02/04, 6:40pm
AMD hints openness to ARM
AMD in conversations at the end of the week wouldn't discount the possibility of making ARM-based processors. When pressed by Wired, CTO and former Apple executive Mark Papermaster made the unusual non-denial that "the answer is not no." The company's long-term plans were aiming for a modular chip design that could drop in ARM or another architecture without losing Radeon graphics or other AMD-specific touches.
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01/31, 10:10am
AMD Radeon HD 7950 targets more common gamers
AMD has hoped to corner the more widely accessible range of high-end video cards Tuesday by unveiling the Radeon HD 7950. It trims back slightly from the range-leading 7970 with 1,792 visual processing cores instead of 2,048, 112 texture units instead of 128, and both 800MHz core and 1.25GHz memory clock speeds versus the 925MHz and 1.38GHz of its counterpart. The chipset is still powerful enough to handle 4K video and carries the 384-bit memory bus and 3GB of video RAM.
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01/28, 4:55pm
NVIDIA said pushing Kepler, trashing Radeon 7900
NVIDIA was accused this week of using dishonest marketing to try to skew gamers towards its next-generation Kepler graphics hardware. Posters in the ChipHell forums claiming to have details of the new graphics core were reportedly discovered to be NVIDIA marketers. They made bold claims about Kepler's prices and performance in what appeared to be an attempt to downplay AMD's Radeon HD 7900 line.
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01/28, 1:55pm
Lenovo puts up IdeaPad Y470p for sales
Lenovo has stepped up its gaming credentials by quietly taking orders for the IdeaPad Y470p. The 14-inch notebook swaps out NVIDIA's low-end GeForce GT 520M video of the regular Y470 for a mid-range AMD Radeon HD 7690M, giving it an edge in 3D games. The 2.2GHz quad Core i7 and 8GB of RAM help keep the system running at full pace.
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01/25, 1:50pm
New Xbox could see Microsoft jump to Blu-ray
The third-generation Xbox could mark a symbolic switch in storage but also a step back for game ownership. Kotaku understood from a rumor source that it would keep an optical drive but jump to Blu-ray, allowing it to hold larger games and play offline HD movies. For Microsoft, it would be the footnote to the HD disc debate of the mid-2000s, where the company officially backed HD DVD but was forced to drop plans after Toshiba axed the format and eventually supported Blu-ray.
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01/24, 7:35pm
Xbox 360 sequel may use Radeon HD 6670
A culmination of rumors may have given the first clearer picture of the next-generation Xbox's hardware. A tip to IGN has the system using graphics hardware roughly equivalent to AMD's Radeon HD 6670. Although strictly a mid-range graphics chip on the desktop, it would allegedly be about six times faster than the Xbox 360's 2005-era video.
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01/22, 11:20pm
Sony preps spring 2012 VAIO refresh
Sony in a post-CES update has tweaked several of its VAIO notebooks for the spring. The VAIO Z now has the option of 4G LTE access on Verizon, making it one of the first full-powered notebooks with the choice. The $1,950 ultraportable now comes in a Carbon Fiber Silver color and gets newer Core i5 and i7 processors from the late 2011 upgrade.
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01/20, 3:40pm
AT&T ships Aspire One 722 for $40 on contract
AT&T just revealed it has began selling Acer's 11.6-inch Aspire One A0722 netbook. The dual-core, 1GHz AMD C-50 system sports a full-sized keyboard and can connect to the carrier's HSPA+ network. A six-cell battery may give it long battery life, although it's not known by how long.
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01/16, 12:10pm
Surface SUR40 arrives a year later
Microsoft on Monday confirmed that the first Surface 2.0 table, the Samsung Surface SUR40, was shipping. Coming out a year after it was first shown, the multi-touch table introduces optics in the panel itself that can see objects and react accordingly. It can now react to as many as 50 simultaneous contact points and uses a quicker 2.9GHz AMD Athlon II X2, a Radeon HD 6700M graphics chip, and runs on Windows 7.
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01/15, 3:20pm
Samsung 9 Series desktop, WB150, and QF20 at CES
Samsung had a few extra stand-out devices at its CES booth this past week, and we got to try many of them. The Series 9 All-In-One PC is effectively Samsung's answer to the 27-inch iMac. Whatever you think of Samsung's affinity for Apple design, the 9 is certainly unique just from aesthetic perspective: it uses Samsung's distinctive asymmetric look and tucks all of the computer into the base, leaving the display itself to be less than half an inch thick.
