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Hey hey I forgot about the Z80 i got one of those still to this day, lol
 


And here's AMD up at bat, doin' a pooch 😀:

Having to print a retraction or deliver information that is totally opposite of what we presented in an article is something we dread, in fact, it is probably the worst single event a reviewer can imagine. Unfortunately, we have to do that today as our coverage on the 785G chipset contains information that appears to be incorrect now after several conversations with AMD this morning.

Let’s just rip the Band-Aid off quickly here. We have touted, as have many others, that the 785G chipset provides multi-channel LPCM audio output. We went over it in our press briefings from AMD and in previous conversations with them and others. It turns out that in retail boards and with the current 9.8 (8.634a) driver set that an audio block exists which limits LPCM output to two-channels. In other words, the 785G is no different from the 780G/790GX chipsets in this regard.

As of now, our initial preview coverage and review is incorrect regarding this feature set. For most users, this will not matter, as two-channel LPCM is available along with 5.1 S/PDIF audio outputs through the HDMI port. However, for the serious HTPC crowd, the lack of multi-channel LPCM is a huge drawback when selecting a platform that will be the centerpiece of your media center. The Intel G41/G43/G45 and NVIDIA GF8200/9300 series of chipsets fully support multi-channel LPCM output as does AMD’s own HD 4xxx series of video cards.
Click to expand...

Arf-arf!! [:thegreatgrapeape]
 
Well at least they didnt let that go on and on not saying anything. That would be reallllllll bad. As with every other industry it is a given that some problems, miscomunications, recalls, DOA products and so much more are a reality and not reallly a problem, that is unless it is a continuing, reoccuring and unadressed screw up. The LPCM outpu on the 785G board really blows and kinda set AMD back a little bit on the HPC market, but whoopity doo. AMD I dont think is really concerned with the HTPC crowd too much as there are not too many products out there for this purpose FOR AMD.
 


Heh, my post was more of a friendly poke in the ribs at JDJ than anything else, seeing as how he had to post the Intel SSD goof-up. Twice. 😀
 
However, THIS could be an explanation of AMD's declining margins last quarter:

Record shipments of notebooks to US consumers in second quarter, IDC reports

Notebooks represented three out of four computers shipped to the U.S. consumer market during the second quarter of this year, IDC reported Thursday.

The preliminary figures from IDC’s PC Tracker indicate that the consumer appetite for mobile computers remains unchallenged despite the economic malaise affecting general demand in the U.S. market.

The preliminary data shows that the U.S. PC market, which includes desktops and laptops, contracted by about 1.4 percent compared to an earlier projection of -3.1 percent, and this result can be attributed entirely to the consumer notebook market.

Of the four major PC markets assessed in the preliminary results – consumer portables, consumer desktops, commercial portables and commercial desktops – consumer portables managed positive growth while the others had moderate to severe contraction.

The main indication of consumer attraction to mobile computing is that the consumer notebook growth is estimated at a solid 63 percent year on year. While the commercial desktop and notebook shipments fell by 25 percent, as a result of substantially reduced IT budgets, and the consumer desktop market was down by 9 percent, the consumer notebook market expanded to a new record of more than 6.3 million units.

Although the performance of the consumer laptop market defies the economic realities facing the average consumer, several factors are conspiring to keep that market in positive territory.

First is the fact that notebooks are must-have products that combine entertainment, communications, and productivity features required by consumers. As such, even with economic stress, consumers will continue to invest in such tools to enhance their entertainment, educational, and professional environments.

The second factor stimulating demand is pricing. Notebook prices continue to fall with high-performance units available at bargain prices, often below $600. An environment of eroding prices has been made possible by continued improvements in manufacturing capabilities, a reduction in component prices, and tight competition among vendors.

The third factor that is helping the consumer notebook market maintain momentum is the emergence of the mini-notebook or netbook form factor. This is a product that is designed for maximum mobility at a fraction of the standard notebook price.
Click to expand...

AMD doesn't have a real netbook competitor to the Atom yet, and their improved mobile solution still isn't out yet either...
 
