MSI shows off its first Brazos systems

MSI was showing off a pair of Brazos solutions earlier today at an event in Taipei, Taiwan. On display was a 12-inch notebook as well as a 20-inch all-in-one desktop, both featuring an AMD E-350 CPU.


The all-in-one Wind Top AE2050 have a 20-inch 16:9 screen. MSI will offer models with a multi-touch enabled screen, but this doesn't appear to be a standard feature. Besides the 1.6GHz dual core E-350 CPU with built in Radeon HD 6310 graphics, MSI has added USB 3.0 support and the two ports are located on the left hand side of the system.

Other features include four USB 2.0 ports, a pair of audio jacks, built in Ethernet of some form, an HDMI port, a multi-format memory card reader and an optical drive. It also sports a pair of SRS certified speakers and a top mounted web cam. It might not be the most exciting system ever, but should prove to be an interesting alternative to an Atom/ION all-in-one system.


MSI Wind U270 which is MSI's first Brazos notebook and it's a 12-inch model that features a fairly basic, but not unattractive design. The display has a resolution of 1366x768 which is a step up from the Acer Aspire One 522. Again it sports the 1.6GHz dual core E-350 Zacate APU with Radeon HD 6310 graphics. MSI has fitted the U270 with a D-sub connector, an HDMI port, a single USB 3.0 port, two USB 2.0 ports, a pair of audio jacks, an Ethernet port and a multi-format memory card reader. There's of course also a built in webcam & WIFI, space for a standard 2.5-inch hard drive and support for up to 4GB of DDR3 memory.

Acer Aspire One 522 on Fusion APU

A leak info (not from Wikileaks :-P) that Acer is preparing a brand new Aspire One netbook based on AMD Ontario (FUSION) APU. This new Aspire One powered by a 1 GHz Dual Core Fusion APU (Accelerated Processing Unit) CPU & GPU Combo with max TDP only 9 watt. The on-die GPU said to be a Radeon HD 6250 class that is fully capable for mainstream games and Full HD playback.

Aspire One 522 is using 10.1 inch LCD screen but with max resolution of 1280x720. If not satisfied by that, we can used external LCD via HDMI port. Price tag expected to be around US$ 425.

More detail specifications:
AMD Fusion Dual core 1GHz AMD C-50 Ontario APU
Memory DDR3 2GB
Hard disk 500GB
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 6250 + HDMI Port
Layar 10.1″ 1280 x 720
OS Windows 7 Starter
HD webcam
WiFi 802.11b/g/n + Bluetooth+EDR
6-cell battery

AMD's Cayman Unleashed

AMD today introduced AMD Radeon™ HD 6900 series graphics (Cayman), its most advanced enthusiast GPU representing the intelligent choice for enthusiast gamers. The AMD Radeon™ HD 6900 series of graphics cards provides gamers with an enhanced second-generation, Microsoft DirectX® 11-capable architecture for breakthrough performance, advanced image quality features for the best looking games, and innovative AMD PowerTune power management technology that dynamically adjusts power draw on the fly.

Unlike Barts, Cayman is based on a fundamentally new GPU architecture, with improvements extending from its graphics front end through its shader core and into its render back-ends. The highlights include higher geometry throughput, more efficient shader execution, and smarter edge antialiasing.


Reviews:
TechReport
X-Bit Labs

AMD ships 3 new processors with speed bumps

AMD continues to expand their current desktop CPU line, just in time for holiday shoppers. The first of these processors being released today is the AMD Athlon II X3 455 (HDZ565WFK2DGM). The new Athlon II X3 455 is the triple core processor which replaces the Athlon II X3 450. The Athlon II X3 455 features three cores running at 3.3GHz. The second processor today is the Phenom II X2 565 Black Edition. The Phenom II X2 565 is a dual core processor that runs at 3.4GHz. The Phenom II X2 series has become a favorite for the potential of unlocking the unused cores on the processor. This presents an opportunity to purchase a quad core processor at a lower cost, though there is no guarantees that the third and fourth cores will work properly, so you need to keep that in mind if that is your goal for the Phenom II X2 series.

The third and final processor being release today, is the flagship processor from AMD, the Phenom II X6 1100T processor (HDE00ZFBK6DGR). The 6-core THUBAN 1100T takes over the top spot in AMD's CPU line from the 1090T, and does it at a suggested retail price of only $265.00. The clock speed improvements over the 1090T are minimal: both the standard and Turbo Core speeds increase only 100MHz, to 3.3GHz and 3.7GHz, respectively.


