News Bits: Dell Latitude E-series Leaked, AMD Makes a Move, Microsoft Wants Yahoo

Dell Latitude E-series pics, specs leak

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Image courtesy Engadget
The Dell Latitude E-series notebook has been leaked onto the Internet. It features a 14.1-inch display with WXGA and WXGA+ LED options, as well as variants with 12.1- and 13.3-inch displays. Features include DisplayPort, eSATA, and PC Card/ExpressCard slots.

Read More (Engadget.com)

AMD to take 50% of dedicated notebook GPU market

AMD's market share of the dedicated notebook graphics market will rise to over 50% in Q2 this year. HP and Dell are planning to adopt AMD's latest graphics card models. According to the report, 55 - 60% of notebook maker's high-end notebooks will have the ATI M82 and M86 dedicated graphics cards because they consume less power and cost less.

Read More (DigiTimes.com)

Microsoft offers $44.6 billion for Yahoo

Microsoft today made an unsolicited offer of $44.6 billion for Yahoo. This will be the largest acquisition ever made by the firm. Microsoft plans to counter Google with the acquisition. Microsoft and Yahoo have been discussing the deal since late 2006; Microsoft decided it was time to make a move in late 2007 when Yahoo's stock price continued to fall.

Read More (NYTimes.com)

Sager introduces NP2092 with Penryn processors

Sager has refreshed its 15.4-inch gaming notebook with the new Intel Penryn processor. It starts at $1,169 with dedicated Nvidia 8600M-GT 512MB graphics and is shipping now.

Product Page (SagerNotebook.com)
Forum Discussion

Third undersea cable cut to Middle East
A third Internet cable going to the Middle East has been cut. Two cables were cut earlier this week. One of the two cables is expected to be repaired by Feb. 12, while the other's repair date is unknown. Internet and phone traffice from Egypt to India has been scrambled by the loss of the two cables.

Read More (CNN.com)
Special thanks to forum super moderator Greg for submitting this bit

 

I like the Dell E series, looks tempting and sleek and the popular NP2090 finally gets a refreshed. I bet Sager still offers GDDR2 instead of GDDR3 on their new NP2092.

 

The Cable thing does sound odd indeed...

But...ATi strikes back!

 

Love the new Dell series. I can't believe how Dell is actually making laptops look good... right after I bought my slightly uglier, but still better looking than the E1505, Inspiron 1520.

 

Finally AMD are on a comeback! This is awesome for us, the consumer. This new competition is going to make GPU prices plummet! (hopefully)

 

W00t! Go ATI just introduce a high end notebook card!

 

Still not too wild about the Dell. Glad to see AMD still has some life. I don't really like their processors, but the ATI cards I have owned have been pretty good.

 

Its important to remember that this ati comeback is not because of performance but instead because their cards cost less and use less power. Then again i'm willing to shell out more money and take less battery life if the midrange 9-series is 256-bit.

 

Yeah, I really hope AMD can bring enough competition to drive prices down and technology up!

 

Really like new the E-series (similar to the XPS series?)! Can't wait for new ATi GPUs (256-bit mid-ranges maybe?)!

 

Well, that is actually disappointing news. For AMD desktop chips, the new HD 3650 using the RV635 core is pretty much a die shrink of the HD 2600 with DX10.1 support added, but still 128-bit data bus and same number of stream processors. With the M86 being based on the RV635, I doubt the new Mobility HD 3600 will be much faster than the previous Mobility HD 2600. nVidia's parts look exciting since the new G94 9600GT finally brings 256-bit memory bus to mid-range graphics cards in a dedicated design (rather than being crippled high-end parts) and has 64 stream processors. Having double the memory bus and double the stream processors would make the nVidia 9600 series a killer choice for a mid-range graphics chips so of course manufacture's decide to go with ATI instead.

 

Is the AMD intergrated GPU the Radeon Xpress X1270?

 

ooh, is that brushed aluminum i see?

 

Damn, enough leaked laptops already. Just release them! I feel like another laptop could be added to my collection of computers soonish....

 

Wow quite some interesting news there. The dell notebook looks like an xps 1330 from the back, giving it a resemblance to consumer notebook designs. I think it's nice to have dell business notebooks with LED screens so other manufacturers would follow suit. And about the AMD, hopefully it will also tend to the enthusiast market for dedicated gpus, not just mainstream.

 

Heeeyyy I like this news article! That 14" dell looks interesting, any chance of an 8600 or other midrange in there? The LED screen sounds promising for batterly life.

