AMD Phenom II Breaks 7GHz Barrier

7.08GHz. That's the record-shattering speed an AMD Phenom II processor was overclocked to using a massive amount of liquid helium. You can watch the whole process in this documentary video set to one kickass soundtrack. [Crunchgear]

AMD's Atom-Mauling Bobcat and High-End Bulldozer Chips

Sure, AMD's sorta reveling in getting handed $1.25 billion by Intel, but more importantly, they've just revealed the future of AMD chips: The promised Atom competitor Bobcat, and a new high-end architecture called Bulldozer. More »

Intel Pays AMD $1.25 Billion To End Antitrust, Patent Wars

In case you were wondering if Intel's business practices were as shady as the European Commission and the NY Attorney General think they are, look no further than this: Intel is paying $1.25 billion—plus frills—to avoid fighting. More »

Remainders - Stuff We Didn't Post (and Why)

Insane Graphics Card Packs 2GB Memory and Six (Yes, Six) DisplayPort Ports...Volcano Prevention Efforts May Result in Volcano Eruption...Makeshift Bike Rack Attaches to Street Signs...PC Built Inside a Classy-as-Hell Leather and Wood Chest... More »

Intel Hit With a Massive Antitrust Suit, In the US This Time

Remember how Intel got smacked in the face with a $1.45 billion fine in the EU for shadily suffocating AMD into submission? Today, New York's Attorney General has brought the fight to the US. This is going to get messy. More »

PC Makers May Have Too Much Stock, Deals On the Way?

Sounds like PC makers might have missed Ballmer's call for tempered Windows 7 expectations. There's a chance that they're sitting on a glut of inventory now, is there any hope that excess stock will translate to even better holiday deals? More »

Rumor: ATI Locked in for Next-Gen Xbox Graphics?

Nothing is official, but Fudzilla's sources suggest Microsoft liked the Xbox 360's Xenos graphics enough to stay with ATI for its next console, possibly slated for 2012. Given the lead-time, it may even be a 28-nanometer chip. [Fudzilla via CrunchGear]

ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series Is First to Support DirectX 11, Drive 180 Inches of Monitors

Do you remember that crazy, 6x30-inch monitor rig by AMD? Well their upcoming ATI Radeon HD 5800 series graphics cards are what drive the uber display. More »

AMD Confirms Six-Core Consumer Processors Codenamed "Thuban"

Just one day before Intel's IDF conference, AMD dropped a little bit of a bomb on us, confirming that they will bring hexa-core processors to consumer computers. Even better, they'll be backwards compatible with existing AM3 and AM2+ motherboards. More »

AMD Athlon II X4 620: Four Cores for $99

AMD's new Athlon II X4 chips are like a Phenom II minus the L3 cache. But they're super-cheap: $99 (2.6GHz-620), and $122 (2.8Ghz-630). Also looks like they hold their own against the $150 Core 2 Quad 8200: [Maximum PC]

AMD’s Next-Gen Ultrathin Notebook Platform Promises 1080p Video and Decent Battery Life

We have already told you there are gonna be more rail thin Windows 7 notebooks than you can count—most packing new Intel ULV chips—but AMD's promising 1080p video playback capabilities and solid battery life. More »

AMD Vision Takes Complicated Processor Stickers off Laptops…Kinda

Alright AMD, I'm feeling what you're putting down. Instead of stickers with XY and Z processor names taking up palmrests, you'd rather just tell people what the computer can do. More »

Why Laptop Battery Claims Are So Useless, And Why That Won't Soon Change

It's one of those things we take for granted: official laptop battery life claims have an extremely tenuous relationship with reality. Not surprisingly, everyone's using the same tricks to conjure their silly estimates—and they don't plan on stopping. More »

AMD Unveils World's First DirectX 11 Graphics Processor, Takes It for a Spin in Public

AMD demoed their buzzed-about DirectX 11 graphics processor at the Computex show in Taiwan, offering proof that they're making progress in getting to market first with their product. More »

Athlon II CPU Echoes the Glory Days as AMD's First Cheap 45nm Chip

It not's surprising right after its 40th birthday, AMD's trying to recall the better days: The Athlon II X2 makes an official sequel out of the Athlon name for its cheap 45nm chip, starting at $87. More »

AMD to Intel: Nyah Nyah Nyah Nyah Nyah

After the European Union smacked Intel with a $1.45 billion fine for breaking antitrust laws, AMD responded in the most mature way possible: By mercilessly rubbing it in on the front page of its site. More »

Intel Smacked With Staggering $1.45 Billion Fine in Euro Antitrust Case

In the largest trust-busting fining in EU history—about twice as severe as the infamous Microsoft antitrust ruling of 2004 and a hair worse than the ensuing $1.44 billion penalty for noncompliance—Intel has been ordered to pay $1.45 billion by European Commission regulators. What the hell did they do? More »

Despite a Horrible Quarter, AMD Gains on Intel

Exhibiting just about every symptom of a suffering company, AMD isn't in great shape. But through a brutal, money-bleeding Q1, they actually caught up with their chief rival a little. Ha, what? More »

AMD's $69 2.8GHz Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition CPU Reviewed (Verdict: Not Bad For the Price)

Years ago I used to build with AMD processors because I was looking for decent power at an affordable price. Their new Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition claims to do that for only $69. More »