At present, AMD contracts with (and is the sole customer of) GlobalFoundries to produce its processors at one of two foundries. The first fab, F1M1, is a 4.5 year-old facility that initially debuted at the 65nm node using 300mm wafers, but has since begun transitioning to 45nm. The second fab, F1M2, née Fab 38, née Fab 30) is currently producing 45nm processors using 300mm wafers; GlobalFoundries has previously stated that this facility is also working on deploying 32nm bulk silicon. Comments made during AMD's second-quarter conference call indicate that the company is still selling far more 65nm products than 45nm; AMD doesn't expect to see 45nm parts account for 60 percent or more of total shipments until the fourth quarter of this year.

Let's take a moment and consider AMD. It's been at least three years since it posted a profitable quarter, the corporation has cut jobs left and right, and has drawn its break-even point down to just $1.3 billion in revenue, down from $1.5 billion before the economic crisis tore things up. Equipment sales, the well-regarded Phenom II launch last January, and Strong performance over the last year from its ATI division have collectively helped stem the flow of red ink, but never halted it. AMD's 45nm execution has thus far been excellent—the company introduced its own hexa-core Istanbul processor on June 1, five months ahead of schedule—but Sunnyvale is walking a financial tightrope in which every decision and product introduction must be weighed against that $1.3 billion break-even point CEO Dirk Meyer has pledged to reach by the end of 2009.

Given the reality of its present position, AMD has an obligation to its shareholders to compete only in those markets where it can maximize return while minimizing cost. AMD has never done particularly well in mobile; there's no reason to expect that the arrival of a netbook product would change that. With R&D financially constrained and the company's expected capital expenditures for 2009 cut to $100 million (down from $150 million), AMD doesn't have the luxury of sitting down and designing a true Atom competitor. The best the company could hope to do in the short-term would be to build a 45nm Athlon II at minimal clockspeeds and very little cache. Such a chip might find traction in the highest-end netbooks, but it would be a kludgy Atom competitor at best.

An AMD-designed Atom-like processor would be little more than a speedbump for Intel's steamroller at this point in time, and AMD knows it. The company's solution to Atom, at least thus far, is to attempt to create a market at a price point and performance level in the space between Atom and lower-end Intel mobile Celeron parts. This approach is exemplified in the HP dv2, though CNET blogger Brooke Crothers notes that HP's new baby may not be ramping well. Nevertheless, AMD has blocked out its own price/performance segment precisely because it has no answer to Atom in the near future.

AMD's lack of a netbook processor may be a theoretical weakness, but the company's decision to focus on desktop and server markets where it's historically been strongest is the right decision. The netbook market may be burning hot right now, but Sunnyvale's gross margins are already almost 50 percent lower than Intel's and its financial position, as previously noted, is precarious. AMD is obviously hoping to strengthen its mobile position with its upcoming "Tigris" platform refresh, but it'll be desktop and server markets that make or break Dirk Meyer's profitability promise. Netbooks, however tempting, will have to wait.
 
Ummm maaaybe. I disagree with the mobile end, as they really havnt had anything to offer until recently, and if you predate all the troubles, they didnt have chipsets or ATI either, which will make a difference in mobile.
Its simply not the same company it was 8 months ago, besides mentioning JUST the selloffs etc.
Mobile is there for AMD, they just have to turn it up a notch in that area
 


If it is, it doesn't seem to be impacting their discrete cards. Or Nvidia's IGPs.

Might just be a BIOS or driver bug. Typically you don't go to market promising something like this and not deliver EVENTUALLY with some kind of patch.
 
Advanced Micro Devices' server roadmap is solid but its mainstream mobile lineup is languishing. First, the good news. These days AMD is walking the talk. This is a radical change from the AMD of 2007-2008, which always seemed to have a hopper full of Intel-vanquishing paper processors that, if they did materialize, disappointed.

Fast forward to AMD's Tuesday earnings announcement, when the company said it was actually moving up the introduction its most sophisticated processor, the six-core Istanbul, to June.

And AMD has proved its silicon mettle at large server customers such as IBM and Sun Microsystems--the latter's executive vice president John Fowler had nothing but praise for AMD processors in high-end Sun server systems.

