Gizmodo: athlon

Super Cheap, Super Small Lenovo X100E Leaks

Dan Nosowitz — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:45:04 EST

Lenovo's new X100E ultrathin laptop just leaked out, and it's looking pretty sweet: 11.6-inch screen, redesigned chiclet keyboard, a supposed starting price of less than $500, and colors. Colors, you guys. On a ThinkPad.

The X100E looks to be a substantial physical redesign from Lenovo, who typically falls so thoroughly on the function side of the form vs. function debate that they may not even be aware there is another side. The new chiclet (or "island") keyboard looks great, much less busy than previous ThinkPad layouts, and the overall design seems to have calmed down significantly. Hell, it'll even be available in colors. Colors! From Lenovo! (Looks like red, white and black are the extent of the palette, but still).

It should be packing a low-power AMD Athon "Neo" processor, 4GB of memory, up to 500GB of hard drive storage, and boast a 5.1-hour battery life while weighing less than 3 pounds. But the most enticing part has to be the price: Previous ThinkPads have been extremely pricey, often even more than equivalent Macs, yet the X100E is rumored to come in at $500 to start. No info quite yet on a release date, but we'll keep you updated. [Ubergizmo]

AMD Athlon II X4 620: Four Cores for $99

Danny Allen — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 01:20:00 EDT

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

Sean Fallon — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:12:00 EDT

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.

So far reviews have been generally positive, with the consensus being that the 2.8GHz chip with 2MB of L3 cache isn't spectacular, but it can deliver enough performance to handle the latest games. Because it's a Black Edition, users are going to want to overclock this thing, and the Overclocker's Club concluded that while it can't stand up to triple and quad cores, it could beat the Athlon X2 7750 as well as the Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 in several tests. The overclocking process was a bit tedious and they could only push it to x1.5 over stock, but overall it gives you a decent bang for your buck. If you are looking for additional opinions on the 7850, Engadget has rounded up several reviews. [AMD and Engadget]

AMD Still Going 'Asset Light', Poops Out 500 Employees

John Herrman — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 06:04:40 EST

Spinning off their entire manufacturing arm wasn't the end of AMD's new "asset light" business plan — the manufacturer has cut 500 jobs from its remaining workforce around the world. The worst news is that these cuts were planned before everyone became poor last month, so it's hard to shake the feeling that things still aren't going too well for AMD. It'd be sad to see processors become a one horse race, but that's what it's starting to look like. [Reuters]

AMD Processor Roadmap Leaked Online: Quad-Core "Deneb" Phenoms in January

Kit Eaton — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:45:09 EDT

AMD's immediate processor plans have been leaked in the form of a PowerPoint slide to Spanish site CHW.net. Dual-core "Brisbane" Athlons at 2.6GHz are due in October, alongside "Toliman" triple-core Phenoms. November sees the single-core "Lima" Athlon chip, obviously destined for low-power devices, since it runs at 1.6GHz and draws just 15W. Most interesting to processor fanatics will be the 45nm Phenoms slated for a January 8th launch. Both are quad-core "Deneb" chips, one running at 2.8GHz, one running at 3GHz and both drawing a chunky 125W of power. The "ultra-value client" devices scheduled for November are also intriguing: AMD's answer to Intel's Atom perhaps? [CHW.net via Reghardware]

AMD Busts Out Low-powered Athlons and First 3GHz CPU

Louis Ramirez — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 10:56:32 EST

AMD fans looking for a few energy efficient chips now have the option of choosing from the new 3500+ and 3800+ Athlon 64s. Both single-core processors are based on 65nm technology (like Intel's Core 2 Duos). The difference is that AMD's chips draw only 45 watts of power...

whereas Intel's draw around 65. So if you're trying to cut back on costs or need a quiet living room PC, AMD's new chips (although late to the game) are the better bet. On the other end of the scale, there's the Athlon 64 X2 dual-core 6000+, AMD's first 3GHz CPU, which for those keeping score, is AMD's fastest CPU to date (though it still doesn't topple Intel's best). AMD's new chip is already being packed inside some of Alienware's top models. The latter is selling in bulk for $464 while the 3500+ and 3800+ are going for $88 and $93, respectively. – Louis Ramirez

Press Release [AMD]

Velocity Micro Shipping Raptor Signature Edition Quad SLI Gaming PC

Charlie White — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 09:48:32 EST

Velocity Micro is now shipping the Velocity Micro Raptor Signature Edition which it calls the world's fastest gaming PC. It s packing NVIDIA Quad SLI (~~Scan Line Interleave~~ Scalable Link Interface) technology using four NVIDIA Geforce 7900 GPUs along with an NVIDIA nForce 4 SLI MCP (multichip package) motherboard.

This is a step beyond what NVIDIA announced at CES, touting quad SLI with its GeForce 7800 GTX GPUs. The PC also has an AMD Athlon64 FX-60 dual core processor, part of the FX series that's popular with gamers. This coupled with NVIDIA Quad SLI is what Velocity Micro says makes this the world's fastest gaming computer.

The Raptor Signature Edition PC is now available for $5995.

Product page [Velocity Micro]