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01/02, 3:55pm
Mac Pro shows signs of upcoming refresh
Signs of a long-in-waiting Mac Pro update have appeared in earnest through the Apple Store. Picking either the 12-core stock workstation or most build-to-order changes knocks the shipping time back to between one to three weeks, usually a sign at Apple that supplies are dwindling. A refresh isn't necessarily imminent and might depend on both the sales rate of remaining stock and how soon new components are ready.
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12/30, 11:10am
Mid-range AMD Radeon HD 7000 series uncovered
A detailed leak may have given out details of AMD's mid-range Radeon HD 7000-series desktop graphics. The 7750 and 7750 as explained by Fudzilla would sit on the new mainstream Cape Verde Pro and XT cores and each scale back considerably from the higher-end but more expensive Radeon HD 7970. Both would drop from 384-bit to 128-bit memory interfaces and 900MHz core clock speeds.
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12/22, 12:30am
AMD Radeon HD 7970 retakes speed lead
AMD on Thursday retook the top spot for single-card graphics speed through the Radeon HD 7970. The video card is the first anywhere to use a 28 nanometer chipmaking process and uses this to pack 2,048 cores, or a third more than the Radeon HD 6970 it's replacing. Performance comes also through a newly widened 384-bit memory bus, PCI Express 3.0, and a full 3GB of GDDR5 memory, again a record for a single-chip card.
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12/20, 4:40pm
AMD intros second-gen A-series chips
Chipmaker AMD on Tuesday revealed updates to its A-series desktop and notebook Fusion processors. The flagship dual-core and quad-core chips get speed boosts, and users can for the first time overclock the x86 and graphics settings on unlocked models. All the chips also get the AMD Steady Video feature, which is meant to get rid of the shakes and jitters in home videos.
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12/16, 4:40pm
AMD Radeon HD 7970 specs leaked early
More information on AMD's upcoming Radeon HD 7900-series graphics cards and the HD 7970 model in particular, have appeared online, thanks to OBR-Hardware. The new slide reveals a compute power of 3.5 teraflops and a 925MHz core clock speed. The 2,048 shader processors seen here confirm an earlier report as well.
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12/13, 9:25pm
NVIDIA drops proprietary lock on CUDA tech
NVIDIA took a major step towards spurring growth of its CUDA general-purpose code technology for video cards on Tuesday by posting the CUDA source code. Developers and education now have access to a variant on the LLVM compiler that will let them add new processor types and languages. The extension could see CUDA run on AMD's Radeon hardware, Intel's integrated graphics, and even use relatively old code like Fortran.
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12/13, 12:00pm
Alienware Aurora gets faster thanks to new chips
Dell has updated its Alienware Aurora gaming desktops introduced at the past CES show. The new PC is being touted as the most advanced Alienware desktop created thus far, sporting a choice of second-generation, six-core Core i7 chips ranging in a factory-overclocked clock speed between 3.9GHz and 4.2GHz, along with the X79 Express chipset and as much as 16GB of quad-channel DDR3 RAM. Active vents and a liquid-cooling system are present to keep the system running quietly.
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12/12, 3:35pm
AMD may go thin and fast to rival Intel
AMD's Australian and New Zealand regional head Brian Slattery in a discussion [reg. required] Monday said that AMD could have its own take on ultrabooks could arrive as soon as January, likely at CES. Calling them "ultrathins" in a likely attempt to avoid colliding with Intel's term, he explained to The Australian that processors for thin but fast computing would be ready soon. In opposition to Intel, however, AMD didn't have set guidelines and would let companies use larger screens as well as thicker and heavier systems if they felt it necessary.
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12/12, 8:00am
Samsung Series 5 Ultra has thin profile, big drive
Samsung in its home country has rolled out the Series 5 Ultra in what's considered a tenuous claim to the ultrabook title. While a 13-inch system at 0.6 inches thick and 3.1 pounds is largely inside of the official definitions, the 14-inch system at four pounds and 0.8 inches is outside of the class, even with an aluminum shell. In including the choice of an optical drive, they also fit more closely to the definition of a traditional notebook.
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12/04, 11:25pm
Mac Pro video details slip out early
Signs of Apple's long-in-waiting Mac Pro update emerged in earnest after a discovery in the latest Mac OS X 10.7.3 beta. Netkas found code references in the ATIRadeonX3000 driver extension to "Tahiti," the known codename for AMD's upcoming high-end desktop Radeon HD 7000 line. The chipsets are expected to be the first 28-nanometer chips and have a completely new, liquid-cooled graphics core meant to improve general-purpose computing tasks like those in OpenCL.
