Today has been a long time in coming; we first heard about Llano way back in 2008, but even then the target date was 2011. Even so, AMD has been hurting for a compelling mobile platform since… well, since ever. Even in the glory days of the K8 platforms, AMD never had a great mobile strategy, a fact that Intel capitalized on with the launch of Banias and the original Pentium M Centrino platform in 2003. Presumably the goal of most laptops is to actually work well as mobile computing platforms, and prior to 2011 the best AMD could do was compete on performance and price, with battery life (e.g. actual mobility) never quite keeping pace with the times. Earlier this year, AMD launched Brazos, their low-power alternative to Intel’s Atom ecosystem. It boasted better performance and much better graphics than Atom, with battery life that checked in at a respectable 8+ hours for a moderate 56Wh battery. Of course, there are Intel laptops that can provide battery life that’s very close to Brazos with general performance that’s 3x faster, so Brazos isn’t a panacea.
Enter Llano, the mainstream alternative to the low-power Brazos that brings AMD’s APU A-series to market with a much faster CPU and GPU. Llano is also AMD’s (GlobalFoundries’) first 32nm CPU, which brings AMD back to parity with Intel in terms of process technology. The process shrink should bring lower power requirements, smaller die sizes, and better performance. Add in power gating, Turbo Core, and expected pricing starting at 0 for quad-core laptops and the A-series starts to sound quite compelling. So just how good is Llano, and can AMD finally start to steal more of the mobile market from Intel? Let’s find out.
Today has been a long time in coming; we first heard about Llano way back in 2008, but even then the target date was 2011. Even so, AMD has been hurting for a compelling mobile platform since… well, since ever. Even in the glory days of the K8 platforms, AMD never had a great mobile strategy, a fact that Intel capitalized on with the launch of Banias and the original Pentium M Centrino platform in 2003. Presumably the goal of most laptops is to actually work well as mobile computing platforms, and prior to 2011 the best AMD could do was compete on performance and price, with battery life (e.g. actual mobility) never quite keeping pace with the times. Earlier this year, AMD launched Brazos, their low-power alternative to Intel’s Atom ecosystem. It boasted better performance and much better graphics than Atom, with battery life that checked in at a respectable 8+ hours for a moderate 56Wh battery. Of course, there are Intel laptops that can provide battery life that’s very close to Brazos with general performance that’s 3x faster, so Brazos isn’t a panacea.
Enter Llano, the mainstream alternative to the low-power Brazos that brings AMD’s APU A-series to market with a much faster CPU and GPU. Llano is also AMD’s (GlobalFoundries’) first 32nm CPU, which brings AMD back to parity with Intel in terms of process technology. The process shrink should bring lower power requirements, smaller die sizes, and better performance. Add in power gating, Turbo Core, and expected pricing starting at 0 for quad-core laptops and the A-series starts to sound quite compelling. So just how good is Llano, and can AMD finally start to steal more of the mobile market from Intel? Let’s find out.
It's too cliché to proclaim netbooks are dead. Perhaps the appropriate phrase is netbooks are no longer interesting to write about, but they do have a roadmap going forward. For years we heard about convergence in the PC and consumer electronics space. Convergence has finally reached mainstream, but the process isn't over yet. The smartphone revolution is the beginning of a much larger convergence. A melding of computing devices, convergence between the smartphone and tablet, or the tablet and notebook PC. The smartphone will become even more PC-like and the tablet will become even more notebook-like. But where does that leave PCs?
The PC needs to evolve as well, and as we've learned in the past, software enables hardware and hardware enables software. The PC's changing role in the future also requires some new thought about hardware design and what sort of decisions microprocessor manufacturers are going to make going forward. Today Intel is announcing the first step in that evolution, an announcement that we actually first heard about from another company a year ago. Read on to learn about Intel's Ultrabook.
First I want to thank everyone who entered and MSI for suppling a GT680R Sandy Bridge notebook for the contest. And second, I'd like to congratulate AT reader gamefreakgcb - you're our grand prize winner!
MSI will be sending me 25 coupons for Mafia 2 which I'll distribute to the first 25 commenters who entered the contest.
And if you didn't win this time, don't worry – we've got another big contest coming up soon…
The march of progress is inevitable, with faster computers constantly replacing last year's top performing parts. Clevo is a company with a heavy focus on Desktop Replacement (DTR) notebooks, often at the forefront of the latest performance enhancing parts. AVADirect is one of a few vendors that sells Clevo notebooks, letting customers choose the various components. In the past, Clevo has had notebooks with desktop CPUs and a reasonably fast mobile GPU, or mobile CPUs with two GPUs; the X7200 combines the two and offers up to hex-core i7-980X CPU support with GTX 480M SLI graphics to provide what is easily the fastest notebook we've ever tested–with a "UPS battery" to match.
Given the high-end nature of the CPU and GPU options, we asked AVADirect to send us a no-holds-barred system for testing, and that's exactly what we got. Take Intel's fastest i7-980X CPU and add in 480M SLI with a couple of SSDs in RAID 0, and watch the mobile benchmark records topple one by one. If you want the (currently) fastest notebook on the block and are willing to pay the piper, meet the latest heavyweight champion of the world. We’ve got one of the very first review units to hit the streets, and we’re going to see what this bad boy can do. Ladies and gentlemen, let's get ready to rummmmble!
The giveaways are back! Our previous contest was for a 4GB G.Skill memory kit. The winner? donebu. Check your email and respond to claim your prize 
Thanks to G.Skill we have even more memory to give away. Today we've got another 2GB DDR3-1066 SO-DIMM for your notebook. It's the F3-8500CL7S-2GBSQ, you can find the full specs on it here (note that page has multiple products on it, we're giving away the F3-8500CL7S-2GBSQ). You can check out Newegg's listing here.
Read on for details on how to enter.
After a brief hiatus the giveaways our back and even more streamlined. We've done away with the email entry and now all you need to do is post a comment to enter the giveaway! Our previous giveaway was an OCZ Behemoth Mousepad. The winner? dumpsterj. You've got an email from me, just confirm your address and we'll get your prize shipped out!
For today's giveaway we're back to memory, but this time it's notebook memory. G.Skill sent over a 2GB stick of DDR3-1066 notebook memory. It's the F3-8500CL7S-2GBSQ, you can find the full specs on it here (note that page has multiple products on it, we're giving away the F3-8500CL7S-2GBSQ). You can check out Newegg's listing here.
Read on for rules on how to enter.
