AMD's "Puma" Mauls Intel

For some reason, when I read that title I'm reminded of those pictures where that tiger (labeled AMD) mauled that young kid (Intel) over in Southern Cali some months ago. Sorry...I'm a callous person.

 

Actually, faster CPU yes but better battery life? I don't think so, maybe just on par. You are talking about the M51 here. It is also far worst build than the dv5 series. Also you mentioned the Vostro 1500 before, unfortunately you cant get the 8600GT with that anymore (for a month or 2 now). Sorry viv but you could have picked some better notebooks for comparison...

You are forgetting precisely the reason why more and more people are buying notebooks. Not for work, but for home entertainment.

 

Riiiight, Asus, battery life, no go. Sorry, I have let you down - I only had like 5mins to write that, not enough time for significant research. I hope to redeem myself in future arguments.

 

The external graphics option will run off the same PCIx port that puma laptops will have. Meaning that when you buy that nice external graphics solution it only needs to be replaced when you need a faster card. Either way for less then a low end dedicated same Generation notebook you can get decent CPU power same GPU power (as a low end dedicated) all packed in a 12in light notebook that can plug into a box that makes its GPU capabilities better then most gaming laptops. Nice little option there if you ask me.

 

Its not really a big question at all. Puma is being aimed at the budget PC market that would still like to run a game or two. ATi's high end cards are more likely to be combined with Intel chipsets because they need high power CPU to perform well. Its not like its going to be a Puma + ATi vs Intel + NVidia at the high-end, it will just be ATi vs NVidia with intel chipsets in that market.

 

Except, it really doesn't. I mean, if AMD was mauling Intel in the slightest, it might actually win some performance tests.

This article needs to be renamed "AMD's HD 3200 Mauls Intel GMA (on paper)" since as a platform, Puma does not actually maul Montevina, or even, for that matter, Santa Rosa either. Also, while describing how the HD 3200 is lightyears better than the X3100/X4500 is all fine and dandy, how about some benchmark numbers to back it up? You can't just say something like that and not give actual performance numbers.

 

Something I can find in brazil for less than R$2000. My dv8000 cost my father R$4500(the dollar was at a higher value at the time, so then budget was something that cost less than R$2800)

Which I think should be near $600 at US

 

You're not going to get a Puma for that price, either. Just saying.

And I just noticed HP's battery life estimates for the tx2500 - 2:15 on the standard 6 cell battery. Assuming it even hits that 2:15 mark (I usually take 10% from manufacturer estimates on all of these claims), thats still 25% poorer than the tx2000. Remember what I said about power consumption? I mena, this thing makes even my Asus W7S look good - T7300/8400M GS, and the worst ACPI/power management of any manufacturer out there (seriously, Asus battery life is pathetic), and it still manages to get 2.5 hours at least on the standard 6 cell. Take an M1330 with identical specs, you're looking at 3+ hours of battery life from a 6 cell battery. Thats 50% more than the tx2500. Apparently, having integrated graphics no longer guarantees you good battery life (or, in this case, even decent battery life.)

 

Except ATI's GPUs can always fall back onto Puma for Hybrid Crossfire.

Not saying that it'll be every potential customer's deal maker, but if it indeed does work well, and ATI GPUs match up to nVidia's, my next laptop WILL be AMD+ATI.

 

The new focus on IGPs is encouraging. CPU performance on the mobile front has been giving dimishing returns for the past while. Battery life differences have remained somewhat trivial between the two platforms (3-3.5h for both). Heat dissipation issues has more to do with design and engineering than the actual platform itself.

The brighter note is that Puma will force Intel and nVidia's hand on their mobile divisions. No longer will X3100 or 8400M GS be acceptable for mobile platforms. Better for the consumer, I'll say.

 

That was an excellent article. It's good to hear of renewed competition in semiconductor technology. The Puma platform does sound rather promising with somewhat novel ideas... I love watching technology change and I hope it pans out for consumers benefit.

 

Hybrid CrossFire sounds like Hypermemory (used a portion of the system RAM for VRAM, quite popular about two years ago, didn't really do much at all) for the multicore generation, really it does. I'm anticipating that instead of a 3% performance increase, we might see even up to a 5% increase from H-XF. Not much of a fall back, my friend.