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11/29, 10:00am
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti gets mid-life upgrade
NVIDIA orchestrated a mid-cycle upgrade for the GeForce GTX 560 Ti. A new Limited Edition bumps it from 384 visual processing cores to 448 to keep it relevant. While the main, individual, and memory clock speeds take a step back to 732MHz, 1.46GHz, and 900MHz each, NVIDIA is counting on the extra parallelism and a jump to a wider 320-bit memory bus (up from 256-bit) with 1.25GB of RAM to let it handle considerably more at once.
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11/28, 2:35pm
AMD to ship its own optimized 2GB, 4GB, 8GB RAM
AMD-branded RAM modules will soon begin shipping, the company said Monday. It used its AMD OverDrive performance optimization tool to test and optimize DRAM for its Fusion chips, Radeon graphics cards, and more traditional processors. The chipmaker also worked with Patriot Memory and VisionTek in the undertaking, utilizing their experience.
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11/22, 2:55pm
Lenovo unveils tiny IdeaCentre Q180 nettop
Lenovo staked out an aggressive claim Tuesday by launching the IdeaCentre Q180. The nettop is billed as the "world's smallest desktop PC" and, Lenovo says, has the footprint of a paperback. It gets to that claim by becoming one of the first mainstream nettops to use Intel's new Cedar Trail-based Atom processors, picking the dual-core 2.13GHz Atom D2700 to use just 10W of power.
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11/17, 9:25am
Next-gen Microsoft Surface table ready to order
The first Microsoft Surface 2.0 multi-touch table, the Samsung SUR40, has gone up for pre-order. Those in 23 countries can request the new Surface ahead of its launch in January. A handful of companies have already publicly lined up, including aircraft maker Dassault, Fujifilm, and Royal Bank of Canada.
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11/16, 12:00am
HP overhauls Envy 15, 17, and 17 3D for audio
HP in one of its more surprising unveilings Wednesday night completely remade its Envy 15 and 17 notebooks. The new versions take more of their visual cues from the MacBook Pro, adopting its silver-colored metal, but put an even heavier emphasis on Beats audio processing than they did in the past. Each has six speakers and a subwoofer, even going so far as to have an oversized thumb dial for volume that both gives it finer volume control and a more iconic look.
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11/16, 12:00am
HP Pavilion dm4 first notebook with HD 7470M video
HP's last round of notebook updates included a unique refresh to the Pavilion dm4. The 14-inch ultraportable runs on more recent Intel Core processors but is unique in being the first known notebook with Radeon HD 7000 video. Some trim levels can carry a dedicated Radeon HD 7470M, whose performance is a mystery but should raise the bar for entry-to-mid-level video.
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11/07, 7:45am
HP unveils trio of 3D-aware devices and PCs
HP started off the week with a push into 3D in areas it doesn't normally touch. Its media hub, the Wireless TV Connect, now has a new model that has the still-rare ability to stream 3D video from a PC to a TV. It's now much smaller but can still take the footage directly from a PC's HDMI adapter, up to 1080p with 7.1-channel surround, over a WHDI stream with "virtually no latency" to its own wired HDMI connection.
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11/03, 5:35pm
AMD reveals job slash
AMD waited until the market closed Thursday to say it would cut 10 percent of its workforce. The decision will touch on all of the company's sections worldwide. Its cuts were officially intended to refocusi the company on non-traditional areas, such as lower-power chips, cloud-friendly computers, and developing countries.
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11/03, 12:15am
Notebook offers Beats audio
HP has introduced the 3115m, a new notebook that serves as a business-focused variant of the company's Pavilion dm1. Both 11.5-inch notebooks center around a dual-core AMD E450 processor and Radeon HD 6310M graphics, however the 3115m adds Windows 7 Professional and HP's ProtectTools software suite.
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10/24, 7:20am
MacBook Pro gets early morning upgrade
In an uncharacteristic early morning refresh, Apple on Monday updated the MacBook Pro. The new versions use slightly upgraded processors, up 100MHz on 13-inch models to 2.4GHz Core i5 and 2.8GHz Core i7 chips and 200MHz to 2.2GHz and 2.4GHz on 15- and 17-inch models. Video has also been given a boost: the base 15-inch now uses a much faster Radeon HD 6750M with 512MB of RAM, up from a 6490M with 256MB of RAM, while the higher-end 15-inch and 17-inch models use a 6770M with 1GB of RAM.