In a "Global Webcast" on server technology Wednesday, Patrick Patla, a vice president in AMD's server and workstation business, revealed a strong roadmap, saying that 8- and 12-core "Magny-Cours" processors will appear in 2010. "We're currently working on new processors which we expect will deliver more than 35 times the performance of the original single-core AMD Opteron processor released in 2003," Patla said in a statement.

Intel, of course, will also bring out many-core processors, but AMD is keeping pace, and, according to people who should know, like Sun's Fowler, maybe more than keeping pace.

Now, the bad news. This post today on CNET's Crave blog says it all: "One of our biggest issues with HP's Pavilion dv3z was its AMD processor, keeping it from beating out the performance of comparable 13- and 14-inch laptops with Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs." This is, by no means, the first review that expresses this sentiment. In short, AMD mobile platforms consistently come up short in the high-profile, burgeoning laptop market. Will AMD close the gap in 2009?

Maybe one answer to that question is AMD's Neo chip that powers the low-cost, ultra-thin HP Pavilion dv2 laptop. More than a Netbook but less than a mainstream laptop, this kind of sleek mobile device could eventually eclipse the high-end Netbook segment.

AMD CEO Dirk Meyer said Tuesday that the single-core Neo processor will get a dual-core sibling dubbed "Congo" by summer. A dual-core processor in this low-cost, MacBook-Air-for-the-masses category is a compelling proposition. AMD needs to stay ahead of the game, especially when Intel brings out chips for this category in the May-June timeframe.
Taken from C-NET- april 09

I'm not here to suggest a sea change in brewing, but I'll happily point out that the release of the Radeon HD 3000 series on the desktop went a long way toward renewing faith in ATI, and the newly debuted Radeon HD 4000 series has suddenly made NVIDIA's entire lineup look quaint at best, and overpriced at worst. So while AMD still hasn't recovered from the buyout, ATI is back, and this year, we're finally seeing the merger bear fruit.

While the 690G integrated graphics processor (IGP) was fairly impressive, it still never quite got past the simple fact that it's still an IGP. But the 780G chipset - basically an entire Radeon HD 2400 core crammed into an integrated graphics part - has successfully managed to bring low-end dedicated performance to the integrated graphics set while actually reducing power consumption compared to its predecessor in the process! And this part, coupled with some smart engineering from AMD's processor division, forms the foundation of the exciting new platform they dub "Puma" - a platform that validates AMD's purchase of ATI.



The Platform

So what is Puma? Puma is the codename for AMD's new platform, a budget analog to Intel's Centrino Duo platform. But don't mistake "budget" for "inferior" -- it's a target market, but AMD has some tricks up their sleeve that make Puma a very compelling choice.

In stores, Puma will be identifiable by the name "Turion Ultra," thereby smartly avoiding the problem that has plagued Intel's Centrino platform since its inception: Turion Ultra can refer to the platform or the processor.

AMD's Turion Ultra processor. The Turion Ultra is the first processor AMD has designed specifically for the mobile market; former Turions were basically Athlon 64s and Athlon 64 X2s with thermal characteristics good enough to make it in laptops. Yet the Turion Ultra, while its cores are basically unchanged from desktop Athlon 64 X2s, has inherited some architectural refinements from AMD's Phenom processors, including HyperTransport 3.0.

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AMD's "Puma" Mauls Intel
BY: Pulp, TabletPCReview.com Contributor
PUBLISHED: 7/2/2008

by Dustin Sklavos

AMD's mobile presence over the past couple years has been decidedly lackluster. Their processors have often been marred by poor battery life, mediocre performance, paper launches, or some combination of the three, and their saving grace has been a healthy presence in the budget laptop market.

Their buyout of ATI didn't do them any favors in the short term, either, with ATI's Radeon HD 2000 series being lackluster at best and disastrous at worst, leading to an eighteen month stagnation of the video card market resulting from an overconfident NVIDIA. And worse, an inability to capitalize on the mobile graphics market that started with the Radeon X1000 series only grew worse with the HD 2000 line.