However, the way ATI is going, the Mobility HD 3850/3870 actually has a decent shot at beating out the 8800M/9800M in the performance race, so it'll be interesting to see how it turns out.

 

The way i see it, and from the conversations (IGP), this Puma platform is basically the cat's meow for the super-low-end $399-599 laptops, where you KNOW you're usually going to get either X3100/GMA950 IGP graphics, or some UMA-based GeForce, like 6xxx or 7xxx series.

Can't really see where else it would be useful.

Let's be realistic, with the numbers showing up, it ain't gonna knock even the lowest mid-range gaming notebook off of it's perch.

T

 

No, the discrete GPU doesn't use system memory like Hypermemory. It's simply a crossfire between the GPU and the IGP, with GPU rendering a part and IGP another part. It has been benched to scale very well, to about 1.8x. Where did you get the 3 and 5%?

 

I meant that its a gimmick that won't significantly impact performance, like Hypermemory, not that it works like Hypermemory. I remember reading 2 years back that Hypermem only increased performance by 3% or so, and I was trying to highlight the fact that H-XF would be similarly useless.

 

interesting news, thanks!

 

I cant beleive so many people feel they have to come and defend Intel products. Its an article, and it uses a play on words for a title. The word maul is used only because of the platform name Puma.

And A DV5z is way less than $1000, you can get it for like $600. Tablets usually suck at power, shouldnt compare tx2500 to a regular 13" laptop, so thats why they offer the 8 cell battery for it fairly cheap.

It may consume more power, because the IGP is better, it may be the most efficient, but that doesnt mean it draws the least amount of power. Part of the reason they get much better graphics performance is the HT3.0, which is 3600Mt/s compared to Intels FSB of 800 or 1066Mt/s, which actually only runs your RAM at 200 or 266Mhz, so it way underutilizes the DDR2-667 at 333Mhz or DDR3-1066 at 533Mhz. Making DDR3 a power saving method and marketing ploy.

AMD's faster DDR2-800 RAM run at 400Mhz with 3600Mt/s and the cheapness of RAM will give me a good boost in performance. Cant wait for 4GB modules to be prevalent.

I cant believe someone is wondering whether hybrid crossfire adds performance, its been working and helping a lot in 780G desktops for months.

comparing a new DV5z at 5.8lbs to a M51 or similar budget Intel notebook is ridiculous, as the Turion Ultra will maul or pounce any T5xxx Intel cpu, so there goes your claim to fame on Intel budget notebooks. You can even get the crossfire HD3450 for less than $1000 in a DV5z. If you need a lot of battey life pick up the 12 cell battery available. and Im sure an 8 cell will become available soon.

And I cant wait for the fujitsu SA 3650, because what this article forgot to mentoin was the new Puma supported "XGP" external graphics port at PCIe2.0 x8 and x16 in future, where I can have a 13" mobile notebook but plug in an HD3870 external when I get home. Edit: which also means I can upgrade to the latest and greatest or maybe even desktop GPUs, or external crossfire in a year or two when the 3870 isnt enough.

Manufacturers could give you even more graphics performance and little more power efficiency if they would include the sideport memory with the chipset, which is discrete graphics memory up to 256Mb, like on my 780G HTPC with HD3200 with 256MB of DDR3 sideport RAM.

Oh and when I went to Frys to buy a Puma laptop for my girlfriend, they were sold out. Just need a better supply now. And more "performance" models like ones with the HD3870, or a 3650 with GDDR4. I cant wait to see what ASUS gives us.

 

That was because the title is inaccurate.

"AMD's Puma IGP mauls Intel's IGP" would have been more accurate and would not have led to much discussion.

 

But you are not understanding the point. Puma is a platform. The IGP is a HUGE part of the platform, and although yes, Intel has a CPU advantage in their newer CPUs the writer is stating that the CPU is already way overkill, so thats why Intels CPU advantage isnt taken into consideration.

AMD's Puma chipset is more advanced, and the architecture is more advanced. Intel has extended the life of its architecture very well, but if AMD had the resources to be at the same manufacturing technology AMD would also have better CPUs, considering their much better RAM speed and bandwidth. Intel should readily admit the AMD architecture is better, considering they are moving to it themselves for the future.

