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My understanding was that VT on AMD CPUs (AMD-V) is always active and does not need to be enabled by the BIOS. Use this utility to confirm.

Have you thought about trying Eyefinity? As it seems to me Eyefinity is gonna be the way things end up, as it is cheaper to go triple monitors than it is to make one mega screen. And if you are wanting it for coding according to Jeff Atwood you just can't beat coding on triple monitors.

From here. Perhaps this is the wrong chipset, if so, please correct me. If not, emphasis on the word "discrete".

That'll show me to do my research. Checked up on the Radeon HD 3300 (which is not part of the HD 3000 series...?). True enough, it does look pretty damned good. However, I will refer to my point above that although this may be enough for some, even most people, there are still those of us who either require or desire more power than even that particular set has to offer.

The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3000 Series of discrete graphics allow you to experience the power of HD with graphics processing designed for how you work and play

From here. Perhaps this is the wrong chipset, if so, please correct me. If not, emphasis on the word "discrete".

This is actually what he *needs*:

http://www.intel.com/cd/business/enterprise/emea/eng/189154.htm
http://www.amd.com/gb-uk/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_14397,00.html

No one at the company had the forethought to do something like this. The same could also be accomplished merely by purchasing 20 identical Dells or HPs. Every serious vendor offers business platforms for a 2-3 year period, to solve or prevent this exact problem. The problem was purchasing dissimilar hardware to begin with. Now you're paying the price. *Next time* do everything you can to push $employer to buy identical machines. Explain the reasons for doing so. Use the data at the Intel and AMD sites above to make your case.

In other news, AMD has a blog article on it's soon to be launched competitor to this, Socket G32 8-core/12-core Opterons:
http://blogs.amd.com/work/2010/02/22/magny-cours-is-right-on-schedule-and-shipping-to-customers/

Ok, so that is interesting, but only just... This isnt desktop Linux so Im not sure why you are saying "eat that".

The OS is DMAed directly into system memory. Ok, thats kind of spiffy. That means its been "pre-loaded" which is already located.

Let me put this in perspective. Back in the mid 90s I worked at AMD. On the ÉlanSC520 system on a chip (133mhz 486 class):

• Booting of Windows CE, QNX, Psos, VXworks and other real time operating systems to a running state (like these guys) was measured in 100s of milliseconds.
• Even better, the SC520 supported Execute in Place (XIP) - FLASH was directly conntected and had a controlerl off the CPUs cache - it was fast. This let the OS and applicatoins run right out of flash from reset - no "booting" at all. Systems could easily initialize in 10s of MS and be fully running - with graphics in a few 100ms. This included a running network stack. Pretty spiffy for the old school.
• There was a company that was doing this with an early version of Linux back then too. Their company name started with an R - but I cannot remember the rest. I think someone bought them. This was fast too.

So, this really isnt that spectacular - cool yes, ground breaking no.

-Foredecker

Intel, the company which primarily makes IA32 and AMD64 processors

(emphasis mine)

Bet AMD is surprised. Intel should be ashamed of themselves.

Kind of sad performance but maybe someone can fix it.
http://math.ut.ee/~uraes/openssl-gpu/

18.5Gbps?
http://developer.amd.com/gpu_assets/AES.pdf

• Intel gave rebates to computer manufacturer A from December 2002 to December 2005 conditional on this manufacturer purchasing exclusively Intel CPUs
• Intel gave rebates to computer manufacturer B from November 2002 to May 2005 conditional on this manufacturer purchasing no less than 95% of its CPU needs for its business desktop computers from Intel (the remaining 5% that computer manufacturer B could purchase from rival chip maker AMD was then subject to further restrictive conditions set out below)
• Intel gave rebates to computer manufacturer C from October 2002 to November 2005 conditional on this manufacturer purchasing no less than 80% of its CPU needs for its desktop and notebook computers from Intel
• Intel gave rebates to computer manufacturer D in 2007 conditional on this manufacturer purchasing its CPU needs for its notebook computers exclusively from Intel.

