement in multimedia performance to go along with 25 percent longer battery life. Alas, that’ll still only net you an hour and 55 minutes of “active use” and just under five hours in idle, according to AMD. The Congo, offering the same HD video and DX10.1 support, does a little better at two hours 26 minutes of utility, thanks to its HD 3200 and dual core Neo chips inside. That’ll hardly trouble Intel’s CULV range of marathon runners, but then Intel’s processors don’t pack quite as much grunt. AMD’s own Pat Moorehead got to test drive laptops based on the two new platforms and was enraptured by their raw, snarling power. Of course, he would be. The majority of OEMs have signed up for this party, with models expected to arrive in time for the release of Windows 7.

[Via TG Daily]

Read – Tigris processors
Read – Pat Moorehead tests Tigris laptop
Read – Congo features
Read – Pat Moorehead tests Congo laptop

Filed under: Laptops

AMD Tigris and Congo mobile platforms focus on multimedia, longer battery life originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Sep 2009 05:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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