Therefore it would make no sense to say AMD Turion Ultra mauls Intel Penryn, the article still makes its point that Puma mauls Intel given the assumptions stated.

I think Intel's new laptops will be great and the X4500 graphics will be acceptable for even a HTPC, with the same performance with 10 less watts on the CPUs. And I'm sure there will be Nvidia hybrid graphics on Intel notebooks just like there is AMD, but then that would not be Intel, that would be a Nvidia chipset.

you can argue both ways on this one, but I think the author has a valid point.

 

Not to everyone. For me and many people out there playing games or 3d performance is not important at all. So I really don't care if my next PC has Intel X4500 or HD3200. Even Intel X3100 would be fine for me.

Some people, like me, care about CPU performance, battery life and heat. So for people like me the statement 'AMD mauls Intel' seems biassed and inaccurate.

And yes I do understand that for you, and people who care about games and 3d performance, the AMD platform is very interesting.

 

You're comparing two completely unrelated things. HyperMemory is just the GPU/IGP using system RAM so ATI can cut out dedicated RAM. It will not increased performance at all - in fact, it will lose performance as compared to a discrete GPU with it's own memory.

Hybrid CrossfireX is where you link the discrete GPU with the onboard IGP, allowing both to render frames in tandem. Contrary to your claims, the preliminary performance results of this combination increase what the GPU could do alone by up to 70%, not a mere 5%. It has been done by desktop systems and now laptop test systems, so it's just a matter of time before it is fully functional in the laptop segment.

 

Its a huge part of AMD's platform, not Intel's. Intel is somewhat more adaptable with this sort of thing. While at AMD you're forced to have a dedicated GPU (don't kid yourself, the HD 3200 is simply an HD 2400 soldered to the motherboard), and are thus subjected to the downsides of a GPU whether you really need the performance or not. It also means that no AMD notebook will break 3 hours of battery runtime. Does that bode well?

With Intel's platform and two chipsets (GM45 and PM45), you can pick between a true IGP with far, far superior battery life, and real dedicated graphics with either power to match the HD 3200 or far more power. AMD will have the better price for that kind of GPU performance, but again, AMD is competing on price, not actual performance.

 

No, I'm really not. They are related - gimmicky features that don't really appear to boost performance in the slightest. I haven't researched much into the performance of H-XF, I was just saying, it appeared to be the next "advancement" in a line of gimmicks that are marketed as performance boosters that don't actually work. I actually do know how Hypermemory, CrossFire, and Hybrid CrossFire work, thank you.

Apparently, you have done the research, and if it really does increase GPU performance by 70%, I have but a few questions. In regular desktops, CrossFire only scales to 50% with IDENTICAL GPUs, so when pairing a GPU with a presumably less powerful IGP, how the hell does it manage to boost performance by 70%? And even if it is true, what kind of crappy GPU do you have for performance to be boosted by 70% by an IGP, soldered HD 2400 as it is? Thats a GPU with performance comprable to the HD 2400 then, no?

 

Wow. Someone seems a little testy.

To which generation of CrossFire are you referring? I know that it probably averages to a 50% increase, but I think there has been some progress made so as to make more effective use of two GPUs.

The Mobility HD3200 is not a "crappy GPU." It may not be top-of-the-line, but for a laptop and the average user it is certainly the most capable IGP currently on the market that can at least play some games whereas most IGPs will not. And if paired with a moderately more powerful discrete GPU, then how is a gain of up to 70% not feasible?

Here is an article which talks a little about it: [H] Enthusiast

And if Hybrid CrossFireX is "gimmicky," then I suppose nVidia's Hybrid SLI is, also? Or, perhaps, any other next generation improvement?

 

i like the puma platform or wot it can do.i mean they showed it running 1080p and was only using like 20-30 cpu if that.i cant remember how much,but it wasnt a file it was bluray disc,so thats really good.i like that and the graphics bit for intergrated gpu.but i think my next laptop is gonna be a mac lol.

 

Two HD 3870s in CrossFire scale to something like 48.7% or something. Right around 50%. Check the AnandTech HD3870 review for the exact number. It was less than SLI, though, that I do remember (and no, I'm not an Nvidia fanboy - Nvidia is sucking it up atm, ATI is doing really damn well in comparison). Thats from earlier this year, it should be relatively current.