...
For example, rival chip manufacturer AMD offered one million free CPUs to one particular computer manufacturer. If the computer manufacturer had accepted all of these, it would have lost Intel's rebate on its many millions of remaining CPU purchases, and would have been worse off overall simply for having accepted this highly competitive offer. In the end, the computer manufacturer took only 160,000 CPUs for free.

Actually this is one problem you can lay squarely at the feet of MSFT. Instead of investing in their core business and pushing Windows they have spent all this money on Xbox, and now it is coming back to bite them in the ass. How? Because a whole lot of new computers, along with a whole lot of windows licenses, are bought by those that like to game on Windows.

And since the x360, which in all likelihood be the same model they will be selling 3-5 years from now, due to the cost of designing a console, supports mostly DX9 game companies are designing for the x360 FIRST, and then putting out a shitty port and calling it "multiplatform" later. Which doesn't leave a whole lot of PC games left worth having, and the MMOs like WoW will frankly run just fine on a 3.2Ghz P4 with a 36xxHD AGP card.

This is why you have ATI pushing Eyefinity, and Nvidia pushing GPGPU, because ever since Ballmer took over it has been a big FU to gamers and their core markets. But MSFT better wake up and smell the stupid, because as the Linux guys will tell you, just about everything EXCEPT Windows gaming can be done on Linux just fine, with cheaper hardware and no licensing fees. All it is gonna take is a big OEM getting really pissed off at being burned on all those juicy gamer rig sales to really push Linux and cause the Ballmer monkey to crap his pants.

Windows 7 is definitely a step in the right direction, but if they don't push hard to get REAL games for it, instead of shitty console games with the word "multiplatform" tacked on (God I hate that fucking word) then it will all be for naught. I know many gamers that are still using XP, as thanks to DX9 there really isn't a compelling reason to switch, and Linux is getting better all the time. MSFT really needs to push their games division to put out REAL DX11 games for the PC, push their partners to do the same, and get it done ASAP if they don't want their marketshare to be dominated by XP with the Mac and Linux creeping up to bite them in the ass.

I used to buy $150+ cards to game with just about every year, and build a new PC (with a new Windows License) every other year just so I could crank up the purty. Now everything I play looks nice on a $60 ATI 4xxx card, and I doubt my quad core will be going anywhere for the better part of a decade. Why should it? DX9 is what 99% of the games are using, the few games that would need more powerful hardware are frankly ePeen tech demos like Crysis that are NOT fun, so why should I build bigger? Why should I buy a new Windows every other year so I can pass down my older machine? I can't find any reason to. And THAT is what MSFT needs to be worrying about. The x360 is doing just fine, it is PC gaming that is on life support. So Ballmer better get off his ass and get to work ASAP.

How many years was it again that they promised to produce open source graphic drivers for Linux?

Announced: September 7th, 2007: press release

Since then they've been catching up more and more, the HD5xxx/Evergreen/R800 instruction set was posted before Christmas so the docs are almost up to date, minus a few things like UVD2. Also AMD promised to help the open source community, not write the whole thing themselves and it's making big strides but there's also a lot of rework going on in xorg to support a modern desktop.

Um, the mobility 5870 has 800 Stream Processing Units and utilizes 1.04 billion 40nm transistors.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/notebook/graphics/ati-mobility-hd-5800/Pages/hd-5870-specs.aspx

I still use a 32 bit OS because I see no need in switching to a 64 bit OS. I'm currently running Ubuntu 32 bit on a 64 bit CPU, I really don't see the need in changing.

Recent benchmarks pin 64bit Ubuntu as faster than 32bit Ubuntu on a variety of operations.

Unless you want a huge amount of RAM, theres little need to get a 64 bit OS.

Not true

but a lot of software is 32 bit only.

Not a problem for FOSS, plus a 64bit kernel has no problem running 32bit apps (as per article there is a 1-2% hit, but

So don't buy a branded box.

Build your own PC. If a part is bad, you just RMA it. No bullshit, no having to send the whole thing in.
I know that companies like Asus have 3 year warranties on motherboards and video cards, AMD has a 3 year warranty on their processors, and companies like OCZ have Lifetime Warranties on RAM, SSD's, and PSU's.

Quit getting ripped off by the computer-in-a-box companies.