Paired with AMD's new 800 series chipsets, which offer extra PCI-E lanes for CrossfireX, SATA 6G and USB 3.0 without needing expensive add-ons like the NVIDIA NF-200, AMD's Thuban processors offer the enthusiast a way to build an affordable, yet very powerful and versatile 6-core production or gaming system.

AMD's Financial Analyst Day 2010

At its annual Financial Analyst Day, AMD demonstrated how its unique combination of CPU and GPU computing technologies on a single die will enable breakthrough capabilities in an innovative processor design with planned OEM system availability in early 2011. AMD executives detailed how this new class of processor, AMD Fusion Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), is poised to create a sustained position of advantage by powering demanding PC workloads in sleek form factors with long battery life, pacing future AMD growth. AMD Fusion APUs are built from DirectX® 11-capable GPU technology and either low-power or high-performance multi-core x86 CPU technology. These APUs are designed to vastly improve today's Internet, video processing and playback, and gaming (client and online) experiences. For the first time, AMD also demonstrated its new high-performance x86 multi-core CPU architecture codenamed "Bulldozer" and provided additional information around the "Bulldozer" launch schedule.

AMD also announced several notable updates to its 2011-2012 roadmaps including:

Server - All “Bulldozer”, all the time



By the end of 2012, every new server CPU AMD bring to market will be based on the new “Bulldozer” architecture. “Bulldozer” will power multiple platforms designed to give server buyers what they keep asking for: more threads, more memory and the best performance-per-watt, per-dollar available. The “Terramar” CPU, planned for release in 2012, will indeed scale to 20 cores in our mainstream, 2- and 4-processor server platforms. The cloud’s new best friend will be “Sepang,” planned for release in 2012. “Sepang” is planned to scale up to 10 cores and is targeted at low-cost, low-power 1- and 2-way platforms.

Client Roadmap - Velocity goal: the best APUs every year

Velocity is the term Rick Bergman introduced last year to signal the new AMD Fusion APU design methodology and product introduction cadence. AMD Velocity builds on AMD’s already established annual GPU design cycle to achieve a faster pace of innovation than AMD previously achieved with a CPU-only development focus.




"Krishna" and "Wichita" are two and four-core 28nm APUs based on the next-generation sub-one watt "Bobcat" CPU cores and a DirectX 11-capable GPU, designed for the tablets, notebooks, HD netbooks, and desktop form-factors. "Trinity" is a 32nm APU based on AMD's next-generation "Bulldozer" CPU cores and a DirectX 11-capable GPU, designed for mainstream and high-performance desktops and notebooks. "Komodo" is a 32nm CPU featuring up to 10 AMD "Bulldozer" CPU cores designed for high-performance and enthusiast desktops.

AMD introduce Barts-based Radeon HD 6800 series

The company has released the first official photos of the Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850. Barts PRO and XT parts feature a 255mm2 die size. This is quite good as Radeon HD 5850 and 5870 had 334mm2 size. The chip is almost 30 percent smaller and the new one consumes up to 151W in the XT version, which is less than the Radeon HD 5850 series. Radeon HD 5850 had 2.15 billion transistors while the Radeon HD 6850 and 6870 have 1.8 billion.



Thanks to generally refined DirectX 11 architecture, 256-bit GDDR5 memory controller, increased clock-speed (despite of decreased amount of stream processors and texture units) as well as improvements like better tessellation module amid smaller die size hence lower price, the new Radeon HD 6870 seems to be generally more competitive than the previous-generation Radeon HD 5850. It is especially notable that now both models 6850 and 6870 support up to six monitors, not a mainstream feature that will be sported by $179 and $239 graphics cards.

In the new generation Northern Islands processor - when it comes to the Radeon HD 6800 - several improvements to the tessellation unit was made. In particular, the company improved thread management for domain shaders and re-sized some queues and buffers to achieve significantly higher peak throughput, particularly at lower tessellation levels. Even though the changes had negligible impact on transistor count or power consumption, two times higher the tessellation rate in synthetic tests is declared by AMD.

The AMD Radeon HD 6800 series graphics cards are the first in the industry to offer support for both DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 1.4a, providing PC users with expanded options for multi-monitor configurations, display selection, and new DisplayPort audio features. Thanks to new drivers, the new graphics boards also feature better support for third-party stereo-3D (S3D) middleware.