Calling the HD 3200 an IGP is misguided. While in technicality, it is an integrated graphics processors, lets not kid ourselves here - its just an HD 2400 soldered to the motherboard. I was saying, to have an increase of 70% framerates, assuming the same 50% rate of scaling, that GPU that paired with the HD 3200 would have to be like X1300 level, or thereabouts. A moderately more powerful GPU than the HD3200 would not get an increase of 70% from the HD 3200 being added to it. Maybe 25% or so, but not 70%. That simply is unfeasible.

I understand the concept of running an IGP when not gaming, and using the dedicated GPU when needed (see: Sony SZ, Asus U3S), but combining the two doesn't seem like it would provide that much performance benefit, especially in a desktop. Can you imagine combining the integrated GF 8200 and like, an 8800GT or 9800GTX? Would it really do anything? Can we have a no?

 

No one is talking about doing that. We're talking about taking two cards of roughly the same class and Hybrid CrossFiring them. So, you think there will only be a 25% increase, at best, when they are running together?

HD 3200 - 100%
+ HD 2450 - 100%
-----------------
HCF @ 125%

I have to think it would be better than that. But perhaps you're right. We'll just have to wait and see...

 

Well, in the desktop market,

HD 3870 @100%
+ HD 3870 @100%
CrossFire @150%

I can't see the scaling being any better in the notebooks, and possibly even worse. Assume that the HD 3200 is less powerful than the HD 3450 (what its being paired with in the HP's, thus making it essentially the best selling mainstream mobile GPU by default) and you've got my 25% estimation. Thats about what I'm expecting - if it beats that, hats off to them. Battery life figures for H-XF notebooks should be pretty interesting.

As for the GF8200 + 8800, thats what Hybrid SLI essentially is at this point.

 

Who thinks HD3200 is just a 2400 soldered onto the motherboard? That is terribly inaccurate. This actually resides in the Northbridge, not a separate chip like other might do. THis is a whole better type of integration, tightly coupled and it benefits immensely from HT3.0.

And for clarification, hypertransport is AMD's RAM/data transfer speed, and hypermemory is a bunch of FLASH memory to quicken boot times and hopefully save some battery power, like Intel's Turbomemory. AMD actually allows the use of dedicated VRAM called sideport memory or display cache, it is a Northbridge frame buffer up to 256MB. My desktop 780G has 128MB DDR3 of it, so I dont have to share system RAM, but I do to help the crossfire with HD3470.

The Puma 15" will break 3 hours if not given some crappy 6 cell battery like HP gives standard on the DV5z. It was just a way to budgetize it further, but who isnt going to get the high capacity one for $30 more to make it like every other performance notebooks 6 cell.

The notebooks 780M and the desktop chipset 780G scale pretty good, simply because we are talking about low end cards.
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=527&type=expert&pid=9

Tom's hardware says When the integrated HD3200 graphics unit is paired with a dedicated Radeon HD3450 to create a CrossfireATI Crossfire configuration, graphics performance improved by an average of 65% across the benchmarks. Every single game in our test suite showed gains, ranging from 55% to 87%.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-780g-chipset,1785-13.html

Whats awesome in the desktop HD3200 is that you can easily overclock the speed by a few hundred Mhz to make it match the HD3470, or some people up to 900Mhz from 500. Not sure what kind of adjustments will be in laptop bios though.

 

The author made his point, the title is representitive of his statements. His criteria was platform performance, battery life not being one of the "performance" criteria and the assumption that CPUs are already overkill, so Puma has plenty of CPU power.

So its not biased or inaccurate.

Do you know how many BIASED INTEL article titles I see when you google AMD Puma, way too many. Intel enthusuast have had biased journalism forever.

 

You are taking my statement literally instead of bothering to get the meaning from it. It is heavily based on the HD2400, and is essentially an integrated HD 2400, in terms of performance, power consumption and everything else. I dare you to deny it.

And for clarification, hypertransport is AMD's RAM/data transfer speed, and hypermemory is a bunch of FLASH memory to quicken boot times and hopefully save some battery power, like Intel's Turbomemory. AMD actually allows the use of dedicated VRAM called sideport memory or display cache, it is a Northbridge frame buffer up to 256MB. My desktop 780G has 128MB DDR3 of it, so I dont have to share system RAM, but I do to help the crossfire with HD3470.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperMemory

Thanks for trying!

