AMD Delivers New Processors For Ultrathin Notebooks

AMD today announced the availability of the AMD platform for ultrathin notebooks, enabling extremely thin and light notebook designs with full-featured entertainment capabilities at a lower price. Previously codenamed "Yukon," the platform is based on the new AMD Athlon Neo 64-bit processor, ATI Radeon X1250 integrated graphics and optional ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3410 discrete graphics that may very well create a new category of stylish notebook PCs.

The new AMD platform debuts within the HP Pavilion dv2 Entertainment Notebook PC ultrathin notebook, which measures less than one-inch thick and weighs less than four pounds. The HP Pavilion dv2 also comes equipped with a 12.1-inch diagonal LED BrightView display, nearly full-size keyboard, and optional external optical disc drive with Blu-ray capability. What makes this really impressive is that the dv2 is priced starting at $699 and has performance and features that rival higher-priced ultraportable notebooks.

Bridging The Gap Between Netbooks And Notebooks

With the dominance and rapid growth of notebooks many consumers have grown accustomed to being productive on the go, but the desire for increasingly lighter, sleeker and more stylish designs that are also "affordable" gave rise to the netbook in 2007 and 2008. Netbooks offer incredible value to people who need mobile access to the internet, but they lack the power to provide entertainment options, such as enjoying and manipulating photos, watching HD videos and listening to a large music library. The AMD ultrathin notebook platform presents consumers with a new choice: a highly portable notebook with rich media features at a lower cost than traditional ultraportable notebooks.

Anyone who has used a netbook over the last year has to admit there's a pretty significant difference in performance between current netbooks and higher-priced ultraportable notebooks. The new AMD Athlon Neo processor might just be the answer consumers are looking for as they try to find the best notebook value during tough economic times.

The 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor was widely praised in 2008 for offering basic laptop performance on a budget, but the reality is that the Atom is roughly three times slower than a 1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor found in a full-featured notebook when it comes to processor-intense tasks. The new 1.6GHz AMD Athlon Neo processor offers significantly better performance than the Intel Atom processor ... but at a fraction of the cost of a Core 2 Duo processor. The charts below show the performance of the new AMD Athlon Neo compared to the Intel Atom and the Intel Core 2 Duo (L7500).

The new AMD platform for ultrathin notebooks means consumers won't have to compromise between low price and enjoying true HD entertainment with smooth 1080p HD playback. The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3410 graphics also delivers a solid casual gaming experience with realistic 3D graphics you won't see from netbooks. Likewise, ability to have advanced digital outputs including HDMI with video and audio means consumers can connect their laptop to their HDTV for a home theater experience.

We'll have more coverage of the AMD Athlon Neo processor and HP Pavilion dv2 soon, so stay tuned.

 

X1250??? I thought they would have based it only on the 780gx.....

 

I think the reason that the base configuration uses X1250 has more to do with trying to keep costs as low as possible in a world increasingly populated with netbooks.

There's a very modest cost savings for manufacturing the X1250 version of the dv2 versus the 3410 (780gx) version ... it's not much of a cost savings, but when the economy is in the toilet and notebook manufacturers are operating on dangerously thin margins, any cost savings is a good cost savings.

Even the X1250 graphics will give you better performance than the ancient Intel integrated graphics (GMA 950, etc.) found in most netbooks.

 

Any time frame for when they are going to be available.?

 

HP says the dv2 will start shipping in April. We'll have more coverage of the dv2 from CES this week and we'll have a full review as soon as we can get our hands on a review unit from either HP or AMD.

 

April! Grrrrr......
The new AMD CPU looks really promising, not that the Atom CPU is bad but any bump in performance is always welcome especially if it's at a cheaper price.

 

Maybe better performance than the Atom and cheaper than the Core series CPUs, but how does the power consumption / battery life stack up? Has AMD finally got this aspect under control?

If nothing else, an AMD competitor in this segment will help consumers by putting a little pressure on Intel to review its pricing.

John

 

Excited to see how these will perform and what future umpcs and netbooks will come from them.

Unfortunately for AMD they'll have to compete against Atom + nVidia Ion....

Ironic that nVidia is going to save the win for Intel.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1229608554532.html

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3478&cp=3

 

I am sure they could drop low speed X2 cpu as seen on Everun (sp?) ultraportables..

 

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2233241/amd-unveils-athlon-neo

So they have a dual core variant in the works, and not too far away either.

 

i hope the new MSI notebook that look like the macbook air has this proecessor that would make it the biggest bang for the buck

 

John – Battery life is dependent on many factors such as the type of applications being run, the brightness of the display, external devices attached, etc. The dv2 is expected to have a battery life around 4 hours.

 

Maybe the dual core variants that are coming in the 2nd half of the year will have some of the new 4000 series cards. Hey, I can hope.

 

I saw a video on youtube where the HP rep showed off a DV2 with an ATI 4210.

 

...really?! Where did you see that ive actually been saying around this site that id love to see this processor mixed with a 4000 series ATI GPU.

 

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-1 rep for the camera man for generalizing it as a netbook.

+1 rep for the HP rep for setting him straight.

 

LMAO nice vid Jaya but i think this guy made a mistake if you listen to him it sounds like he was thinking he probably actually meant:

3410 lol im gonna call a mistake on this one that would have been awesome though!