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HP updates its Pavilion p6700 series home desktops

Originally posted at CES 2011

AMD hopes to be the high-end laptop GPU maker of choice with its new Radeon HD 6000M, AMD’s second generation of Microsoft DirectX 11-capable mobile graphics.

Originally posted at CES 2011

AMD might have let the Radeon HD 6500M and 6300M out a little early, but today marks the formal launch of its new, second-generation DirectX 11 mobile chips, the HD 6000M family. The new arrivals are the HD 6900M / 6800M in the gaming-centric high-end (offering up to 1.3 teraFLOPS of compute power), the HD 6700M / 6600M in the upper midrange, and the HD 6400M to provide mainstream users with all the discrete graphics loving that they desire. The 6000M range introduces AMD’s new HD3D hocus pocus, which will allow apps, games and other media to present themselves in 3D to you — provided devs care to make them so — while EyeSpeed is a marketing name for a set of technologies designed to improve video streaming and gaming performance by taking on more tasks with the GPU. You’ll care about that if you’re a big online media consumer and you’ll also want to know that AMD has an exclusive on hardware acceleration for DivX video. Full press release awaits after the break.

Continue reading AMD launches Radeon HD 6000M series, endows them with HD3D and EyeSpeed skills

AMD launches Radeon HD 6000M series, endows them with HD3D and EyeSpeed skills originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 00:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Is this real? Is this happening? It’s been over four years since AMD and ATI completed their $5.4 billion merger with the promise of Fusion hybrid CPU / GPU chips, and after what’s seemed like nearly endless delays, the company’s delivering here at CES 2011. And it’s delivering in a big way — the first Fusion chips are a direct assault on Intel’s Atom and the netbook market, offering what AMD says is better CPU performance, vastly better GPU performance with DirectX11 support, dedicated 1080p HD video processing and HDMI out, and “all day” battery life that can hit 10 or more hours. There are four total chips in two families built around the new “Bobcat” CPU core to start: the “Zacate” E-Series for mainstream laptops, AIOs and small desktops will have an 18W TDP and come in the 1.6GHz dual-core E-350 and the 1.5GHz single-core E-240, while the “Ontario” C-Series for HD netbooks and “other emerging form factors” will clock in at 9W TDP and come in the dual-core 1.0GHz C-50 and the single core 1.2GHz C-30. The “Llano” A-Series designed for mainstream laptops will offer up to four cores and arrive later this year.

We’re expecting to see a number of systems based around the E-Series — the Lenovo X120e and HP Pavilion dm1 have already been announced — and we’re anticipating quite a flood in the days ahead, which we’re more than eager to test out. AMD’s making some serious claims — it says “Fusion processors are, quite simply, the greatest advancement in processing since the introduction of the x86 architecture more than forty years ago” — and if can deliver on its performance promises, it’ll pretty much turn the entire netbook market upside down. What’s more, the company says tablets and other embedded devices are coming in the first half of 2011, so things could get seriously interesting. PR after the break.

Continue reading AMD announces first Fusion chips: 10+ hour battery life with DirectX11 graphics

AMD announces first Fusion chips: 10+ hour battery life with DirectX11 graphics originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 00:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s a song as old as rhyme, as Mrs. Potts would say: new AMD and Intel chips are out, and there are new desktops to take advantage of them. HP’s playing its part with three new budget-friendly Pavilion desktop series: the p6700 (starting at $300), s5700 ($330), and HPE-500 ($600). They all offer a wide range of configurations, with the standard-sized p6700 starting out at a Pentium E5700 proc and ranging up to an Athlon II 445 triple-core processor, the slim s5700 ranging from Athlon II 260 dual-core up to Phenom II 511 dual-core, and the HPE-500 blazing away with Phenom II 1045T six-core chips and discrete Radeon HD 6450 graphics, on up to Phenom II 1090T six-core and Radeon HD 6770 graphics. All of the desktops have “Beats Audio,” an Envy feature that HP is spreading out across its product line. Other than that little perk, there are few surprises in any of these when it comes to specs and options: prepare to be generally nonplussed. Still, with these new (cheap!) chips from AMD and Intel, budget buyers should get a lot more power for their buck when these desktops land on January 9th… until the next round of procs comes out, of course.

HP unveils new Pavilion desktop lineup, packs new Intel and AMD chips originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 00:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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