The Puma 15" will break 3 hours if not given some crappy 6 cell battery like HP gives standard on the DV5z. It was just a way to budgetize it further, but who isnt going to get the high capacity one for $30 more to make it like every other performance notebooks 6 cell.

Wow, and with the same "crappy 6 cell battery" I manage to get over 2.5 hours out of my MSI GX600, which features a faster processor (T7300), a FAR more powerful graphics card (8600M GT), and likely cooler temps (based on what I've seen of past AMD platforms, but I'm not going to guarantee that). If you don't need any GPU power and can live with a real IGP, you can get far better battery life (4-5 hours) from an Intel platform in a similarly equipped notebook. You really can't proclaim overall power consumption and battery runtimes as a positive for Puma.

 

OK, my bad, I was thinking HyperFlash, but hypermemory is just using hypertransport.

I never said battery life was a positive for PUMA, but its at least better performance for the same battery life as older AMD notebooks. Over time maybe OEMs will find a better way to use it to be more efficient.

Yet the review for your MSI notebook says it get just over 2 hours on balanced mode, just like the HP DV5z review says 2:22 on balanced mode.
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4094

And can you be certain the batteries are the same? Does your MSI have a 10.8V 47Wh battery? Or is it more like a 14.8 Volt battery, much better than comes with the HP DV5z. Not all batteries are created equal.

And your 2.0Ghz T7300 isnt really more powerful than the ZM-80.

 

Uhh, I don't know, I use it and I get 2.5 hours out of it. I can't really vouch for other peoples numbers. I usually have bluetooth and camera off, and brightness on the lower side (on battery). But either way, the fact that its even comparable with so much more power alone should be disappointing.

HyperMemory has been done by ATI since like 2003, WELL before the AMD buyout - I doubt it has anything to do with HyperTransport other than the "Hyper" used in the title. Combine it with the fact that they are completely unrelated technologies (look up HyperTransport - next to nothing to do with system RAM or dedicated graphics cards)

And my T7300 really is more powerful than the ZM-80. Especially after I hit the OC button that boosts clocks to 2.4GHz. But, having read the review, you should already have known that

Lemme check on the battery for you.

EDIT: 11.1V, 48Wh. Nearly identical to the dv5z battery. It still gets above 2.5hr battery life.

 

I'm sorry, but why should we pay for more battery power and add more weight to our systems because this new "amazing" IGP sucks down more juice than your mother at happy hour?

Puma would be FAR better and a technological advancement had they been able to fit such performance and hardware into a system and not adversely affect battery life.

But no, people are praising this, regardless of the major battery life change with it. Had this been Intel, the AMD pipsqueaks would have been out in force, frothing at the mouth, had such an article been misrepresented by such an article title.

 

LMAO JM!
I agree, maybe they can get those voltages down...

 

What do you mean weight? The DV5z is one of the lightest 15" laptops at only 5.8lbs, and its not a fatty either, very slim, thats why theres heat.

You cant compare with overclocks. Maybe someone can overclock their ZM-80 to 2.5ghz, you never know. The ZM-80 has a slightly lower TDP though at 32 watts max, so up the voltage on it and see what it can do I suppose.

In the review it performed in cpu testing about the same as Intel at the same clock frequency. It destroyed in 3dmark06, beating even dedicated 8400M GS with T7300. Now if the hybrid crossfire is up and running then you better believe you got yourself a real budget gaming rig that is also fairly mobile with small size and low weight, and mediocre battery life.

I see now hypermemory is just how dedicated cards use shared RAM, hypermemory is just the PCIe data bandwidth to RAM access, but on AMD, thats going to jump onto HyperTransport on the Northbridge, run through the CPU where the integrated memory controller resides and over to the RAM over hypertransport.

Hypertransport replaced the Front Side Bus in AMD system, and has a lot to do with RAM and CPU communication. Is how AMD runs RAM at speed (using integrated memory controller) with bandwidth of like 3600Mt/s (laptop HT3.0) compared to Intel's 800 or 1066Mt/s running RAM at only 200 or 266Mhz.

