AMD offering blueprint for $249 PC
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"Personal Internet Communicator" is geared toward families in so-called emerging markets, such as China and India.
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Desktop features BTX motherboard for improved airflow.
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Going native in Barcelona AMD has demo'd its upcoming quad-core Opteron server processor, a few days after launching the gamer-oriented Quad FX, which despite its name is a dual-core part.â¦
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Company will manufacture a dual-core PowerPC processor.
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(InfoWorld) - Wal-Mart opened its campaign for the back-to-school PC sales season on Wednesday by unveiling a $298 desktop from Everex that combines three of the most popular industry trends -- open-source software, a power-efficient processor, and a lack of "bloatware." The Everex Impact GC3502 uses Microsoft's Windows Vista OS but substitutes the OpenOffice.org 2.2 version of word processing and spreadsheet tools for the traditional Microsoft Office variety. The computer runs on a 1.5GHz C7-D processor from Via Technologies, a chip that meets lead-free environmental regulations and saves energy with low wattage demands. The sales price does not include a monitor but is still lower than comparable packages sold on Wal-mart's Web site, such as an HP Compaq Presario, an Acer America AcerPower FH Minitower, and a Dell Dimension desktop. PC vendors usually compete for customers by slashing prices during the eight-week back-to-school season, stretching from mid-July to mid-September. But Everex also hopes to attract buyers by avoiding the free "trial software" that annoys many users, according to Eugene Chang, a product manager at Everex, of Fremont, California. Dell followed a similar strategy on July 10 when itÂ withheld bloatwareÂ from its newÂ Vostro line of PCsÂ for small business users after a long campaign by bloggers and Dell customers against common practice by PC vendors of loading unrequested software onto new computers. Software companies fund the effort as a way to find new users. Although those features are popular, they could backfire on Everex because most U.S. consumers are not yet familiar with Via processors or OpenOffice software, one analyst said. "It's not surprising that Wal-Mart, of all retailers, will sell the $298 Everex desktop; it's a good marriage with their biggest audience -- budget buyers," said Toni DuBoise, a senior analyst with Current Analysis West. "But it has a couple of problems; one is that it uses a Via processor, which is almost unknown to U.S. consumers. And it runs at just 1.5 GHz, so it's unknown how it will handle Microsoft Vista," she said. "And running OpenOffice is kind of a unique tactic. It's anti-Microsoft as Microsoft obviously owns the market for productivity software. So users may have some concerns about compatibility."
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Blog: AMD announces its quad core server chips will ship in August
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In its ongoing battle with rival Intel, AMD announced the latest round of desktop CPU price cuts today. Check out this and other original content on CNET's blog network.
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Cheap as chips Yesterday, on the 6th September, AMD announced the launch of the latest member of its dual-core Athlon 64 X2 family however information about the 5200+ was limited to the tray price â US$403 per 1,000 â with no mention of the clock speed, TDP, cache, Socket and so on.â¦
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This morning, AMD announced its desktop-level integrated chipset combining its designs for systems and peripheral bus controllers with ATI's graphics logic, all in one package. AMD already has the lead in components for value-priced systems, and ATI's logic may help it maintain that lead. But as Intel has proven over the years, that effort might not always bear fruit.
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Quiet - someone might notice... AMD has quietly added a pair of top-of-the-line Athlon 64 X2 processors to its public price list. Missing from the list when AMD introduced its 65nm processors on 5 December, the 5400+ and 5600+ have now been added to the line-up. Shhhh, don't mention it - someone might want to buy one...â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) showed a laboratory version of its promised "Barcelona" quad-core Opteron 8000 server chip to analysts on Thursday, saying it planned to begin selling the product in the second quarter of 2007. AMDÂ will pitch the chip to users of high-end, commercial workstations and servers, who could see performance improvements of up to 70 percent in database applications and 40 percent in floating-point applications compared to AMD's dual-core "Rev F" Opteron. The demonstration Thursday, to analysts gathered in Berkeley, California, was AMD's second effort to show that it is keeping up with quad-core chips from rival Intel Corp. AMD also launched its "4x4" Quad FX Platform, a motherboard with two dual-core Athlon 64 FX-70 series chips intended for the desktop gaming market. Intel lost significant market share to AMD in 2006Â as it was criticized for being slow to produce chips that emphasized power efficiency instead of pure calculating speed. Intel hasÂ bounced back in recent monthsÂ with the launch of dual-core chips including the Core 2 Duo for desktops and Xeon 5100 "Woodcrest" for servers. On Nov. 14 Intel reached the market first with quad-core chips, with the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 for gamers and Xeon 5300 for servers. Intel has alsoÂ led the industry in converting its chip designsÂ from the 90-nanometer process to 65 nm, including all four processors mentioned above. In response, AMD has criticized Intel's quad-core design as merely gluing two dual-core Woodcrest chips together, whereas the Barcelona chip includes all four cores on a single piece of silicon. Analysts are divided on the impact of that distinction, and say they cannot measure the difference until they compare benchmarks from both finished versions. Still, AMD trumpeted Barcelona as an engineering achievement that marks the company's shift to 65-nm architecture. By shrinking the processor die, AMD is able to improve power efficiency and squeeze an extra level of shared cache memory onto the design, said John Fruehe, AMD's worldwide market development manager for server and workstation products. "As you add more cores, it becomes less about brute force and more about the efficiency of how many things you can do at once, and how efficiently you can order them," he said. "From a customer perspective, those who will see the biggest bang for their buck with quad-core are people running applications like larger databases. The more threaded an application is, the more benefit you get." The users who will see the greatest return on their quad-core investment are users of multithreaded applications like CRM (customer relationship management), ERP (enterprise resource planning), e-commerce and virtualization, Fruehe said. AMD will first launch the Barcelona design on a four-socket board (running four quad-core chips) and a two-socket board (running two quad-core chips). The company will wait until later in 2007 to launch single-socket Barcelona boards, which are used mainly to develop new applications for the larger servers or to run Web farms to handle multiple simultaneous processing requests. AMD expects servers vendors such as Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. to adopt the new technology for their servers in 2007, although none of those companies has yet made a public announcement.
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This supercomputer deal is about more than speed.
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With starting hardware prices of $3,993 and $7,050 respectively, the IBM eServer(TM) p5-520 and p5-550 Express models are among the most cost-effective in the industry.
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Blog: It's cheaper than ever to take the quad-core plunge, but don't spend money on cores you don't need.
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Advanced Micro Devices Inc. next week plans to unveil a sub-$300 PC for the developing world as the company tries to get a jump on a potentially enormous market.
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Wants to sell chips, not finished systems AMD isn't quitting the low-cost, developing world-oriented PC arena after all - it's simply changing its business model, the company has claimed. Instead of manufacturing a box - such as the Personal Internet Communicator, aka 'Emma', it canned earlier this month - it will devise reference platforms system builders can use as a foundation for their own products.â¦
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Not everyone is ready to do a complete switch over to the new Intel LGA 775 platform quite yet and perhaps for good reason. Should you decided you would like to say take a peek at it without having to &quot;Sell