I'm not here to suggest a sea change in brewing, but I'll happily point out that the release of the Radeon HD 3000 series on the desktop went a long way toward renewing faith in ATI, and the newly debuted Radeon HD 4000 series has suddenly made NVIDIA's entire lineup look quaint at best, and overpriced at worst. So while AMD still hasn't recovered from the buyout, ATI is back, and this year, we're finally seeing the merger bear fruit.

While the 690G integrated graphics processor (IGP) was fairly impressive, it still never quite got past the simple fact that it's still an IGP. But the 780G chipset - basically an entire Radeon HD 2400 core crammed into an integrated graphics part - has successfully managed to bring low-end dedicated performance to the integrated graphics set while actually reducing power consumption compared to its predecessor in the process! And this part, coupled with some smart engineering from AMD's processor division, forms the foundation of the exciting new platform they dub "Puma" - a platform that validates AMD's purchase of ATI.



The Platform

So what is Puma? Puma is the codename for AMD's new platform, a budget analog to Intel's Centrino Duo platform. But don't mistake "budget" for "inferior" -- it's a target market, but AMD has some tricks up their sleeve that make Puma a very compelling choice.

In stores, Puma will be identifiable by the name "Turion Ultra," thereby smartly avoiding the problem that has plagued Intel's Centrino platform since its inception: Turion Ultra can refer to the platform or the processor.

Puma is comprised of the same three types of parts as Centrino: processor, chipset, and wireless. Puma's processor is the Turion Ultra. The chipset is the mobile variant of AMD's 780G desktop chipset. The wireless is ...

Well, AMD diverges from Intel here. AMD allows the notebook manufacturer to use whatever wireless chipset they choose, while Intel only allows their own wireless to be used. AMD does cite this as a benefit, but I'm not sure I concur: my experience with Broadcom, Atheros, and Intel wireless parts has left me generally preferring the performance and stability of Intel's hardware. Your mileage may vary.

Turion Ultra Processor

First things first: AMD's Turion Ultra processor. The Turion Ultra is the first processor AMD has designed specifically for the mobile market; former Turions were basically Athlon 64s and Athlon 64 X2s with thermal characteristics good enough to make it in laptops. Yet the Turion Ultra, while its cores are basically unchanged from desktop Athlon 64 X2s, has inherited some architectural refinements from AMD's Phenom processors, including HyperTransport 3.0.



Additionally, the Turion Ultra offers more fine-grained clock speed control as well as allowing it to clock the cores independently of one another. It's also able to dynamically scale the HyperTransport as needed, resulting in a processor that can respond precisely as needed to workloads.

More improvements include an increase of processor cache from 1MB of L2 cache to 2MB (L2 cache is basically RAM built onto a processor) and support for up to DDR2-800. By themselves, these may not add up to much, but while memory speed has historically been for the most part unimportant to Intel's Core processors, it has had a more measurable impact on AMD's dual cores.

Unfortunately, the TDP (Thermal Design Power) hasn't changed from existing Turions: the Turion Ultra's lineup tops out at 35W, exactly the same wattage as its predecessors and exactly the same wattage as its Intel competition, though it bears mentioning Intel and AMD measure TDP differently. Given the improved power-saving characteristics, the Turion Ultra should offer at least marginally superior battery life to existing Turion X2s, but it may not be able to compete with Intel's Core 2 Duos in performance or battery life. Still, it's an improvement in an era where CPU power is already at a gross surplus.

The Turion Ultras available on initial release are the following:

Model
Speed
TDP

ZM-80
2.1GHz
32W

ZM-82
2.2GHz
35W

ZM-86
2.4GHz
35W




Radeon HD 3200 Graphics

The Radeon HD 3200 Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) at the center of Puma is perhaps the most exciting part of the platform, and rightfully so. It offers several features that Intel's IGPs simply can't touch and NVIDIA is struggling to keep up with.

First and foremost, the HD 3200 is one of the most - if not THE most - power-efficient IGPs available today. At the same time, it's easily the fastest, being basically an entire Radeon HD 2400 with virtually no changes made to it. As a result, it shares the benefits of that lineage, including two key features: 5.1 sound over HDMI and UVD (Unified Video Decoder). While sound over HDMI isn't a huge development, it's supported natively in the Radeon HD 3200, making design simpler for OEMs. It also allows easy connection to high-definition televisions, and personally I think laptops serving double duty as media center computers may wind up becoming a growing niche because of this.