 

He meant that adding a larger battery (for example, a 12 cell battery, or even an 8 cell battery) means adding a significant amount of weight to the baseline of any system. So, with a 12 cell battery (even if it was available) would take the weight of the dv5z to 7lbs at minimum.

Yes, you can compare with overclocks, in that its a general rule that you cannot overclock a notebook. Any notebook. There are exceptions. My notebook is one of them. My T7300 essentially become a T7700 with the OC. Its a more powerful processor, end of story, which is all I tried to say in the first place. Also, I'm almost certain its faster even at the stock clock speed, but when you've got a 20% OC, who cares about stock clocks. SuperPi is not really something that counts, since its frequency only and doesn't end up stressing the overall micro architecture of the processor like some other benchmarks might (Cinebench, etc - look at the AnandTech CPU test suite). This is why the Intel processors are faster than the AMD Turions and Turion ultras - they have better internal microarchitecture.

Indeed the dv5z did beast 3DMark06, but then it stank up the joint when we got to the battery life tests. Yes, its got an IGP, but when that IGP is essentially just an HD 2400, that IGP doesn't have the usual IGP benefits (*ahem*battery life*ahem*heat*ahem*)

Mediocre won't cut it in terms of battery life. Not everyone wants a budget gaming platform. No AMD notebook will break 3 hours of battery life on a standard 6 cell battery, whereas an Intel model with the IGP will break 4 with ease, even hit 5 on the same 6 cell battery. And then, if people could live with 2.5 hours of battery life, they can upgrade to a far more powerful graphics card such as the 8600M GT, 9600m GT, or Mobility HD3650 on the Intel platform and hit the same battery life as the HD 3200 in Puma. Also, if battery life is so bad just on the HD 3200, imagine what it would be on Hybrid CrossFire when you run not one, but TWO graphics cards in unison. Would it break 1.5 hours? Do I even want to know the answer?

And for the record, I know what Hypermemory and HyperTransport are, I don't really need you to explain them to me, thanks. (Have we been over this before?) You were the one that said they were the same thing, I only told you that you were very, very wrong.

 

No one is going to run both graphics adapters on battery mode.

And even if you were to game on a standard IGP, the battery would be out in under an hour, no matter how much it shines under normal usage.

 

Point taken, you're probably right. Still, its worth thinking about.

Have you ever tried gaming on GMA? I can't speak for X3100, but you definitely get more than an hour gaming on GMA950. Try at least 2 hours if not more.

 

You said hypertransport had nothing to do with RAM, that was inaccurate.

How much did your laptop cost?

What 15" notebook lasts 5 hours on a 6 cell battery while actually using it?

 

Indeed I have - on several laptops that usually run between 2.5-4hrs of normal usage. When playing a game, though, I'm lucky to scrape an hour. I suppose, however, that it depends on what kinds of games are being played as to how it will affect battery life.

 

Read my statement again, it said that it had nothing to do with relating system RAM and graphics cards. I could also say that this has nothing at all to do with graphics card, and I'd be right.

My laptop was free. I don't know the MSRP off the top of my head, but I see what you are getting at. You'll get the same/better battery life out of a Dell M1530 with the 8600M GT and similar options that costs like what, $1200 before coupons? And regardless, even if you make your point, you are just saying that AMD is competitive on price, but not performance.

15.4" notebook that gets 5 hours of battery life...a certain ThinkPad T61 with the standard 6 cell battery and T7300/X3100 gets right in that neighborhood as far as I remember (JM, wanna give exact details?) There are probably others as well, but you see my point.

Haha, if I tried gaming on either of my two current laptops, yea, I'd not scrape an hour, but on GMA, you can't play much in the way of intensive games anyways. I know that on my old Sony, I used to be able to play over 2 hours of Quake 3 Arena on battery (6 cell).

 

Now youre just being a punk, because I read it again as you said and this is exactly what you wrote
"(look up HyperTransport - next to nothing to do with system RAM or dedicated graphics cards)"

Hypertransport does have to do with dedicated graphics cards that use hypermemory in AMD systems.

 

Quite simply, you are misinterpreting what I wrote. Nothing more, nothing less, and any attempt on my part to help clear this misinterpretation results in personal insults hurled back at me. Very nice, very nice.

As for the second part of your statement, I think you are wrong about that. Do you have any evidence to support your claim?