Reviews:
Legit Reviews-AMD Radeon HD 6850 and 6870 CrossFire Video Card Review
Hot Hardware-AMD Radeon HD 6870 & 6850 Graphics Cards Debut
Tom's Hardware-AMD Radeon HD 6870 And 6850: Is Barts A Step Forward?
Anandtech-AMD’s Radeon HD 6870 & 6850: Renewing Competition in the Mid-Range Market

Intel Selling Upgrade Card to Unlock

Intel is asking customers to pay extra if they want the full power of their store-bought silicon. An eagle-eyed Engadget reader was surfing the Best Buy shelves when he noticed this $50 card --


and sure enough, Intel websites confirm -- that lets you download software to unlock extra threads and cache on the new Pentium G6951 processor. The chip actually have a full 1MB of L3 cache that's enabled plus HyperThreading support.

This 'new' idea is similar to online games idea that let you "BUY" extra weapons and features with voucher cards. Still, it's an intriguing business model, and before you unleash your rage in comments, you should know that Intel's just testing it out on this low-end processor in a few select markets for now (United States, Canada, the Netherlands, and Spain).

In fact, this is the very first time in history, when a hardware maker enables a software upgrade. Interestingly, how much time will it take hackers to enable the application to all owners of Pentium-based systems? Or maybe that was indeed the plan to slowdown sales of CPUs by Advanced Micro Devices?

AMD Zacate Demo Video

Demonstration of AMD's upcoming Fusion architecture Accelerated Processing Unit code named "Zacate." In the video Simon Solotko demonstrates accelerated web applications, flash video, 3D gaming, and HD video playback on the 18W TDP dual core APU "Zacate."



Zacate has two x86 cores fused together with a DirectX 11 graphics engine. AMD continues to claim that this architecture will work very well in ultra mobile form factors and that it will also be affordable.

Here are some pics of a running AMD Bobcat platform, specifically a Zacate APU running City of Heroes: Going Rogue.


The Zacates compared with a coin:

AMD's new stickers

AMD is working on new stickers that manufacturers put on their computers - the stickers, which have been around a while let the consumer know what type of products are inside.


We're used to see the Intel Inside, Centrino, AMD's Better by Design stickers, AMD's Vision or nVidia's sticker and of course the one for Windows, but now things may be getting out of hand when some machines are labeled "Skype Ready".

What's worse is that these stickers are often hard to remove, and can either tear or leave a residue that requires a cleaning job. The reasoning behind the stickers is that companies pay the manufacturer for the 'ad space' of placing a sticker right on the palm rest of a laptop.

AMD knows that computer logo stickers are getting out of hand, and for that reason has consolidated many of its logos into the Vision branding program. Right now, in fact, AMD's logo stickers are optional and vendors that choose not to use the sticker are not penalized in terms of marketing dollars.

AMD is designing case badge stickers to be less sticky. The new stickers will be able to be peeled off more easily, and with little to no residue left behind. This clearly shows that they are taking it a step further and siding with the end users who take them off anyway. If only Microsoft would follow this advice. AMD's new stickers should be out sometime next year.

Toshiba's Nile-powered Satellite T235D

For someone who still considers 13" notebooks to offer the best blend of portability and functionality, we saw a lot to like in the Toshiba Satellite T235D. Weighing less than four pounds and measuring only 0.7" at its thinnest point, the larger form factor gets you not just a bigger LCD panel, but also a larger keyboard and touchpad.


Processor AMD Turion II Neo K625 1.5GHz
Memory 4GB DDR3-800 (2 DIMMs)
Chipset AMD M880G
Graphics Mobility Radeon HD 4225 integrated graphics
Display 13.3" TFT with WXGA (1366x768) resolution and LED backlight
Storage Toshiba MK3265GSX 320GB 2.5" 5,400 RPM hard drive
Audio Stereo HD audio via Realtek codec
Ports 2 USB 2.0,1 eSATA/USB 2.0 combo port,1 HDMI
1 VGA, 1 RJ45 10/100 Ethernet via Realtek controller
1 analog headphone output,1 analog microphone input
Expansion slots 1 MMC/SDHC
Communications 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi via Atheros AR9285
Input devices Chiclet keyboard
Synaptics capacitive touchpad
Internal microphone
Camera 0.3-megapixel webcam
Dimensions 12.7" x 8.8" x 0.7-1.03" (323 x 224 x 18-26 mm)
Weight 3.9 lbs (1.8 kg)
Battery 6-cell Li-Ion (61 Wh)


This particular variant of the T235D-S1345 sells for $599.99 at Newegg. The cheapest 13" laptops with Intel CULV processors, like Acer's Aspire AS3810TZ or Toshiba's own T235-S1310, are priced almost identically at around $590-600.