Hasta La Gadget!

When a leaked document strongly suggests that Intel’s upcoming Panther Point chipset will support USB 3.0, AMD’s not going to take that cheery news lying down. Not even a day later, the underdog chip maker has confirmed that its A75 and A70M Fusion chipsets will support the standard protocol, which claims speeds ten times faster than USB 2.0. No word on when that’ll happen, or whether AMD will beat Chipzilla to market — but if nothing else it can brag about being first out of the gate with an official plan. Huzzah!

AMD beats Intel to the punch, confirms USB 3.0 support in future chipsets originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Acer already announced UK pricing for the Windows 7 and Android Honeycomb versions of its Iconia Tab, and now it’s ready to take both stateside. Days after Best Buy started taking pre-orders for the Android 3.0-powered Iconia Tab A500, the Windows-based W500 has shown up on B&H’s site for $549. Like its cousin, the W500 has a 10.1-inch (1280 x 800) display, HDMI-out and dual cameras, though it steps up to 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, AMD Radeon HD 6250 graphics, and a 1GHz Ontario (C-50) AMD Fusion APU. It also comes with a keyboard dock, putting it in the same price range as ASUS’s Android-based Eee Transformer, which costs less but doesn’t include its similar-looking keyboard. Acer rates the W500’s three-cell battery at up to six hours — a far cry from the iPad’s promised 10-hours and, perhaps, a good reason to wait for slates featuring that lower-power Fusion APU AMD’s been shopping around to tablet makers. B&H says it’ll ship starting April 15th, but head on over to its website if you’re psyched enough to place an order now. Or you can keep saving your pennies for Acer’s other Iconia.

Acer’s Windows-powered Iconia W500 up for pre-order for $549, ships April 15th originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Apr 2011 08:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As sure as snow in winter or sun in summer, AMD has yet another refresh to its graphics card portfolio this spring. The Radeon HD 6790 is only a couple of misplaced digits away from the far more illustrious HD 6970, but you should be able to tell the two apart by another, altogether more significant spec: the new mid-tier card retails at $149. Predictably, its performance offers no threat to AMD’s single-GPU flagship, but the 6790’s 840MHz graphics and shader clock speeds plus 1GB of GDDR5 running at an effective 4.2GHz data rate don’t seem like anything to sniff at either. Reviewers agreed that it’s AMD’s slightly delayed answer to NVIDIA’s GTX 460, and with the latter card exiting retail availability to make room for the (oddly enough) less powerful GTX 550 Ti, AMD’s new solution looks set to be the better choice at the shared $149 price point. Alas, being limited to 800 Stream processors and 16 ROPs does expose the HD 6790 to being cannibalized by AMD’s own Radeon HD 6850 (which can be had for sub-$150 if you’re tolerant of rebates) and that turns out to be exactly what happens. A solid card, then, but one that would require an even lower price dip to make economic sense. Benchmarks await below.

Read – Tech Report
Read – AnandTech
Read – Tom’s Hardware
Read – PC Perspective

Radeon HD 6790 sneaks in at under $150, leaves reviewers wanting more for the money originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Apr 2011 02:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After so many ages of waiting the Fusion devices are upon us, and here’s Dell‘s entry. It’s the M102z, rocking an AMD E-350 processor at 1.6GHz and Radeon HD 6310 graphics, 4GB of RAM, and an 11.6-inch display managing 1366 x 768 — not bad for a little guy priced at $699. If that’s a little too rich there’s a 1GHz model with half the memory and slightly lower spec graphics for $599. Or, if you really like watching commercials, step it up to the $759 model with a built-in TV tuner. All are said to be available now abroad and should be hitting these shores soon, so if you had your finger hovering over the “Buy Now” button on an HP dm1z you might just want to hold off for a little while.

[Thanks, kamarul]

Dell achieves AMD Fusion, announces Inspiron M102z notebook originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 02 Apr 2011 12:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tired of Intel’s Core i5 taking a beating on your X-Slim X360‘s battery life? Join the crowd. For those less concerned with playing Crysis 2 and more concerned with a solid overall machine, MSI’s new X370 looks to strike a lovely balance. The 13.4-inch ultraportable gets a 1366 x 768 resolution display, AMD’s hot-off-of-the-presses Zacate E-350 APU, Radeon HD 6310 graphics, HDMI / VGA outputs, a pair of USB 2.0 ports, an internal card reader, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, gigabit Ethernet, a 1.3 megapixel camera and (nearly) as much DDR3 memory as you can stuff into it. You’ll also get a 320/500/640GB hard drive, a 4- or 8-cell battery and a chassis that weighs 3.08 pounds with the smaller of the two cells. Naturally, Windows 7 (64-bit) is the OS of choice, but the company’s stopping short of providing a hard price or release date — here’s hoping it falls somewhere between “cheap” and “price mistake.”

MSI slips AMD’s Fusion into 13-inch X370 ultraportable, hopes you’ll notice originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 Apr 2011 10:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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