UVD ...

The second, the Unified Video Decoder (UVD), is a big deal. UVD allows the computer to offload video decoding from the central processor to the graphics processor. While this isn't a big deal for watching DVDs or most any standard definition fare, watching high-definition content can cause processor usage to shoot straight up or even max out completely, leaving you with stuttering video. The inclusion of UVD allows for Blu-ray to continue trickling down the market as well as improving battery life by reducing processor strain in decoding high-definition video.

Gaming Performance ...

This isn't all. The Radeon HD 3200 is, in itself, a capable graphics processor that puts up numbers that nip at the heels of low-end dedicated graphics parts. It raises the bar and allows even budget buyers to play more modern games. Maybe not at the highest settings, but definitely playable. This is a far cry from Intel's competing parts: the existing X3100 is a punchline with profoundly hit-and-miss performance and support, and the even if the incoming X4500 winds up being three times faster than the X3100 as Intel claims, three times profoundly unplayable is generally still unplayable.

CrossFire ...

The HD 3200 also adds support for two different CrossFire schemes, dubbed Hybrid CrossFire and PowerXpress.

PowerXpress may be the more important of the two. One of the major drawbacks of dedicated graphics in notebooks is increased power draw, but PowerXpress doesn't just mitigate this problem, it basically solves it. When a Puma notebook is paired with a Radeon HD 3000 series dedicated GPU, the notebook can actually seamlessly switch between using the integrated HD 3200 and the dedicated graphics. This means that when you're plugged in, the notebook can run full bore with dedicated graphics, while when unplugged, the dedicated graphics can be shut down entirely and draw no power.

Hybrid CrossFire is the other big sell here. Basically, if the notebook is equipped with a dedicated Mobility Radeon HD 3400 series GPU, the HD 3400 can actually be run in tandem with the integrated HD 3200, generally resulting in about a 50% performance increase. This is a bigger deal than it appears because the 3400 is a pretty small, inexpensive, low-powered GPU to begin with. Try to imagine putting NVIDIA's low end GeForce 8400M GS in a laptop and the motherboard being able to boost the graphics performance by as much as 50%, and you start to see the value of this technology.

Everything Else

As mentioned before, the third component for a Puma notebook is wireless networking, and in its own way it seems kind of silly that this would even be part of it at all. When you look at the Turion Ultra processor and especially the Radeon HD 3200 integrated graphics part - along with the technology it leverages - any mention of "it should include a wireless card" just seems silly. You can't even buy a new notebook without a wireless card anymore.

Now one crucial point worth making is that Puma isn't designed for ultraportables; it's just a little too big and throws off just a little too much heat for that market, which has so far been dominated by Intel's low voltage and ultra low voltage processors. That said, it wouldn't surprise me to see it get down to the 12" neighborhood like the Turion X2 has.

Conclusion

AMD is wholeheartedly embracing the budget market sector right now, but the interesting thing is how compelling and how balanced a platform Puma is compared to Intel's Centrino and upcoming Centrino 2 platforms. The reality is that the importance of the GPU is growing. High-definition content is becoming more and more common, and there's growing interest in employing the GPU for purposes outside of gaming. Adobe, for example, has demonstrated its next edition of Photoshop being substantially accelerated by employing graphics hardware.

Suddenly the surplus of CPU power Intel's Centrino platform offers doesn't seem as compelling when you look at the GPU performance you often have to sacrifice. Dedicated graphics are easy to find on the Internet and in custom builds, but go into your local Best Buy or other retailer and the dedicated graphics parts suddenly become a bit of a rarity.

Puma's Radeon HD 3200 IGP ups the ante, and the Turion Ultra processor can help AMD stay competitive in the low end market until they can produce a faster architecture.

In the end, though, AMD's marketing is going to have to get the word out that they have the better platform. But if you're in the market for a budget laptop, Puma's the way to go.
 
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