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10/13, 8:00pm
Lenovo IdeaPad U400 at Amazon for $920
Lenovo's recently introduced IdeaPad U400 has now gone up for sale on Amazon. The 14-inch notebook is priced at $920, and the 099329U model gets a 2.4GHz Core i5 processor and ATI's Radeon HD 6470M graphics processor with a dedicated 1GB of RAM. They're paired with 6GB of system RAM and a 750GB hard drive.
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10/12, 5:10pm
AMD Bulldozer CPUs now in Gamer Scorpius PCs
Custom gaming PC maker CyberpowerPC has introduced its new Gamer Scorpius line on Wednesday. All are based on AMD's FX-series Bulldozer CPUs and include the Gamer Scorpius 7500, Gamer Scorpius 8000, Gamer Scorpius 9000 and Gamer Scorpius 9500. AMD Radeon HD 6000 graphics are used inside the systems.
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10/12, 1:30pm
$7,600 40-inch device offers table-top computing
First announced in January this year, the launch of the next generation Microsoft Surface touch table computer has been postponed. The 40-inch Microsoft Surface 2.0, also known as the Samsung SUR40, was expected to be available for purchase later this year. Samsung has now slipped the official release date back to January of next year.
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10/02, 9:00am
Sony ships new VAIO SE and upgrades others
Sony chose an unusual Sunday timeframe to tune the VAIO notebook line. As promised earlier, the 15.5-inch VAIO S is now on sale as the definition of Sony's new mid-range. Known as the VAIO SE, its focus is on HD content with a 1080p display and dedicated Radeon HD 6630M video.
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09/26, 5:45pm
Series 7 ships from Best Buy by October 23
Samsung's Series 7 performance notebooks are now up for pre-order over at Best Buy. Priced at $880, the 15.6-inch notebook on show uses a quad 2.2GHz Core i7 processor and is available in silver. There is 6GB of RAM onboard and a 750GB hard drive.
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09/08, 12:00am
HP Pavilion dm1 gets mid-life Beats and new apps
HP put out its second PC revamp in as many days on Thursday with an update to the Pavilion dm1. Its 11.6-inch crossover notebook now has Beats Audio processing to get better sound from the speakers and headphones. Faster processors also back it up with AMD's Fusion-based, 1.65GHz E-350 and unspecified low-voltage Intel chips now making their way into the ultralight.
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08/31, 12:10pm
Sony shows 15.5-inch Vaio S with 1080p display
Sony on Wednesday introduced a new addition to the Vaio S lineup with a 15.5-inch model. It sports a 1080p display and measures under one-inch thick while weighing in at 4.4lbs. Its magnesium and aluminum alloy case can be had in black or silver.
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08/30, 11:45pm
Samsung Series 7 gets giant trackpads, aluminum
Samsung as part of events on Tuesday brought a new notebook line to the US. Both take some, though not all, of their cues from Apple's MacBook Pro, including an oversized, 'buttonless' trackpad (here run by Elan and not Synaptics), illuminated chiclet keys, and aluminum across most of the body. Space efficiency is key, Samsung says: a 15.6-inch model can comfortably fit a numeric keypad, while the '13-inch' version has a 14-inch display and uses an extra-thin bezel to fit into the smaller display frame.
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08/18, 3:25pm
Samsung outs 700G7A gaming notebook in Europe
A new 700G7A notebook from Samsung is aimed squarely at gamers. It has been spotted at a GamesCom press conference by German site NewGadgets and reveals a 17.3-inch screen with 1080p resolution. A 2GB AMD Radeon HD 6970m GPU is onboard as is a 2GHz quad-core Core i7 processor.
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08/17, 5:25pm
AMD A6-3500 costs just 95
AMD has added a new desktop processor to its A-Series Fusion processors. The A6-3500 runs three 2.1GHz cores along with a 444MHz Radeon HD 6530D for integrated graphics still fast enough to handle 1080p video and some games. Turbo technology bumps the speed of the main cores up to 2.4 GHz.
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08/15, 8:45pm
Notebook powered by AMD CPUs
MSI has expanded its line of multimedia notebooks with the new CR430, a 14-inch variant aimed at budget-conscious buyers. The notebook is powered by AMD's dual-core 1.65GHz E-450 processor with Radeon integrated graphics. On the outside, the design offers a chicklet-style keyboard with nickel-plated touchpad keys below a multi-touch trackpad.