They are seen as more Linuxfriendly because they have released the specifications for their 3d chipsets which Nvidia hasn't. Unfortunately, and contrary to what slashdot-commenters believed, that hasn't lead to someone creating high quality free drivers for ATI cards.

Many GPUs do in fact support double precision, its not IEEE standard double precision floating point yet, but that's going to be a feature of the next generation or two. My source is ATi, anything marked with a superscript of '1' does not support double precision maths, everything else does. ATi StreamSDK requirements

I seeing 9.11 support for radeon 9500 through HD2100 desktop cards on WinXP and on Vista/Win7. I'll have to hack them for my mobile9700 notebook but they're there.

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Legacy/Pages/radeonaiw_xp.aspx?type=2.4.1&product=2.4.1.3.24&lang=English

This means I might get windows 7 running on the thing.

Vastly incorrect, in fact. MICROSOFT was the one that initially ditched OpenGL support in Vista - well, technically they were going to support 1.3 and deprecate the API, but then they reworked the display driver model so that it worked again when CAD companies including the one I work for were about to strangle them. The display driver model currently used is a vast improvement over the initial model that only allowed DirectX contexts and didn't allow compositing. The current driver model allows compositing of contexts of different types (meaning you can draw OpenGL with Aero on in a window, but you do get a performance hit).

nVidia not only supports OpenGL, they support many extensions that ATI historically has not - for instance, I added Geometry Shaders to a graphics engine nearly 2 years ago and ATI still doesn't support them (but they have promised better support in future drivers.

lol - still Re:9400M - 9400M is a mobile, so you're probably stuck with it unless you have a MXM module, in which case it may be possible to upgrade. Incidentally, my previous laptop did not and blew its graphics card for the second time (the notorious 8XXXM laptop series...) 3 days out of warranty but my new laptop does, so I may toy with upgrading graphics someday. From a basic fillrate, 9400M gets about 3.6 gigatexels/second and the 240 about 17. It is more comparable to the 9800M GTX I have on my current laptop (16GT/s). The GTS 240 slated for this quarter is supposed to be closer to 40GT/s, which is close to the GTX 260 (core 216) I bought for my desktop after a price drop to under $200 earlier this year.

Either you're mistaken or ATI's driver download page is broken. They still list 9.3 as the latest driver for anything before the 2000 series.

See: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/linux/Legacy/Pages/radeon_linux.aspx?type=2.4.1&product=2.4.1.3.7&lang=English

AMD may periodically provide Windows XP and Windows Vista driver updates (for the products listed above) for critical fixes only. No new features will be provided in future driver updates. The Linux ATI Catalyst driver will only be supported in Linux distributions prior to February 2009 for the legacy products listed above.

All future ATI Catalyst releases made available past the ATI Catalyst 9.3 release will not include support for the legacy products listed above or any of the features associated with those legacy products.

I think you're confusing ATI with Nvidia... Nvidia still supports all of their cards back to the TNT2 with their binary blob. There's no new features for older cards of course, but they'll actually work with modern Xorg and kernels.

My laptop is an AMD Sempron with ATI "R300M xpress".

The last ATI driver to support the chipset was 9.3 - the current version is 9.10ish(?).

Actually, as of right now it's 9.11 (knock yourself out here), which happens to also have been released for their "older" products (like your 300M) that only get driver updates (without new features) every few months...

http://blogs.amd.com/nigeldessau/2009/11/12/blog-77-a-time-for-peace/

No, Intel will not be doing any more OEM bullying.

So surely this thing must be available from Amazon, or NewEgg, or Tiger Direct or from the manufacturer's own website like the Haupauge 1212 was when it was first released? What about those links?

Okay.

• Amazon
• Dell
• ATI doesn't have them for sale, but that's not surprising since ATI's actually trying to get out of the digital cable tuner market.
• Newegg doesn't sell CableCard tuners. Yet. As the market picks up with mulitple players (Hauppauge and Ceton for starters), I expect Newegg to start selling something.

