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Lenovo dropped AMD based PCs due to Intel deal in 2006

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

AMD vs Intel

The European Commission has recently made public e-mail exchanges between Intel and various computer manufacturers that highlight anti-competitive deals Intel made to keep AMD processor products out of PCs over the past few years.

In particular, a Lenovo executive is quoted as writing in an internal e-mail in December of 2006:

Late last week Lenovo cut a lucrative deal with Intel. As a result of this, we will not be introducing AMD-based products in 2007 for our Notebook products.

Of course Lenovo wasn’t the only group influenced here, but of the other major PC manufacturers Lenovo is the only one to never offer AMD mobile processors (they did at one time offer a couple AMD desktop processors in some bottom-barrel systems).

Even HP, who has long been the relative champion of AMD mobile technology in several of its products, was found succumbing to the financial incentives offered by Chipzilla:

In an e-mail written in July 2002 during the negotiation of the rebate agreement between HP and Intel, an HP executive wrote: “PLEASE DO NOT… communicate to the regions, your team members or AMD that we are constrained to 5 percent AMD by pursuing the Intel agreement.”

Opinion
I encourage you to read the full article and others about the European Union’s anti-trust actions against Intel. And Intel’s actions certainly cross the anti-competitive line. We won’t debate economics here, but let me say this:

AMD’s mobile products haven’t been competitive in performance or power consumption in a while. And let’s not forget their nearly complete lack of marketing. They are severely disadvantaged in size and thus capitol compared to Intel, explaining a number of their deficits, but competitive products are needed to be competitive.

Source: [PCWorld]

Tested: Intel is faster with longer battery life than AMD

Thursday, August 6th, 2009
Gateway NV52 and NV58 notebooks - from Anandtech.com

Gateway NV52 and NV58 notebooks - from Anandtech.com

The folks over at Anandtech took two identical notebooks, save for the opposing Intel and AMD CPU’s, and gave their batteries a pounding. Guess who won?

Win might be a little misleading. Among several different battery tests, covering the spread from idle to DVD playback, runtime on the Intel system surpassed the AMD version by 20-35%. Keep in mind these notebooks are identical save for the CPU and chipset, being Gateway models NV58 (Intel) and NV52 (AMD). While this article didn’t test performance, it has been well established that the Core 2 Duo lineup is leaps and bounds faster than any mobile chip from AMD.

While the Turion 64 X2 should be a bit less power hungry than the Athlon 64 X2 tested here, performance will drop even more and it still won’t make up the 28% average difference in runtime. As I said on my soapbox last week, AMD doesn’t need a netbook CPU. It needs a mobile CPU to compete in the notebook space in the first place. While in this instance the AMD-based Gateway notebook is $80 cheaper, that alone isn’t enough to keep them in the game. It doesn’t help that several PC manufacturers don’t even offer AMD-based notebooks.

Source: [Anandtech]

Gateway-AMD netbook tested, compared to Intel Atom

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

acer-751-gateway-lt3103

Gateway’s LT3103u is essentially an AMD-based netbook, or the closest thing to it, and has just been reviewed & compared to the new Acer Aspire One 751h.

Last week I was on my soapbox talking about how AMD didn’t need netbooks and while some were criticizing them of not even being in the netbook market, I pointed out Gateway’s use of an AMD chip in their 11.6-inch machine priced around $400 – ala netbook. The folks at TechReport have gotten their hands on Gateway’s makeshift notebook and compared it to its very close cousin, the Acer Aspire One 751h. Both are 11.6-inch machines and since they share the same family tree, the chassis and overall design are very similar.

What follows at the link below is a very detailed review with some very telling test results. I won’t spoil it all, but let’s just say that neither system is terribly sufficient for anything remotely strenuous. If you like high resolution video, even YouTube HD or Hulu HD, you’re out of luck. The AMD chip, which is actually a single core Athlon 64 X2 of yore, has a bit more horsepower, but gives up a couple hours of battery life for it. Hit the link for all the juicy details

Source: [The Tech Report]

New AMD integrated graphics to spank competitors

Friday, July 31st, 2009

ati_mobility_radeon_4000

Intel may lead the integrated graphics space in sheer volume, but NVIDIA and AMD (courtesy their acquisition of ATI Technologies) lead in features and performance. AMD is looking to step their game up and release a new graphics chipset that will have a sizeable lead over even NVIDIA’s offerings.

If you have a netbook or opted for the longer battery life option on your notebook, chances are you have a set of Intel integrated graphics. While these are great for minimizing power consumption and offer simple, effective dual display control (compared to AMD/ATI’s puzzling interface), they are very lacking in features and performance. HD video? Not so much. Gaming? Dream on.

NVIDIA’s Ion platform threatens to bring suitable HD playback to netbooks and at the heart of it is the GeForce 9400M GPU, which has a home in a number of other notebooks as an Intel integrated graphics substitute. AMD is getting ready to fire back with the Radeon HD 4200, codenamed RS880. It’s looking like the 4200 will bring a hefty 15% performance increase over competitors, which would include the well respected 9400M.

The big question on my mind is if it can handle HD and speed things up without killing too much battery life. Either way it doesn’t do much for me without Flash acceleration, which the Broadcom HD Accelerator should have later this year.

Source: [TheInq]

Read posts related to HD video

AMD calls for new battery life standards

Monday, March 16th, 2009

ThinkPad batteriesAMD’s chief marketing office, Nigel Dessau, wrote on his blog recently about laptop battery life standards. He notes that in other industries, a product’s “time of usability” is generally noted by more than one figure: with cars you have city and highway Miles per Gallon, with cell phones you have Standby and Talk Time run-times, and so on.

Nigel is calling for a similar “Idle” and “Heavy Usage” metric for laptops, to better educate consumers as to what they are buying into. He even goes as far as to run tests on various Intel and AMD based systems using his proposed benchmarking suite, to highlight the differences.

While Nigel’s post doesn’t specifically call-out Intel, he does include test results for Intel systems and shows the drastic difference in battery life between the different test methodologies. A Wall Street Journal blogger covering Dessau’s post contacted Intel for their feedback:

Intel doesn’t seem too inclined to converse about the topic in this fashion. “There are many ways to measure battery life,” a spokeswoman for the company says in an email. “We believe the best way to determine how to measure battery life is by making proposals and debating it in industry consortiums and not via blog post.”

Ouch. Apparently Intel doesn’t really care about the post, perhaps because they haven’t seen competition from AMD in quite some time. Hit the links below for more details & the actual test results between AMD’s proposed benchmarks.

How do you consumers view battery runtime figures? Are they a big factor in your purchasing decisions? Are they detailed enough for you?

AMD blog post

WSJ blog post