Hasta La Gadget!

AMD told us that it wasn’t terribly interested in the iPad market, and would wait and see if touchscreen slates took off, but CEO Dirk Meyer changed the company’s tone on tablets slightly after reporting a $118 million net loss (on $1.62 billion in revenue) in a Q3 2010 earnings call this afternoon. First revealing his belief that tablets will indeed cannibalize the notebook and netbook markets, he later told investors that he actually expects AMD’s netbook parts to start appearing in OEM slates in the next couple of years, and that AMD itself would “show up with a differentiated offering with great graphics and video technology” when the market becomes large enough to justify an R&D investment.

Elsewhere, AMD CTO of servers Donald Newell prognosticated that the number of individual CPUs on a chip won’t go up forever: “There will come an end to the core-count wars,” he told IDG News. Just as the megahertz race was eventually defeated by thermal restrictions, so too will the number of cores on a chip cease to increase. ” I won’t put an exact date on it, but I don’t myself expect to see 128 cores on a full-sized server die by the end of this decade,” he said. So much for our Crysis-squashing terascale superchip dreams, we suppose.

AMD sees a tablet chip in its future, and an end to the core-count wars originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Oct 2010 23:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Well, isn’t this a pleasant surprise! Lenovo’s expanding its ThinkPad Edge family once again, and this time it’s adding the 11.6-inch Edge 11. Just like the X100e, the “notbook” — our word for an ultraportable that looks like a netbook but isn’t as slow and weak — is available with AMD’s single and dual-core Nile platform, and also Intel Core i3 / i5 processor options. Certainly you’re thinking it sounds and looks like a nice laptop, but Lenovo’s not planning to release it stateside anytime soon. Apparently, the X100e will continue to be the 11-inch option in the US, while the Edge 11 will be spreading its wings overseas — the AMD version will start at $450 and the Intel version at around $550. Of course, we could keep telling you about what the machine is available with and without, or we could just point you in the direction of our piping hot review. Although, before you jump over to a new tab you may also want to check out the full press release after the break or peruse some of the glossy press shots below. How’s that for options?

Continue reading Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 11 announced with Intel and AMD options, denied US citizenship

Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 11 announced with Intel and AMD options, denied US citizenship originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Sep 2010 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Alright AMD, we still haven’t forgiven you for burying the glorious name that was ATI, but if your next GPU refresh is as mighty as these numbers indicate, we might at least let you in from the doghouse. A slide detailing two flavors of the upcoming 40nm Barts chip has sprouted up from two independent sources online, and it shows some appreciable gains between generations. The new HD 67×0 cards appear manifestly speedier than their predecessors — with faster clocks, more texture units, and more ROPs — but the fun really gets going when you compare them to the HD 5870 and 5850, AMD’s previous high-end cards. Memory bandwidth and pixel fillrate are identical between the HD 6750 and 5850, while the HD 6770 even manages to beat the formerly imperious 5870 in a couple of areas. Of course, this is all still unconfirmed information, but considering that Barts is only an “upper midrange” chip that’s already stepping on the toes of last year’s finest, we feel safe in expecting some pretty big things from the flagship Cayman silicon when it lands — which will be soon if all these leaks and rumors are anything to go by.

[Thanks, Vygantas]

AMD Radeon HD 6770 and 6750 spec sheets emerge, give NVIDIA cause for concern originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 06:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s been awhile since we’ve heard from Dell on the home entertainment front, but don’t you worry, the guys in Round Rock have been right on top of it. First up is the brand new Zino HD home theater PC, which like we’d heard is being updated with an AMD quad-core Phenom II processor that’s more than capable of pumping out full HD to your HDTV. In typical Dell spirit there’s tons of configuration options, including one for 1GB of ATI discrete graphics, a Blu-ray drive, and up to a terabyte of storage. For $299, we’re a bit giddy about this little one considering it packs more power than any of those Ion nettops and it comes with a wireless keyboard and IR remote control.

If a large touchscreen all-in-one is more your thing, the Inspiron One can be configured with similar parts — an AMD Athlon II X4 processor, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5450, Blu-ray, and up to 1TB are all on the list. To us, the real appeal of this one is its 1920×1080 resolution, 23-inch display, which produced some pretty stunning HD playback when we saw it in action last month. Dell’s put a lot of energy into its new Stage touch interface, which consists of different tiled applications. It’s actually more than eye candy as we’re betting those Netflix and CinemaNow tiles will see plenty of tapping. The One starts at $799 and will be available this coming weekend — but before you yank out the wallet, we’d suggest flipping through the galleries below and hitting the break for a read of the press release.

Continue reading Dell whips out 23-inch Inspiron One all-in-one and Zino HD

Dell whips out 23-inch Inspiron One all-in-one and Zino HD originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Sep 2010 01:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We knew AMD planned to upstage Intel in San Francisco this week, but we didn’t realize just how far Chipzilla’s rival would go — the company’s demonstrating the power of its new Zacate APU by having it trounce an Intel Core i5-520M in a graphical superhero showdown. Though we’ve never really thought much of Intel’s integrated graphics anyhow (though we’re giving Sandy Bridge’s technique the benefit of the doubt), watching a netbook part beat a 2.4GHz Core i5 at anything is truly something else. While AMD won’t speak to the clockspeed or price of its new dual-core chips, it says the 18W Zacate and 9W Ontario should appear in devices with over 8 and 10 hours of battery life respectively when they likely ship to consumers early next year. Video after the break.

Continue reading AMD throws down gauntlet, pits Zacate netbook chip against Intel’s Core i5 in City of Heroes duel (video)

AMD throws down gauntlet, pits Zacate netbook chip against Intel’s Core i5 in City of Heroes duel (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Sep 2010 19:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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