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AMD Starts Shipping Mobile Durons

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the the-immobile-ones-were-immobile dept.

HiyaPower writes: "AMD announced today that it has started shipment of its mobile Duron line of processors. While these were supposed to have made it out the gate in 00Q4, it is nice to see that they have finally appeared. Designed around a 1.6V VCore, these processors have a power dissipation of roughly 25W at 600 Mhz, and 29W at 700 Mhz according to the tech specs. Pricing is aggressive as might be expected in this environment. The AMD mobile line has been a good one since the K6-III+ processors. Hopefully, these Durons will live up to the tradition." I bet this release is a spur to the folks at both Intel and Transmeta -- isn't it nice to watch one-upmanship at work sometimes?

7 of 65 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Power comparison. by Shadow99_1 · · Score: 3

    Um this woudl be far more interesting if you used the correct 1.4v for the Duron which makes a 600 Mobile Duron have a wattage of 20 (or 21 depending on which way you do the math) & the 700 Mobile Duron uses 24...

    A mobile P3 at 800 uses nearly as much as the 600 Duron...

    Btw if your overally concerned with heat makes sure your laptop uses an OS that uses HLT... Especially with the Mobile Duron... that could easily lower wattage of the Mobile Duron by 5-7 W...

    --
    we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
  2. Re:How about Transmeta? by fmaxwell · · Score: 3
    Are they ever going to get their chips actually used somewhere?

    The biggest problem that AMD has had was the lack of an all-in-one motherboard support chip to help drive the cost of Duron-equipped systems down. Intel has had such chips for their Celeron line for some time now, which has allowed vendors to create less expensive motherboards that help offset the higher cost of Intel CPUs. Now both SIS and VIA have created such chips for the AMD Thunderbird/Duron CPUs. The chips include:

    Video

    Sound

    Floppy & ATA100 IDE

    Keyboard & Mouse ports

    56K WinModem

    Serial & Parallel ports

    USB

    Joystick

    MIDI

    10/100 Ethernet

    PCI/RAM/etc. interface.

    While most /. users won't give a rat's patootie about integrated video, sound, and WinModems, the market wants cheap PCs. When I needed a cheap system to use as a firewall and mail/web/ftp server, I opted for a $99 motherboard and a $53 650mhz Duron. At under $150 (in qty.), that's a potent and price-attractive core for many home/SOHO systems. I expect many integrators and OEMs to be using similar motherboards in the near future.

    Intel is in a world of hurt. The Thunderbirds are acknowledged to be superb high-end CPUs at a price that Intel cannot match. The Durons are faster, clock for clock, than the Celerons, and, again, are much cheaper. Now with the low-cost, all-in-one motherboards coming out, I expect AMD to clean up in the low-end home/SOHO replacement system market. With the Mobile Durons, AMD will be putting the squeeze on the Mobile Celerons and I expect that you will see many of these in name-brand laptops -- a market where AMD has done well in the past.

  3. Power supply by blacksmith · · Score: 4

    The article is wrong - the mobile devices don't run at 1.6v. If you look at this page from AMD it's 1.4v. Assuming this is the same core rather than the upcoming Morgan core, then the power consumption should just be scaled down by the square of the suppy voltage. 21 W for the 600 MHz and 24 W for the 700 MHz, based on the power consumptions for the desktop versions.

  4. Just the old 'spitfire' core with lower voltage :( by hkultala · · Score: 3

    AMD is designing a new "morgan" duron core,
    which will have PowerNow and ther power-draw-
    orientated enchantments too.

    But that chip is not yet ready,
    so they just lowered the voltage of current duron
    from 1.6 to 1.4 V, and added a "mobile"-sticker on it.

    It has too big power requireemnts to be a real good mobile part, and I think k6-2+ and k6-III+
    are still AMD's mest mobile parts.

    We will have to wait a few months until
    AMD releases truly mobile palomino and morgan-cored athlons.

  5. Power comparison. by Matt2000 · · Score: 5


    I'm an AMD fan (and they're hot, so they can use all they can get, HAH! ouch) so I'm glad to see AMD finally getting going on the high end laptop market. For comparison to the 25W and 29W power consumption, here's some Intel mobile power consumption data:

    Original Mobile Celeron 266: 5.8 W
    Mobile Pentium III @ 650 Mhz 7.9 - 14 W depending on load (speedstep technology)

    And previously from AMD:
    Mobile K6-II @ 400 mhz: 12 Watts
    Mobile K6-III @ 450? mhz: avg. 12 watts probably more.

    So again, AMD comes out heavy on the power usage, and probably heat. Unfortunately my Pentium II laptop is already heating my groin area too much when I'm working with it on my lap, don't need another 20 W of power getting transmitted down there.

    It's just common sense.

    --

  6. Mobile Durons? by jd · · Score: 5
    Wouldn't it make it difficult to keep them in the computer? And what would you feed them?

    I suppose you -could- always add a hamster wheel in there, to keep them amused.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  7. 29 Watts! by aussersterne · · Score: 3
    You'll melt your zipper shut -- or worse -- with this thing sitting on your lap.

    Mobile Duron + Geeks = Instant Unix!

    --
    STOP . AMERICA . NOW