We're currently in a chicken-and-egg situation. CableCard tuners have been available for the past couple of years, but CableLabs were being retarded and required a special BIOS in order for the tuners to work so only ATI bothered with the market. At CEDIA 2009, that changed and new manufacturers have decided to enter the market, but it takes time to develop, test, and manufacture a product. Ask this question again in March of 2010 and there should be several tuners available on the market.

For those looking to get Ubuntu 9.10 on a ATI grfx card with a R600/700 chipset, you may want to take a look at the latest drivers from AMD. As opposed to the usual Envyng or Ubuntu provided drivers. There are a few people who are having a bit of weirdness with the ones shipped there (nothing big just a bit of oddities).
I'm still looking forward to the advancement of the experimental support that X.org has added to the new Xserver (1.7 me thinks) for R600/700 chipsets, go open source drivers FTW!

AMD doesn't make Intel chipsets...REALLY

O RLY?
http://ati.amd.com/products/radeonxpress200Intel/

Granted, they haven't made any new Intel chipsets that I know of since ATI bought AMD, but they were still selling some of their existing products for a bit after the merge.

why not hook up three monitors to one Radeon 58xx card and play it like this?

Because not even in the publicity shot could they get that dirty great inch gap from between the top and bottom tiers of screens. The horizontal looks ok (but you lose definition in the resin overlay between the horizontal monitors), but that joint right in the middle of where you're looking would be very similar to constantly having a piece of masking tape over the middle of your current monitor.

Why not just output to a high-def TV?

N.B. Strategy games do not scale well to high-def TVs. The resolution is great, but for PC gaming you're usually around 1-2m away from the screen; Consoles could be well over 4m with wireless controllers. It becomes extremely hard to see what's going on, or read dialog (having played Empire Total War on a 1080p screen).

People have been saying that forever now. I think only the first 2 generations of 3D cards were greeted by universal enthusiasm, while everything else since had a number of "who needs that power to run game X" crowd. The truth is, yes, you can run a lot of games with old cards, but you can run them better with newer cards. So, it's just a matter of preference when it comes to the usual gaming.

AMD/ATI is at least doing something fun with all this new power. Since you can run the latest games in 5400x2000 resolutions with high frame rate, why not hook up three monitors to one Radeon 58xx card and play it like this? That wasn't something you could do with an older card.

Similarly, using some of the new video converter apps that make use of a GPU can cut down transcoding from many hours to one hour or less... you can convert your blu-ray movie to a portable video format much easier and quicker. Again, something you couldn't do with an old card, and something that was only somewhat useful in previous generation.

In summary, I think the *need* for more power is less pressing than it used to, but there's still more and more you can do with new cards.

First, look at those opterons again and look at the 4 socket plus 4 socket riser Tyan stuff again, you information is somewhat out of date which is why I'm talking about new possibilities while you are putting forward what has only recently become an incorrect argument.

From Tyan's page:

Supported CPU Series: AMD 45nm Quad-Core Opteron 8300 Series Processors [...]

AMD's FAQ also notes that 2000-series CPUs only support two socket boards.

If you have information about 2000-series CPUs working in 8-socket boards, then by all means share it, but it certainly appears that would be news to both Tyan and AMD.

You end up with annoyingly long periods of time where one node is still going and other nodes are waiting for it. When the price point shifts radically why take "adequate" when "good" isn't much more expensive.

Because at this point it appears "good" is still much more expensive.

Also you have entirely missed the point that there are many jobs that are entirely CPU bound and that is what I was writing about, I'm saying there are many cases where you have jobs that are purely limited by how many instructions you can do and that is what you throw systems or clusters with a lot of CPUs at.

I haven't missed the point at all, I'm simply highlighting the fact that such jobs - where a cluster of machines interconnected with Ethernet, Infiniband, or similar won't do it just as well, and a lot cheaper - are few and far between.

IMHO your example has a premise that experience with both Xeon and opteron systems shows has little merit about the speed difference, your misunderstanding of my statements and your mixing up of terminology of CPU to the stupid salesfolk form instead of anything of technical use is too much for me to handle this late at night.

Uh huh. Perhaps you can enlighten me about how I have misused any terminology rather than wave your hands about.

>So?

