AMD taking on Atom with Ultra-Value Client line

Another week, another AMD leak about taking it directly to Intel's minimalist Atom. No, not with Bobcat, but with the new Athlon Ultra-Value Client (UVC) series. AMD is targeting the 230 with its 2650e, a single-core 1.6 GHz chip, and the 330 with its 3250e dual-core 1.5 GHz processor. Both have 512KB of cache per-core, matching the competition, but are rated at 15- and 22-watts respectively, much higher than the Atom's miserly 4-watts. It's unclear if that rating is current for just the CPU or the matching 740 chipset as well, but given the fact that AMD's Athlon 64 2000+ is already quite frugal we wouldn't be surprised if it were for the package. There's no mention of price, and right now these chips are just for desktop OEMs, but laptop versions are said to be in the works and could be quite popular amongst the netbook crowd -- if they're cheap enough. 1.2GHz of Turon can do wonders, and we're hoping for even better from 1.6.

[Thanks, Luiz H]

[Wolfticket @ Sep 12th 2008 1:08PM]

Hopefully the northbridge will be more frugal than the Atom's.

[Major4Play @ Sep 12th 2008 1:49PM]

AMD's 64 based CPUs don't use a northbridge, they have an integrated memory controller on the cpu, a chip called an MCP (Media Communications Processor) is used as a combined southbridge and graphics controller.
Should be alot more frugal than intels ancient chipset.

The one thing not being said is that AMD's UVC should have real power compared to Intel's Atom (Which is a very basic chip modeled on an original pentium core)
Could the worm be being to turn again for AMD ?

[1234321 @ Sep 12th 2008 2:23PM]

what's a frugal?

[Andrew @ Sep 12th 2008 2:30PM]

to add to Major's point..

The 780G chipset uses a mere 0.9watts when idle, and a max of ~11 watts when full out (at 500mhz). This includes video, and of course the chipset. If they can clock that down (which I know they can, to at LEAST 200mhz), those figures would be even lower. The HD3200 graphics is currently the best onboard graphics you can get, and WILL play blu-ray content with only a low end athlon 64 sempron processor (with plenty of cycles to spare). Thank god for 55nm chipset processing!!

[Wolfticket @ Sep 12th 2008 2:30PM]

It's a sugar-loving Skye Terrier from The Magic Roundabout.

[Serial 8-Ball Mouse @ Sep 12th 2008 2:52PM]

"Could the worm be being to turn again for AMD ?"

What...? Um, yes. Wait, no. Worm? Yes. Maybe. Where am I?

[Major4Play @ Sep 12th 2008 4:37PM]

@1234321
Do you really not know what frugal means ? oh dear !

@Serial 8-Ball mouse

Sorry should read

Could the worm be beginning to turn again for AMD ?

[Serial 8-Ball Mouse @ Sep 12th 2008 5:08PM]

Ah. Thanks for clearing that up.

::headexplode::

[GB @ Nov 12th 2008 7:40AM]

I find it a bit lame that someone who doesn't know the meaning of a word gets voted down! But okay, go ahead, vote me down as well, I had to look the word "frugal" up (and that even though I am NOT a native..)!

Oh, I forgott. The folks here on engadget are all English teachers anyway, since they also always correct the news-writer! Sorry, my fault!

[kojo87 @ Sep 12th 2008 1:10PM]

im really glad to see AMD still being competitive.

[cg0def @ Nov 12th 2008 7:54AM]

competitive?! how did you figure that one out? The only thing that AMD is still competitive in is the GPU market and the server market. Only the server market still cares about AMD not because they are the leader in performance but because they provide low power footprint. And they way Intel is going that won't be so for that much longer. I honestly have no idea what happened to AMD and why they dropped the ball so bad this time. AMD talks a lot about all these new technologies that they will bring but the problem is that for the last couple of years they can't back any of their claims with actual products. Yes Intel doesn't have the best design and they seem to only tweak their products in each new generation ( i7 excluded ) but the fact is that tweaking seems to get the job a whole lot better than the *redesign* AMD has been doing. And I used to be the poster boy for AMD ... only you can't keep your eyes closed forever ...

[joshc @ Sep 12th 2008 1:12PM]

lets hope they can bring this out at a good price. if so it can give them a good advantage over the atom. Although at 24 watts it's a bit of a power hungry cpu for a netbook. My eeepc uses 23 watts for the entire system.

[avester @ Sep 12th 2008 1:14PM]

Remember that the memory controller is integrated in the CPU, unlike with Atoms, so the chipset draws less power, I'm going to see how the numbers play out.

Oh wait, calling AMD with names is cool now, Yo mama is fat AMD...

[iofthestorm @ Sep 12th 2008 1:27PM]

Also, unlike Atom these are full-fledged Athlon 64 processors with out-of-order processing. Performance wise, the Atoms we've seen so far are barely on par with the old 900mhz celerons in the original EeePC, and the Athlon 64 architecture, while weaker per clock than Core 2, is much better than Celeron in performance per clock so these chips should have massively better performance.

[gkrules @ Sep 12th 2008 1:58PM]

I'm thinking AMD might beat Intel at this. AMD processors usually cost a lot less than Intel ones and the whole netbooking rage is a lot about the best performance for the price right now. Have you ever noticed that the 3.0ghz dual core AMD processor is almost half the price of the 3.0ghz Intel dual core processor?

[Serial 8-Ball Mouse @ Sep 12th 2008 3:46PM]

If you find an AMD processor for 1/2 the price of an Intel processor, odds are you will pay for it with a lack of comparative performance. Otherwise they would be running every PC out there right now.

[Reader @ Sep 12th 2008 5:50PM]

The E8400 is a beast though... 6MB cache and OCs to 4.1+ Ghz. About 170 on Newegg. Almost bought it the other day, but went with a 5000+ AMD processor and cheap everything (except the video card).

[ethana2 @ Sep 12th 2008 2:33PM]

Keep it up AMD, you've driven more improvements inside intel then they have :)

[matt @ Sep 12th 2008 3:20PM]

AMD definitely has the upper hand here. First, AMD has been doing the whole embedded x86 thing for quite some time now, so they're not new to the market as it might seem; it's us average consumers who are the noobs here. Second, their constant push for monolithic chips is really going to pay off, especially seeing as how much Intel still depends on external components (northbridge/southbridge). An on board memory controller is really going to pay off in the portable market, and when AMD's Fusion chips become a reality it will bring a huge change for small devices. In the end, they are going to have a cheaper, faster, smaller, and more energy efficient product. I think Intel's problem is they've been too busy pandering to the gamer minority and basking in the greatness of their Core processors to realize the fast was yesterday's news; today is about the small and portable. I'm sure Intel will pull it out as always, bringing us more great products as the feud between the two continues to go back and forth.

[eiki @ Sep 12th 2008 5:55PM]

Turon............fail

try Turion

[Johan S @ Sep 12th 2008 6:50PM]

If it costs more than one dollar, it's not "ultra value"

[Bryan L @ Sep 12th 2008 7:16PM]

Um, what ever happened to the AMD Geode?

[bryan @ Sep 12th 2008 7:18PM]

Wait - not to mention that the VIA Nano runs circles around the Atom. Why would anyone run that Celeron SX processor known as the Atom??? Go Go AMD!