Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"AMD showed off a new platform at CES called Yukon that featured a new single-core Athlon Neo processor. The HP machine featuring the platform was very thin (think MacBook Air) and looked fantastic. HP is set to begin shipping the notebook in 2009. EWeek reports that AMD will also be fielding a dual-core version of its Neo processor that will be part of the Congo platform. Congo and the dual-core Neo are reportedly set to launch later in 2009. Congo will be a platform for new types of ultraportable laptops. AMD was very clear in meetings at CES that the Neo was not for the netbook market."

I haven't had a chance to benchmark the Neo CPU, but coming in at 15 watts, it's a power-hungry beast compared to the Intel Atom chip (which sips a dainty 2.4 watts under load) - yet even though it runs at the same 1.6 Ghz as the current Atom, it's said to offer more performance. The biggest difference between the Neo CPU and the Intel Atom is that the Neo CPU is paired with a nice ATI graphics solution on the HP dv2, whereas all Intel Atom-based systems I've seen are paired with the entirely useless Intel graphics solution. I like seeing Intel having competition, so I wish AMD well with this line of CPUs.

"The Sandia team has found that simply increasing the number of cores in a processor doesn't always improve performance, and at a point the performance actually decreases. Sandia simulations have shown that moving from dual core to four core processors offers a significant increase in performance. However, the team has found that moving from four cores to eight cores offers an insignificant performance gain. When you move from eight cores to 16 cores, the performance actually drops. Sandia team members used simulations with algorithms for deriving knowledge form large data sets for their tests. The team found that when you moved to 16 cores the performance of the system was barely as good as the performance seen with dual-cores."

First we hit the thermal/power barrier on CPUs, which had Intel and AMD moving toward a multi-core approach rather than simply racheting up the speed, and now we see that moving beyond four cores is problematic - I wonder how they'll get around that problem? Granted, the real problem with multi-core computing is still more software than hardware.

"In light of a new competitive challenge—Intel’s Core i7—AMD is revamping its Spider platform with a new processor and the addition of software able to tie all of the hardware together. As you no doubt already know from reading Bert’s story, this latest effort is called Dragon. But we’re not here to rehash the details of Phenom II. Rather, in light of significant enhancements to the CPU architecture’s overclocking capabilities (and indeed, confirmation from AMD that all of the "magic" that went into its ACC [Advanced Clock Calibration] technology is now baked into Phenom II), we’re eager to compare the value of AMD’s fastest 45 nm chip to Intel’s entry-level Core i7 920—the one most enthusiasts would be likely to eye as an overclocking contender."

Tom's Hardware puts the newly released Phenom II through its paces with attention paid to the overclocking market. The results are hardly surprising with the Phenom II showing remarkable overclocking value. However, when compared against the Core i7, the decision between CPUs gets a bit muddier. The Core i7 represents leading edge technology with powerful performance, topping the Phenom II in overclockability. However, the Core i7 also means a large investment in purchasing new hardware. On the flip side, the Phenom II can be a drop in replacement, working with many existing AM2+ motherboards. Unless you're willing to drop some serious change for a new rig, the Phenom II is a sound upgrade path.

"The production of a sequel typically implies that the original creation is worth revisiting. However, considering that the original Phenom was the hardware version of Ishtar, many enthusiasts didn’t think Phenom deserved to be revisited. AMD certainly thinks it does—and it hopes Phenom II is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn to Phenom’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture. And why shouldn’t AMD be able to pull off a reversal of fortune? Phenom II isn’t just Phenom joined by a Roman numeral—it’s a die shrink with a boatload of additional cache and an improved core. In short, AMD hopes to erase memories of the original Phenom and put smiles on the faces of disappointed overclockers with its reimagined Phenom II chip."

Targeted towards mid-range PCs, the Phenom II is pretty much the original Phenom packaged in a 45nm process. MaximumPC puts the new CPU through its paces, but the results don't show anything worth noting. The Phenom II seems to be much more of an evolutionary than revolutionary step for AMD, with the new CPU using a bit less power while maintaining most of the compatibility with existing motherboards. Overall, I'm not impressed, but pleased to see AMD working to hold its ground against Intel, however, I think the company needs to put a magic rabbit out of its hat to push back the 800 pound gorilla that is Intel.

"Think of the Spartans at Thermopylae (the movie 300 was over the top, but makes the point): They were the best trained (highest quality) solders of their time and while they eventually got their butts kicked, they took on a vastly larger force and held them for a prolonged period. They didn't do it by going man to man; they did it by focusing on quality over quantity. You might think of this as another way of saying focus, but it is more than that. It is setting a quality mark higher than your competitor is willing to set - and making the market understand that quality. Think about it: Does Apple compete on price or do they compete on perceived quality? Often, we define products by performance, but there are other measures that are often more important. We don't, for instance, all drive cars with big V8s. Toyota beat GM and Ford not by having more cars, more lines, or more resources. They beat them by having better gas mileage and better quality at similar prices."