So no kernel mode setting for me and my old 4870. Just pointing out that this isn't some ATI model wide feature, like it came across from the blurb, which to recap, says:

Another improvement coming with 2.6.31 is kernel mode-setting support for ATI Radeon graphics cards, enabling faster user switching and a more seamless startup experience.

It could have said:

Another improvement coming with 2.6.31 is kernel mode-setting support for legacy[0] ATI Radeon graphics cards, enabling faster user switching and a more seamless startup experience.

[0] AMD's own term for things older than the ATI Radeon X2100 Series.

Can't you guys search a bit for more information before submitting it to Slashdot, how hard is it, here you have more info and specs on the procs:
AMD original press release: http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/amd-press-release-2009aug10.aspx
Amd's presentation of bolth procs: http://www.amd.com/us/products/embedded/processors/asb1-bga/Pages/turion-athlon-neo-x2.aspx
More info on the turion: http://www.amd.com/us/products/notebook/processors/turion-neo-x2/Pages/turion-neo-x2.aspx
Specs for the turion: http://www.amd.com/us/products/notebook/processors/turion-neo-x2/Pages/turion-neo-x2-model-numbers.aspx

Can't you guys search a bit for more information before submitting it to Slashdot, how hard is it, here you have more info and specs on the procs:
AMD original press release: http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/amd-press-release-2009aug10.aspx
Amd's presentation of bolth procs: http://www.amd.com/us/products/embedded/processors/asb1-bga/Pages/turion-athlon-neo-x2.aspx
More info on the turion: http://www.amd.com/us/products/notebook/processors/turion-neo-x2/Pages/turion-neo-x2.aspx
Specs for the turion: http://www.amd.com/us/products/notebook/processors/turion-neo-x2/Pages/turion-neo-x2-model-numbers.aspx

Can't you guys search a bit for more information before submitting it to Slashdot, how hard is it, here you have more info and specs on the procs:
AMD original press release: http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/amd-press-release-2009aug10.aspx
Amd's presentation of bolth procs: http://www.amd.com/us/products/embedded/processors/asb1-bga/Pages/turion-athlon-neo-x2.aspx
More info on the turion: http://www.amd.com/us/products/notebook/processors/turion-neo-x2/Pages/turion-neo-x2.aspx
Specs for the turion: http://www.amd.com/us/products/notebook/processors/turion-neo-x2/Pages/turion-neo-x2-model-numbers.aspx

Can't you guys search a bit for more information before submitting it to Slashdot, how hard is it, here you have more info and specs on the procs:
AMD original press release: http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/amd-press-release-2009aug10.aspx
Amd's presentation of bolth procs: http://www.amd.com/us/products/embedded/processors/asb1-bga/Pages/turion-athlon-neo-x2.aspx
More info on the turion: http://www.amd.com/us/products/notebook/processors/turion-neo-x2/Pages/turion-neo-x2.aspx
Specs for the turion: http://www.amd.com/us/products/notebook/processors/turion-neo-x2/Pages/turion-neo-x2-model-numbers.aspx

I'm not entirely sure if Shaw allows cable cards but if you can get your hands on one then you can record every channel you subscribe too even hbo channel if you pay for it.

Most cable card based DVRs are media center PCs that come with a cable card slot. If you want to build your own computer the only option I know of at the moment is http://ati.amd.com/products/tvwonderdigital/index.html

Also, keep in mind that using your own DVR with a cable card you can not get on demand and other special features like ppv. However, cable card version 2.0 supposedly supports those options.

Alternatively, you can hack a tivo or another box but that isn't exactly as legit as plugging in your home made dvr directly into the coax cable from the wall.

AMD is the first to deliver a beta release of an OpenCL software cross development platform for x86-based CPUs

Source: http://developer.amd.com/GPU/ATISTREAMSDKBETAPROGRAM/Pages/default.aspx

Being able to target both Windows and Linux is something outside Apple's platform scope.

I might be reading your comment wrong, mistaking handheld with netbook, smartbook, etc, but ATI regularly pairs embedded graphics chips with the ARM platform, particularly their Imageon line.

If NVidia does not want a piece of Android business, it is NVidia's loss.

