Zosma Appeared at Japan

Still remember codename Zosma? It is a new Phenom II quad-core processor line based on the same six-core Thuban silicon, but with two cores disabled. Beside the two "potentially" unlockable cores, Zosma also brought the AMD's Turbo Core technology, which previously only found on Six Core Phenom II.

Phenom II X4 960T Black Edition "Zosma" recently spotted at Japan market. This quad-core chip with unlocked multipler comes with the part number HD96ZTWFK4DGR, and is sold in PIB (processor in a box) packages. The chip was tested to allow unlocking of the disabled fifth and sixth cores, proving it's based on the Zosma silicon. It comes with a stock clock speed of 3.00 GHz (15 x 200 MHz), but can bump clock speeds up to 3.40 GHz (17 x 200 MHz). The chip features 512 KB of L2 cache per core, and 6 MB of shared L3 cache.

Mobile A-series Llano finally launches

AMD has launched seven mobile parts of A-series "Llano" Fusion APU today, and the desktop models have yet to make an official appearance soon.


AMD is making some bold claims, in terms of battery life where the company is promising up to 10.5h of usable battery life. In fact, AMD claims that its A8-3510MX APU has 3.5h better battery life than a similar notebook with Intel's Core i5-2410M processor.



When it comes to graphics performance, AMD has always had a huge lead here over Intel, but AMD has thrown in a few new features that should further boost the appeal of its APUs. First up AMD has added what the company called Perfect Picture HD which is a post-processing option for cleaning up 1080p video, a feature that might prove popular with people shooting their own HD home videos. The second feature, called Steady Video is rather quite impressive, it actually pre and post processes the video to reduce camera shake and it even works with online videos.

As always, AMD is being very competitive on price and the company is expect notebook with its new APU's to start at US$499 with an A4 APU, whereas with an A6 we're looking at around US$599 and finally A8 models will come in at around US$699. Of course these are best case scenarios and we'd expect a lot more expensive machine to be available as well, depending on configuration. For those looking for a boost to the graphics performance beyond the APU's integrated solution, AMD supports CrossFire on the platform and claim up to a 75 percent performance boost for its discrete mobile GPUs when pairing them up with an APU.

AMD Confirms Delay of Bulldozer

During the company's press conference dedicated to the launch of AMD 9-series core-logic sets, AMD announced that its long-awaited FX-series microprocessors will be available within the next 60 to 90 days from now, which points to August or September. Mainboards based on the new AMD 9-series chipsets with AM3+ socket will support both existing high-performance multi-core Phenom II microprocessors as well as AMD FX-series chips with up to eight cores.


Below is official rendered image of AMD 8-Core FX Processor Black Edition box (PIB):