After brief teases from HP and others, AMD today at the Cannes Film Festival announced a complete refresh of its desktop and notebook platforms based on Vision Technology for consumer and commercial customers. This is AMD’s largest launch in its history.
Ahead of the biggest buying cycle of the year, the new notebook platforms offer up to eight hours of battery life while delivering an outstanding visual experience at a great price for the mainstream and ultra-thin markets.
The mainstream processors are now known to be much more power efficient than both previous AMD chips and Intel’s quad-core hardware. The four-core 2GHz Phenom II N930 and the 1.6GHz P920 use just 35W and 25W of power – allowing them to be used in thin-and-light notebooks.
AMD also has triple-core processors at 2.1GHz and 1.8GHz, for budget and power conscious system. The rest of the new chips in the line trade either power or cores for performance.
Desktop replacement notebooks can use the quad-core 2.3GHz Phenom II X920 Black Edition, which is rated at 45W for its extra speed. The dual-core, 3.1GHz X620 Black Edition uses similar power, and a mainstream two-core 2.8GHz N620 uses 35W of juice.
Athlon II and Turion II dual-core processors are being updated and range between 2.1GHz and 2.5GHz with 25W to 35W of total power, and a lone Sempron-like V120 chip runs a single core at 2.2GHz and 25W of power.
The ultraThin segment revolves around the Turion II Neo, which runs at 1.5GHz or 1.7GHz but uses only 15W of power. A 1.3GHz Athlon II Neo that require a similar low amount of power. similar. Even in this segment of small footprint and lower power requirements the single core chip is becoming a thing of the past. The 1.7GHz Athlon II Neo that uses 12W of power and a 1.2GHz V105 that uses 9W, are the only single cores being shipped for the ultraThin market.
In 2009, 96 million people worldwide bought PCs for entertainment purposes, per John Peddie Research. Improved Radeon HD 4250 integrated graphics, which has ratings twice as fast as those coming out of Intel right now. In testing with HQV 2.0, a VISION-based system with AMD integrated graphics achieved a video experience score almost 2x that of a comparable Intel-based system.
With HP already leaking info on new machines powered by AMD’s new CPUs, systems are available starting today and will roll out over the rest of the year.