Man-who-is-everywhere-online Rob Enderle has a four-step plan for AMD to beat Intel. He has some good concepts, but the hard part is coming up with the product that matches the concept. It's one thing to say "focus on quality, not quantity", but it's quite another to come up with a product that's higher-quality than what Intel has to offer. One of the ways AMD could compete on quality would be to partner with a motherboard manufacturer and optimize the hell out of the board when used in conjunction with an AMD CPU. A few weeks back I swapped motherboards and put a new ASUS motherboard (an M3A78-EMH HDMI) in to partner up with my AMD 6400+ X2 CPU, and it was a complete and utter disaster - I'm still too upset to write about it. Everything worked (mostly) but the performance was atrocious. Actually, no, it was atrocious multiplied by pathetic...squared. If there was a motherboard with properly tuned chipset drivers that would work great with the AMD processor I had, I would have bought it.

"AMD's 12-core and 8-core processors get a new home in 2010. AMD's newest roadmap reveals a major shift in early 2010: the company will once again overhaul its socket architecture to make way for DDR3 support. The new socket, dubbed G34, will also ship with two new second-generation 45nm processors. The first of these processors, 8-core Sao Paolo, is described as a "twin native-quadcore Shanghai processor" by one AMD engineer. Shanghai, expected to ship late this year, is AMD's first 45nm shrink of the ill-fated Barcelona processor."

12 cores? I say bring it on, but I sure hope that software developers get their butt in gear and make their programs work smartly with multiple cores - my article on this subject showed that right now very few programs can use even four cores, so having 12 cores and watching my video editing program use two of them would be depressing. One would hope though that by 2010 software developers will have clued in to the fact that multi-core computing is here to stay...

"AMD revealed its 8.9-inch ultra low-cost sub notebook during Computex 2008, which is powered by AMD Sempron processor, ATI RS690 chipset and Linux OS."



Looks like there will be no shortage of players in the low price UMPC market. This is AMD's upcoming offering set to go for about $400.

AMD has officially unveiled their new mobile computing platform, formerly known as the codename Puma, and it looks like an impressive step forward for mobile technology. Unfortunately I missed a conference call earlier this week that had some pertinent details, but I was send a slide deck to glean some facts from. I'll do my best to present the facts about this new platform, but expect to see me linking to someone else that knows more about this than I do (which isn't hard to do) by tomorrow.

To begin with, we know that notebooks are increasingly being used for entertainment - and China leads the way with 97% of users indicating they use their notebooks for that purpose. Europe comes next with 83%, and North Americans trail with 76%. Not surprisingly, you see people living in cultures which higher population density using their computers more for entertainment - the laptop likely replacing the TV in many homes as the primary source of entertainment. AMD has created a platform they believe will serve the needs of this market (oh yeah, and those business/enterprise types as well).

The AMD Turion X2 Ultra processor is at the centre of this platform, featuring independent dynamic core technology, AMD CoolCore technology, Power Optimized HyperTransprt 3.0, and a mobile optimized memory controller. All are technologies optimized for long battery life - that's what the slide tells me at least. The AMD 7-series chipsets (780G and SB700) bring other powerful offerings to the table: DirectX 10 support, PCIe 2nd generation speeds, enhanced ATI Avivo HD Block (MPEG2, H.264, and VC1 playback), ATI Hybrid Graphics, lower power/lower noise levels, HDMI, DVI, and DisplayPort support. The ATI Radeon HD 3200 GPU, which I assume is at the core of those chipsets (don't quote me on that!) offer 2.9 times the performance of the GPU used by Intel in their Santa Rosa platform. Intel's well-known for their underpowered integrated GPU performance, so I don't find that difference hard to believe. Read more...

"Without considering overclocking, AMD has improved the Phenom B3s and made quite a positive impact. The improved memory performance and corrected silicon is absolutely a step in the right direction, and what the Phenoms should have been launched as six months ago. OK, so what's done is done, and at least even AMD's fastest CPU is still affordable; hell, even the enthusiast Black Edition is consumer friendly – Intel could learn a thing or two rather than sitting in a swill of arrogance, screwing “enthusiast” for every penny they have with its Extreme Edition processors. However, we feel AMD has put too much weight on the quad-core side of things – true, there are now tri-cores to bridge the gap that Intel hasn't filled yet, but most people will still be content with a dual-core processor and as we've shown, you don't need quad-cores for Crysis and World in Conflict. That's not to say quad core processors like the Q6600 G0 or Phenom X4 9850 are bad purchases – in fact, they're great buys as there is headroom for enthusiasts in both chips."

These processors look to provide quite the bang for the buck. If you are looking for a value and performance oriented upgrade, bit-tech gets to the nitty-gritty of these processors with a huge 15 page review.