Apple Hires Hardcore Graphics Guy To Build Something

It's unclear what Bob Drebin, CTO of AMD's graphics group, previous creator of Nintendo GameCube's graphic chip, is going to do at Apple, but our guess is either make a graphics chip for an iPhone/Tablet/eBook, or work on Snow Leopard's GPU processing. [All Things D]

AMD Continues to Hemorrhage Money, Mindshare Through Q1

Q1 results are in for the processor industry's #2, and they're ugly. This news, combined with recent spinoffs, makes the company look kind of sick—and its executives' obvious lack of optimism doesn't really help matters. More »

OLPC to Ditch Old Friend AMD for ARM-Based Processors

Despite being an original sponsor of the OLPC project, AMD processors will not be used in the upcoming XO-2 touchscreen netbook. Instead, in an interesting move, ARM chips will take on the computing load. More »

Ex-Apple Engineers' Caustic Startup Promises 200x Faster Ray-Tracing Graphics by 2010 (Suck It, Crysis)

Caustic Graphics, a startup from ex-Apple engineers, thinks their approach to 3D graphics—ray-tracing—will result in way more realistic eye candy than you see today, with chips that are 200x faster than today's by 2010. More »

Seagate's SATA3 Is Twice as Fast As Current Hard Drives

Right now, you're probably working on a SATA-based hard drive, with a transfer speed of 150MBps (SATA) or 300MBps (SATA2). Meanwhile, Seagate just demonstrated their tentative SATA3 spec, which reaches speeds of 600Mbps. More »

AMD Phenom II Quad Core Reviewed: Great Today, But Tomorrow's Cloudy

Ars reviews AMD's latest quad-core, the Phenom II, against a barrage of Intel chips and finds that while it "puts AMD back on the map" against today's chips, AMD's got a "long-term problem." [Ars Technica]

Next Intel Atom's Biggest Upgrade Is Its Price

Some details have emerged about Intel's Atom N280 processor, the successor to the wildly popular N270 that drove last year's netbook craze. In short, it's not looking like much of an update. More »

Intel Also Designing Processor for Low-Cost, Ultrathin Laptops

Just days after we heard about AMD's oddly-positioned processor for ultrathin laptops, the Neo, Intel is reported to be working on something almost identical. Are these bridge laptops the secret next big thing? More »

AMD's Neo Processor Ignores the Atom, Gives Netbooks the Tiny Cold Shoulder

AMD's anticipated answer to the Atom is coming soon, but there's a catch: It's not an answer to the Atom. It's more expensive, faster, sucks more power, and isn't intended for netbooks. Oops! More »

AMD Shows Off Phenom II Processor's Headroom, By Overclocking to 5GHz

From AMD's upcoming chip roadmaps we know the Phenom II is due out early next year, and it's AMD's second 45nm chip, but in a recent show and tell session AMD demonstrated the "overhead" built into the chip by overclocking one to a crazy 5GHz. It did take a special CO2 sublimation cooling unit that carries the danger of suffocating you if you use it in a small room, but what the hey. With a liquid nitrogen cooling system the chip was easily pushed way over 5 gigs. You may think "yeah, I could overclock anything with that stuff!" but it should be noted that with fairly normal high-end air-cooling the chips could get up to 4GHz. It'll be interesting to watch AMD's battle with Intel's i7 play out. [PCPerspective]

Get Ready for Cheap Nvidia Graphics Cards

ATI has been hitting Nvidia hard with its 4000-series big guns like the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and they're starting to feel it, with ATI successfully clawing away marketshare from Nvidia. Which has Nvidia skurred. So, sources say, Nvidia's readying a barrage of price cuts to keep the territory loss to a minimum. More »

AMD Has No Interest in Netbooks, None

You may be wondering why every netbook we write about seems to have the same Intel Atom processor. Some of it has to do with Intel's prominence in the entire processor market at the moment (which makes competition from Via little contest), and some of it has to do with AMD not stepping up to duke it out in the tiny laptop arena. AMD simply has no interest in the mini-laptop market, and CEO Dirk Meyer makes it abundantly clear: More »

AMD's Upcoming Conesus Netbook Chip Won't Stoop to MID Levels

In case you were wondering what somewhat troubled chip maker AMD was going to do in the next few years, the company's now revealed its completely updated roadmap that addresses everything from high end all-in-one desktops to netbooks and UMPCs. Especially interesting is it's treatment of its “Atom-killer”... which it says “won't be going to the bottom where Atom is going.” More »

AMD's Quad-Core "Shanghai" Server Opterons Go 45nm, Desktop Version In '09

AMD's just revealed its quad-core Opteron chips manufactured with its new 45nm process. Based on the "Barcelona" chipset, the new "Shanghai" chips have a few extra tweaks: the L3 cache has risen from 2 to 6MB, giving it about 35% boosted power performance over the previous generation. The new chips also have better power management, meaning they can draw up to 35% less power under idle conditions, are compatible with DDR2-800 memory for faster memory accessing, and are backwards compatible with existing Socket-1207 mounting. These 75W server chips are out now, between 2.3 and 2.7 GHz clock speeds, and a desktop variety, dubbed "Dragon" is due early 2009. [AMD and PCWatch]

Cray XT Jaguar: The New World's Fastest Supercomputer

Pumping out a sustained 1.64 quadrillion mathematical calculations per second (1.64 petaflops) after a recent technological overhaul, the Cray XT Jaguar is now the world's latest fastest supercomputer (huge disclaimer coming) for non-classified research. And once you see what's under the hood, you'll know why. More »