And how come I've never looked at Sager notebooks before. Penryn and 8600 GT for 1299. Maybe I have some more research to do.

 

Meh, Dell is still DULL.

 

The new dell laptop looks very nice. I particularly like the LED screen and the clean, sleek lines. It's definitely another step in the right direction for Dell's Latitude line.

With ATi...that's actually really bad news. I hate ATi's drivers and their hardware does not perform as well as Nvidia's. Having an ATi GPU on a system is a deal-breaker so I do hope those only pop up in midrange laptops. High-end gaming systems demand performance and ATi simply fails to deliver in the mobile market. I'm very disappointed at this news unless ATi decides to boost the performance of their GPU's to be on par with Nvidia, include additional GPU cores on their cards, and/or improve their drivers to feature all the great tools Nvidia drivers have.

Third undersea cable cut? Something weird is going on. Unfortunately, this has not cut down on the amount of spam I get.

Microsoft is absolutely crazy to be buying Yahoo. They're so blinded by their hatred of Google. Acquiring a bunch of Google-competitors is not going to help them compete with Google, especially when it's a failing business like Yahoo (who has had years of revenue declines and is now cutting 1,000 jobs). Microsoft already has the tools and talent to compete with Google, but they don't have the creative Management and processes needed to bring things together. They've become like "Big Blue" back in the day despite not wanting to be like that. Microsoft needs to get a clue and bring itself out of the computer stone ages.

 

This really does suck for both Nvidia and mainstream consumers, who get worse hardware purely for cost savings. Its a true pity that Dell and HP won't pay the extra $50 (they can even raise the price of their units by that much) to get nvidia hardware in there. Nvidia's 9600M series actually looks interesting, as opposed to the Mobility HD 3600, which, as stated in a prior post, is just a die-shrunk HD 2600. Hence the cost savings - theres comparatively a lot less development going into that chip than into the 9600M. This will also probably be shown in the performance and benchmarks. Oh well, I guess it will be alright if HP gets ANY mid-range graphics card, regardless of whether its ATI or Nvidia.

 

Oh my God, gripe gripe gripe.

The mobile 3650 is every bit the performance competitor for the mobile 8600 GT. Drawing less power is a GOOD THING. nVidia's current GPUs are powerful, but they're inefficient monsters; the 9600GT needs a power connector for crying out loud.

And for those of you griping about ATI's driver quality, I hate to tell you this but it's been my experience that nVidia's over the past year has been miserable, at least in Vista. It was bad enough that I actually swapped out my 8800GTS 640 and 7100GS for a pair of Radeon 3850s and I'm glad I made the jump. My GeForce 8400M GS doesn't fare a whole lot better either; this actually makes me wish I could've waited to get a notebook with a Mobility 3450.

Everyone who's craving a notebook with a 9600M I'm sure will get their wish from Asus or Sager, but I imagine either the power envelope on it will be horrendous or it will end up somehow stripped down when it hits laptops.

I'd actually really like to see ATI introduce a mobile part based on RV670. Power consumption and die size on the new Radeons is excellent; I suspect they'd be able to more or less bring the whole thing over and possibly even beat nVidia in the mobile market, where nVidia's best mobile part had to lose 32 shaders.

 

Exactly Pulp,

And nowhere did it say that Dell and HP would be DROPPING Nvidia. This is GREAT news as it means competition. The only peeps who have to worry is INTEL and their integrated graphics which make up most of the mobile market's graphics solutions.

Good times ahead...

 

Mind you...cooler running GPU means...OC!

 

True. With Dell, the 1421/1521/1721 Inspirion line has consistently been lacking dedicated graphics, and anything would be better than the options now (though with 50% share I suspect this means all would switch to ATI). And HP's dedicated options aren't very good now - a 2600 equivalent would be quite an improvement performance-wise.

Speaking of power consumption, is there some place where the power consumption data of GPU's is compared, similar to notebookcheck's 3dmark comparison?

 

New Latitude looks like a cross between X1330 and SZ - not bad, imo. And yeah, it is about time that business laptops get LED backlit screen - or any decent screen. My friend's Thinkpad X has terrible screen, not good considering its price.

About ATI/Ndivia thing...First, how comes that some people still think ATI has driver problems? That was true for their pre 9700 days - looooooong ago, in other words. Also, IMO 256bit bus won't help HD2600 much - what it needs is an extra ROP. Without a boost in raw power, extra bandwidth is going to be wasted (check reviews of DDR4 HD2600XT). And yes, drawing less power is a good thing.