 

I get 4+ hours on my 2.2ghz MT40 original turion with an ATI 200m IGP. That is on an 8 cell battery and technology that is well over 3 years old. I used to be able to get well over 5 hours but my battery seems to be running out of usable life.

On the flip side I did get about 3 hours of life on my 17in vostro in an airport yesterday (specs in sig) and it has a dedicated graphics and a standard battery size. We all know Intel has better battery life, but who really needs more then 3-4 hours of battery life before you get to an outlet? Those who do arent going to be trying to do extreme gaming or serious encoding/compiling.

Im not a biased fan either way, but what AMD came out with is pretty neat. The can pack low end gaming power in a cheaper then intel platform that will soon support using a desktop level graphics card. Thats pretty damn nice if you ask me. Ok so you dont like AMD thats fine you can pay a few hundred more and get a dedicated intel platform and get ~30mins more battery life give or take. Its your money, but realize you wont have the ability to use the desktop graphics when the technology is avaialable. You have a desktop gaming rig that does this already? Good for you, but its proposed to use the internal monitor one day. So basically you pay less money for slightly less CPU power and the option in the future to be able to do desktop gaming all on a 12in laptop. Not bad.

For those complaining about the CPU power of AMD vs Intel, yeah the AMD might not pack 100% of the punch. But come on people who really maxes the CPU capabilities of a ultraportable laptop when its in plugged in let alone when on battery. The CPU performance of both AMD and Intel in a 12in laptop will do everybit of what you want with plenty of room leftover, and if your maxing your CPU on battery life then shame on you for complaining about poor battery life as tasks when not plugged in should differ from those done while plugged in.

We are splitting hairs here people, if your looking for a road warrior rig that will do light gaming now and will handle all the tasks of an ultraportable for $1000 but wont have the best battery life AMD puma is your ticket to happiness. If you require slightly better CPU performance and battery life and don't care about light gaming and have a $1000 budget Intel will be your road to happiness. They are two different platforms meant for two different markets, and people are arguing over the comparison of apples and oranges.

 

You know why AMD "Puma" mauls Intel? because you can't get a $600 laptop with your Core 2 Due + 8600gt configuration. There are so many factors, but more than 50% of consumers would fall in love with the ability to watch multimedia in High Definition in a budget $600 laptop. Your 8600gt equipped monster doesn't appeal to the average consumer. So whats your argument again? Performance? I dont think the average consumer gives a lick about top of the line Core 2 Duo's... let alone try to understand whats the difference between a Celeron and a Core 2 Duo.

I used to go for high end parts for computers because I thought i'd get the latest and greatest components, but boy i was so wrong when my wallet was nuked by hefty price tags. I now represent the mainstream consumer, and all i want is to watch movies while I'm commuting, and pay a minimum.

 

And yes, those that want long battery life, for now should look at a less powerful IGP, or big batteries.

I'm hoping Fujitsu gets it right with their 13" SA 3650 Puma with XGP and battery life is hopefully much better than the 15" HP DV5z. Or maybe even HP has recognized their battery issues and thats why the DV4z isnt coming out until September.

The added benefit of XGP puts Puma platform in a different ball park, even though not all Puma laptops will have it.

 

Last September, that is, 10 months ago, I paid $800 for a Dell Vostro 1500 with an 8600GT and a Core 2 Duo. In the intervening time, I assume the price has gone down from there. While AMD is definitely competing on the factor of price and only price, they cannot hope to compete with some of the Intel notebooks based on the Santa Rosa platform that are being replaced by Montevina notebooks and are thus being heavily discounted.

Also, don't kid yourself, while a Puma based notebook can be had for $600, most people will pay in the range of $750-900 for them.

 

And with the same discounts you got when you bought that vostro, I can get a discount that gets me a new Puma laptop for $500 that weighs a pound less, is thinner and has a better screen.

And you probably got a T5550 or 5750, which the Turion Ultra would maul. Core 2 Duos started getting really good with more L2 cache (more than 2MB, which if you dont understand how hypertransport works in AMD do you at least know why Intel performance drastically depends on L2 cache?

 

Then I'm sure you'll fully understand then, when and why Nehalem kicks the crap out of anything AMD has left, with its massive on board caches and QuickPath Connect, now won't you?

Go ahead, I look forward to seeing you eating your own words.