And AMD/ATI gain.

Modded interesting? Interestingly offtopic?

This is an ARM story. AMD doesn't do ARM, and while ATI does produce embedded graphics chips, I've never heard of them being paired with handheld devices.

I've done so, and things have turned out not to work. For one thing, the NVIDIA TNT2 driver that came with the latest Ubuntu LTS version (8.04) didn't go over 640x480px, when Windows could run the same card at 1024x768px.

Nvidia always was and is a pain for Free software . I really love NVidia graphics and use Nvidia graphic card for my PC (mostly with free drivers ) AMD-ATI on the other hand is trying to free as much as it could . AMD site says

Some of the technologies supported in our driver are protected by non-disclosure agreements with third parties, so we cannot legally release the complete source code to our driver. It is NOT open source. We do, however, include source code for the control panel and certain other public segments. We also actively assist developers in the Open Source community with their work, so if you absolutely require an open source driver for your graphics card, we can recommend using drivers from the DRI project, Utah-GLX project, or others.

Maybe we should all encourage intel .. but power hungry users would always prefer either ATI or Nvidia. I would say go for ATI as it's less evil :D

Oh dear. You need to think a bit harder before accusing someone else of spouting bullshit.

Read the final paragraph in this. I trust it is a reliable enough source for you?

I know the width of the widest data register is not related to the size of the address space. But unlike you, I also know that I didn't claim it was - reread what I wrote more carefully. Get an adult to explain the difference between implication and a biconditional, and how informal english differs from logic.

I'm going to restate what I said originally so that it is simple enough for you to understand:
1. The SIMD extensions on the 32-bit x86 instruction set were executed by AMD and Intel's ISAs over multiple cycles.
2. When they transitions to the 64-bit ISA they used to the wider data-path to do more work per cycle.
3. Specifically, they use it in the ALU to handle both single-precision floating-point operations at once.
4. As a result dense numeric code (running over single-precision floats) runs at twice the speed.

Think before you reply.

From the article: "A year's email at a typical medium-sized business uses 50,000 KWh."

What's a "medium sized business"? In the US, 100 to 500 employees. In the EU, 50 to 250 employees. So let's use 250 employees as a "typical medium sized business".

How much email infrastructure is needed for 250 employees? Not much. If you use Microsoft's sizing data for Exchange servers, Microsoft says you need 2.5 MIPS per mailbox, and 0.75 I/O operations per second per mailbox. So for 250 employees, one low-end rackmount server is more than enough; it's about 3x the capacity needed. You'd like to have at least two, for redundancy, of course, with RAID disks in both. So you need two 1U servers, four drives, and a router or two. One study suggests 200 watts per server, but that's based on Google, which worries about power efficiency. And it doesn't include air conditioning load. So figure 1KW for the mail system, or 12KWH/day, or 8760 KWh/year. That's based on very generous sizing of everything.

This is less than 20% of the number in the paper. How did they possibly get a number 5x that big? Are they allocating idle desktop machine resources to mail?

Let the old repair guy give you a hand there bud. And here you go. If that one don't work look up your specific model at driverguide. It requires a registration, but it is free to register and takes less than 5 minutes. I hope this sets you to rights.

AMD has the Geode LX and NX lines.
Geode LX is very low powered and the highest clock speed (I've seen) is 566Mhz.
Geode NX is targeted directly at the Atom. Although I have yet to see any of these out in the wild.
I've only ever found a Geode in the wild clocked as high as 500Mhz (see the ALIX boards)

Actually the Geode is a dead end processor, AMD already has stated they are disconinuing it.

AMD recently announced a new processor "Conesus" that is intended for netbooks and UMPC.
http://gizmodo.com/5086703/amds-upcoming-conesus-netbook-chip-wont-stoop-to-mid-levels

AMD has the Geode LX and NX lines.
Geode LX is very low powered and the highest clock speed (I've seen) is 566Mhz.
Geode NX is targeted directly at the Atom. Although I have yet to see any of these out in the wild.
I've only ever found a Geode in the wild clocked as high as 500Mhz (see the ALIX boards)

Actually the Geode is a dead end processor, AMD already has stated they are disconinuing it.

