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Two New AMD Mobile Chips Launched
to_kallon writes "Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has unleashed two new mobile microprocessors today. One processor belongs to the company's 64-bit Mobile Athlon64 line while the other one comes from the 32-bit Athlon XP-M product line. According to CNET News: 'Like other Athlon 64 chips, and Intel's Prescott, the new Athlon 64 3400+ will block many security threats automatically in conjunction with Windows XP Service Pack 2. The delayed SP2 is slated to come out in August. The Athlon 64 3400+ will also run a 64-bit version of Windows, due now at the end of the year.It runs at 2.2GHz and comes with 1MB of cache. Gamer-PC maker Alienware will insert the chip in a notebook later in the month. Meanwhile, the Athlon XP-M 2200+ comes from the company's older line of chips. It runs at 1.6GHz and is built around an older processor core and comes with a 512KB cache. Averatec, a small computer manufacturer, has put the chip into a notebook that can convert into a tablet PC, marking the first time AMD's chips have been used in a tablet'."
IBM putting one of these 64 bit chips in a highend thinkpad. While I really like the Athlon64 processor, I would not even consider buying anything but a thinkpad for a PC laptop.
The Hammer based chips run cooler than their older AthlonXP brothers. They also add cool-n-quiet for power management. My Athlon 64 laptop (with a DTR chip) rarely gets very warm and the lower power portable Athlon 64 chips are extremely cool (nearly in the G3 - G4 power range which is really impressive for an x86 chip). The P4 based laptops, however, can literally burn you. If you go the Intel route, the Centrino platform is excellent and one of the best chips ever by Intel.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Someone please explain the statement about blocking security threats in conjunction with the operating system. My imagination is failing me. New instructions that do....what?
You make it sound as if AMD one day went to Microsoft and said "Hey, we've got this really cool feature we are adding to our chips, it'll make your operating system much more secure."
NX is not a 'security fix' it is an added feature, a feature not unlike MMX or SSE. An ability that sits on the chip waiting to be used and is generally only used if it is called (ie software support).
This is nothing new! It amazes me that you think it's so radical to hardware and software supporting the same feature.
BTW: NX support now exists for linux and has for some time. By your logic... does it's presence mean that AMD is fixing linux?
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
I'm getting ready to build a new PC and I've decided on the Athlon64 (it was such a difficult decision... not.). It looks like the mobile chips are basically identical to their desktop brethren except that they don't put out as much heat nor do they have integrated heat spreaders. I really like the fact that they put out less power, perform identically (I think), and only cost a few dollars more.
Does anyone know if you can take a mobile A64 and just plop it in a desktop motherboard (for regular A64s) and have it just work? Or does the BIOS have to be aware of the fact that it's a mobile proc? Will the heatsinks designed for the desktop versions work with a mobile version? Does an A64 really require a 400W+ power supply as many sites suggest?
And it's exciting to think that we may get 64-bit laptops soon!
Best Buy can have you arrested
Perhaps you've missed AMD's introduction of the HE and EE series opterons, which have rated outputs of 55W and 30W respectively. It seems like low heat output is quickly becoming the new Mhz. When your transistor budget is so much more than what your logic requires, you can always throw another pipeline or even an entire extra cpu core on the die for more performance, but if it's too hot you're screwed.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
against Intel now in the laptop market as well. AMD has steadily been gaining against Intel is the desktop market, but I really think that the laptop market is the place to be(in terms of cash of course) Also nice that they are attacking at both ends, the performance end and the budget end.
With the advent of wi-fi, I see a lot more people ditching desktops all together and using a laptop as their only machine. Why not? Laptops easily have enough power to check email, browse, use an office suit all at the same time. And you can take them anywhere. And with a low end laptop only a few hundred more than a lowend desktop, there really isn't the financial motivation to get a desktop anymore.
Desktops aren't dying, but the real growth(at least in terms of the mature world economies) will probably be in laptops in the coming years.
I put a Mobile Athlon 64 3200+ (62W) in my ASUS K8V Deluxe motherboard, replacing a standard 3200+ desktop chip. It works exactly as you'd expect. Getting a heatsink to fit was tricky since the notebook chips are "lidless" (no aluminum lid protecting the core), but Zalman's CNPS7000A-AlCu (don't use the all-copper version, it's twice the weight) fit. Alpha's didn't. Just be real careful not to overtighten the screws. Supposedly the lidless CPUs can be cooled better but that lid was put there for a reason.
That said, you can undervolt most of the Athlon 64's quite a bit. I've used ClockGen under WinXP to undervolt the DTR 3200+ in my notebook to 1.3V @ 2GHz, down from the standard 1.5V. Perfectly stable. See here, and check silentpcreview.com (which got me started on all this).
Anyone know how to manually set core voltage levels under 64-bit Linux? Then verify that I didn't push things too far?