 

Having ATi dedicated cards replace the integrated Intel garbage would be nice. However, this article reads like ATi cards will be making their way into gaming notebooks, which I think is very bad due to the performance and drivers. I have never been a huge fan of ATi's drivers. Nvidia has a lot of extra features, tweaks, and color settings that ATi does not have. The Nvidia drivers, specifically digital vibrance, makes colors pop on my screen instead of being dull and washed out like the default Dell-Samsung config. ATi is much better than Nvidia in Linux and probably Vista, but as an XP user I get more out of Nvidia's drivers and performance. I'm not aware of any current ATi card that can even hold a candle to an equivalent Nvidia card.

Competition is good, but not when the competition doesn't deliver on graphics performance.

 

Well the last time ATI cards were really competitive with nVidia cards, the difference between the two was negligible on the mid-card range (MR x1600 vs. Go7600). Moreover, ATI had an edge on the lower card spectrum (MR x1400 vs. Go7400). If anything, this is great news after ATI has been pretty much MIA for this generation of mobile graphics cards aside from a handful of Asus and HP notebooks.

 

Precisely, because AMD/ATI GPUs has always been cheaper than Nvidia. And with this news, Nvidia GPUs prices are forced to come down and with Intel's Montevina fifth-generation Centrino platform around the corner.... well.......good times ahead folks!

 

How exactly is ATI better than Nvidia in Linux? Besides them committing to open source, they have not being able to produce any decent drivers right from the start.

 

Oh man....... this gets better. I concur and means lower pricing for Nvidia GPUs soon.

Go ATI go!!!!:laugh:

 

I guess I forgot one thing. You guys do have a point that Nvidia is over-priced. I love their performance, but their prices are astronomical in many cases. It would be nice to see the prices drop, but so far Nvidia has kept steady increases in performance so I guess that's why the high prices haven't bothered me much (not that I'm paying them anyway).

My experience running various flavors of Ubuntu has been that an ATi card worked out of the box right away. Meanwhile, an Nvidia card required a "restricted driver" which did work after a bit of tweaking and restarting.

 

hmmm.. for the new Dell E-series, does it come with carbon fibre casing? because the back of the laptop has the wave pattern look similar to the Vaio SZ691 and SZ791.

 

I want this new Latitude! I got the D430 and it is great, but this is even better. May get it 1 yr later.

 

ATI's definitely fine in Vista, I'll tell you that. Their Catalyst Control Center does suck and suck mightily, but the hardware itself's pretty good.

Digital Vibrance, btw, always kind of ticked me off actually. All it really does is jack up the contrast and saturation on your screen, and reduce the overall number of shades your screen is actually showing. But I do video on my hardware, I'll take all the colors I can get.

 

Working out of the box is not my definition of a high quality driver as we don't expect most proprietary drivers to work out of the box anyway due to the complex nature of their builds (this is what Envy is for, i.e. easy set up out of the box). The driver quality should be judged based on the amount of bugs and actual performance, something that ATI has consistently failed in their Linux proprietary drivers. Anyway, if you use it long enough, you'll know that ATI lacks a decent OpenGL implementation, has serious bugs that is still being "fixed" and has driver update releases that breaks previous versions' fixes. They just sucked. Nvidia has a stable driver that isn't miles better in performance, but is at least stable.

Btw, only older cards prior to X1000 work on the open source ATI drivers (which I admit has good performance and stability), so the use of "Restricted Drivers" apply to all ATI, Nvidia and Intel graphics chipsets on the latest models.

 

Well, Well Who knew the ATI buy-out would pay-off?
Let's wait & see how this unfolds.
EDIT: AMD may really be back on track
Oww & nice to see Dell's making nice notebooks

 

Montevina. PCI express 2.0. ATI Radeon Crossfire.

 

Now, if they could just get a good platform out(proc, mainboard, etc.).

 

Looks more like brushed aluminum. But hey who knows, this could be like that previous Dell leak... which turned out to be nothing more than a 'design concept'.

 

Even so, it's very good concept. Shows that dell engineers finally put their heads in right place

 

True, I'm really starting to like their design concepts, but I think they still need to improve their quality on laptops (I exchanged my previous m1330 three times during the summer and still didn't get a satisfactory quality, so I gave up)

 

If I remember right, when Dell leaked the XPS M1530 to the press last year it also had an LED backlit screen. I'll believe this one when I see it.