Hasta La Gadget!

After having to delay the final vote earlier this month due to a lack of participation (d’oh!), AMD has dotted the final ‘i’ in its attempt to spin off semiconductor manufacturing. Said company, along with the Advanced Technology Investment Company, have now secured the final approval necessary to create The Foundry Company. Stockholder approval was the only remaining hurdle to be jumped, and the joint venture transaction is expected to fully close by March 2nd of this year. By the numbers, AMD stockholders approved a proposal to issue 58 million shares of its common stock along with warrants to purchase 35 million shares of its common stock and 35 million shares of the company’s common stock upon exercise of those warrants to an affiliate of the Mubadala Development Company PJSC (perplexing, we know). Now, let’s see if AMD can keep up with Intel’s own $7 billion investment.

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

AMD nets final approval to create The Foundry Company originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Feb 2009 10:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yet again, IBuyPower is stepping out with a few new gaming rigs for the bargain-minded among us. The most recent duo to be outed by the company is the Gamer HAF 91B and the Gamer Fire, both of which are based on AMD’s latest Dragon platform and Phenom II CPU. The former gets going at just $999 and includes the Phenom II X4 920 processor, 4GB of DDR2 RAM, a 500GB SATA II hard drive, a dual-layer DVD writer, ATI’s 512MB Radeon HD 4850 graphics card, a CoolerMaster HAS 932 case and a 550-watt power supply. The more fiery sibling ups the ante with a Phenom II X4 940 CPU, a 750GB HDD, LG GGC-H20L Blu-ray drive and an NZXT Guardian 921 chassis. ‘Course, you’ll be paying $1,439 for that one, but either way you’ll be keeping things below the evidently magical $1.5k mark. Order away, should you be so inclined. Full release is after the jump.

Continue reading IBuyPower dishes Dragon-based gaming desktops under $1,500

Filed under: Desktops

IBuyPower dishes Dragon-based gaming desktops under $1,500 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Feb 2009 20:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just a month after AMD launched its Phenom II CPUs and Dragon desktop platform, the chip maker is hitting back with five new processors in the quickly expanding line. The newcomers include the planet’s first 45nm triple-core CPU and three more quad-core siblings, all of which can operate in either AM2+ or AM3 sockets. As for performance? We hope your expectations haven’t been set too high, as the chips were generally found to be just “a logical extension of [the company’s] piecemeal upgrade plan and a fill in [the] gap to its lineup.” Reviewers across the web were generally pleased but underwhelmed by test results, with HotHardware noting that “overall, Intel still has the performance edge clock-for-clock and core-for-core.” In fairness, these chips were found to be good for overclocking, and for the right price, we could certainly see a few gamers giving them a go. For the full spill, dive on into the deep, intricate reviews below.

Read – Official AMD announcement
Read – HotHardware benchmarks
Read – PCPerspective benchmarks
Read – DesktopReview’s review

Filed under: Desktops

AMD ushers in five new Phenom II CPUs, benchmarking ensues originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Feb 2009 09:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It wasn’t that long ago that Monday mornings in the office were a depressing time — another cheerful weekend gone; another long week of work ahead. But, these days, being in the office on a Monday is a good thing, because if your login still works you’ve survived another scary layoff Friday. Spare a thought, then, for those whose system access has been cut off, including 1,300 from Sun (the first wave of a total of 6,000 planned job cuts), 8,000 workers at Sprint who are due to receive pink slips, 6,000 from Philips, and an unannounced number of IBM workers (rumored to be 16,000) who have also found themselves to be on the wrong side of the cost-cutting ax. In one final bit of cheery news, AMD has reported a $1.4 billion loss in the fourth quarter of 2008 and, after shedding its handheld graphics unit, is now selling its manufacturing operations to Advanced Technology Investment. Oh, sorry, you were hoping for some genuinely good news? How about this: that loss is smaller than AMD’s $1.8 billion loss from the same time last year. Now have a great day!

Read – Sun confirms 1,300 layoffs
Read – Sprint Nextel Plans to Cut 8,000 Jobs in Quarter
Read – Philips to Release 6000 Employees into Wild
Read – Several IBM employees report being laid off on Alliance@IBM
Read – IBM Confirms Layoffs
Read – AMD Reports $1.4 Billion Loss

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Recession roundup: Monday morning edition originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Jan 2009 09:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Before you get all riled up, remember, this is just a man in a suit speaking his mind. Got it? Good. On AMD’s most recent earnings call, CEO Dirk Meyer casually confessed that “the distinction between what is a netbook and what is a laptop is going to go away,” and he continued by saying that there would be “a continuum of price points and form factors.” Now, we’re not about to believe that the whole netbook category will simply dry up and vanish in the near future — much to the chagrin of Psion Teklogix, we assume — but it’s not like we haven’t heard equally odd remarks from the CEOs of Intel and RIM. On second thought, shove a Core 2 Quad CPU, twin GPUs and 4GB of RAM into a Mini 10 chassis while nixing any and all heat issues, and you can call it whatever you damn well please.

Filed under: Laptops

AMD sees distinction between netbooks and laptops vanishing originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 25 Jan 2009 08:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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