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08/09, 10:10am
CPU/GPU maker now offering 2GB DDR3 DIMMs
AMD, known mainly for its processors and video cards, has entered the desktop memory market. The company has begun to offer three versions of 2GB DDR3 DIMMs badged with the Radeon brand. AMD is marketing its Radeon DDR3 System Modules as being "ideally suited" for use with its CPU and graphics products.
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08/08, 7:30am
iMac may dip below 1000 again with new model
(Update: real) Apple has updated its iMac for certain educational and institutional customers at the Apple Store. A 21.5-inch model is available with a dual 3.1GHz Core i3 and a modern AMD Radeon HD 6750M for graphics, instead relying on reduced storage and memory, along with the slight processor drop, to bring the price to $999. The design trims memory to just 2GB of RAM and storage to a 250GB hard drive.
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08/04, 12:40pm
Thunderbolt ViDock to give Mac external graphics
Village Instruments could be the first with an external graphics card for Macs and other computers using Thunderbolt. Company head Hubert Chen confirmed after an unexpectedly large response to a question that the company would make a Thunderbolt version of the ViDock. The much improved bandwidth over the current ExpressCard version could give even ultraportables like the MacBook Air desktop-level video performance with software support.
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07/21, 7:00pm
Mac mini 2011 shown easy to access for 2nd disk
A second teardown of Apple hardware took place Thursday at iFixit that showed Apple's new Mac mini might allow for a second hard drive to be added after the fact. The design for all users is fundamentally similar to the Mac mini server from last year and, on those with a single drive, leaves a completely blank space for the second disk. Apple has left it open enough that the only obstacle is finding a second SATA cable that would fit the empty but available port.
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07/18, 11:00am
AMD hints next Xbox to be huge visual leap
AMD's integrated system vendor relationship head Neal Robison hinted in the August issue of Official Xbox Magazine that the next Xbox was getting closer and would be a huge visual leap over the Xbox 360. He claimed the future console would produce graphics on the level of the movie Avatar. The remarks stopped short of confirming plans, but they virtually guaranteed that AMD's graphics were returning for the new game system.
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07/12, 11:00am
AMD unwraps Radeon HD 6990M mobile graphics
AMD planned to retake the notebook video lead Tuesday with the release of the Radeon HD 6990M. The chipset is in many ways equivalent to the desktop 6870 and has a full 1,120 stream processors (visual effects cores) at 715MHz along with 900MHz actual (3.6GHz effective) GDDR5 memory. The performance is enough to make it about 17 percent faster than the 6970M and 25 percent faster than NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580M, AMD estiamtes.
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07/08, 8:05am
NVIDIA may push Kepler and Maxwell GPUs by a year
NVIDIA is pushing back the launches of its Kepler and Maxwell graphics architectures by roughly a year, rumors from the video card industry alleged on Friday. Originally slated for late 2011 and 2013, the respective 28 and 22/20 nanometer designs are now supposedly being moved to 2012 and 2014. The Digitimes sources believed that NVIDIA's fabrication partner TSMC wasn't producing good yields of 28nm parts and that Kepler wasn't running as quickly as hoped for.
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07/04, 11:20pm
HP dv6z Quad Edition brings four-core AMD Llano
HP on Monday quietly posted some of the highest end of its new AMD Fusion-based Pavilion notebooks. The dv6z Quad Edition uses AMD's faster Llano-based chips and ranges from a 1.4GHz quad A6-3400M through to a 1.9GHz A8-3530MX, the two extremes of which can boost to 2.3GHz and 2.6GHz respectively. The Fusion technology gives them graphics capable of playing 1080p video smoothly, but they can be optioned up with an unspecific dedicated AMD Radeon chipset to handle more demanding games.
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06/27, 8:50pm
Sony VAIO Z repositioned as MacBook Air challenger
Sony chose Europe as the first venue to unveil a redesigned VAIO Z. The new system is now more consciously pitched as a MacBook Air equivalent and moves both the optical drive and even dedicated graphics to an external box, the Power Media Dock. The new PC is the first non-Mac to use Thunderbolt, albeit not in Mini DisplayPort form, and uses the high-speed cable to handle not just Blu-ray or DVD but AMD Radeon HD 6650M video, three USB ports, Ethernet, 3D-capable HDMI, and VGA.
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