AMD recently announced a new processor "Conesus" that is intended for netbooks and UMPC.
http://gizmodo.com/5086703/amds-upcoming-conesus-netbook-chip-wont-stoop-to-mid-levels

For notebooks I have no idea how total system power usage looks, AMDs chipsets provide better integrated graphics than Intel do however. And I guess I would go for someone better though still crappy graphics when somewhat faster / more power efficient CPU (if Intel really is.)

In my experience Intel is dominating in the notebook business. I prefer AMD but the notebooks out there using them are either:
1) based on Sempron (slowish but low powered)
2) based on older X2 core (good performance but runs hot and sucks power)

Afaik AMD don't have an alternative to Atom, I may be wrong though.

AMD has the Geode LX and NX lines.
Geode LX is very low powered and the highest clock speed (I've seen) is 566Mhz.
Geode NX is targeted directly at the Atom. Although I have yet to see any of these out in the wild.
I've only ever found a Geode in the wild clocked as high as 500Mhz (see the ALIX boards)

For notebooks I have no idea how total system power usage looks, AMDs chipsets provide better integrated graphics than Intel do however. And I guess I would go for someone better though still crappy graphics when somewhat faster / more power efficient CPU (if Intel really is.)

In my experience Intel is dominating in the notebook business. I prefer AMD but the notebooks out there using them are either:
1) based on Sempron (slowish but low powered)
2) based on older X2 core (good performance but runs hot and sucks power)

Afaik AMD don't have an alternative to Atom, I may be wrong though.

AMD has the Geode LX and NX lines.
Geode LX is very low powered and the highest clock speed (I've seen) is 566Mhz.
Geode NX is targeted directly at the Atom. Although I have yet to see any of these out in the wild.
I've only ever found a Geode in the wild clocked as high as 500Mhz (see the ALIX boards)

That's not quite right. When Intel were *much* smaller, big customers (IBM particularly, but I think some US government dept also forced their hand), wanted second-source suppliers in place as a condition to Intel getting contracts. Intel cross-licensed with AMD in order to secure such contracts. Here's AMDs' version.

What goes on is more behind the scenes and hidden from the general public by the so called Microsoft "Hardware Partner Cartel" For example..When Intel released a Linux compiler that did better 64bit optimization on the Itanium (remember the Itanic) guess what happened to that line of processors.

At the same time AMD started to make inroads into the server market. Now that AMD is also threatening Microsoft with advanced Linux support look at what is happening to them!

You can bet that the DirectX support for this GPU will not have issues but it will take some time for the Linux issues to be resolved. Just enough to make sure that all the OEM offerings on embedded devices that use this GPU will not have a Linux offering. One cannot blame Intel for shying away from Linux when Microsoft can leverage the OEMs to the extent that they can sink companies if they choose.

ATI have a free GPU-accelerated video encoder which supports a range of formats. nVidia have one too, but it only supports H.264 and with a smaller range of options even for that, and it's not even free to use.

the moment I saw the whopping 130w listed next to the i7 920 I immediately decided I didn't want one.

And don't forget -- this is an Intel power rating, which means "typical use". I have a computer with an AMD Phenom 9850, and that's rated at 120W, but that's worst case, not typical. In actual use the computer has been quiet and cool. (I ought to try recompiling the Linux kernel on all four cores or something.)

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article169-page3.html

AMD could corner the efficiency market.

Intel is selling far more CPUs than AMD can even make, and they have the top absolute performance, but AMD is selling plenty of Opterons into data centers because AMD does well on performance/power ratio. AMD is also selling some CPU chips with a maximum heat dissipation of 45W. AMD is already working on cornering the efficiency market.

http://enterprise.amd.com/us-en/AMD-Business/Technology-Home/Power-Management.aspx
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3003

steveha

On that first option. Has anyone compared the available development tools for linux?

http://www.intel.com/cd/software/products/asmo-na/eng/compilers/clin/277618.htm

http://developer.amd.com/cpu/Pages/default.aspx

and nvidia vs ati

http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_home.html#

http://developer.amd.com/gpu/Pages/default.aspx