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AMD's Congo platform getting really official next month?
AMD's never been much for keeping to the roadmap, and it looks like the curious launch of its Congo platform is evidence of that very fact. If you'll recall, we actually saw a Congo-based netbook launch way back in June, and it was expected that a flood of other ultrathin machines would follow shortly thereafter. According to DigiTimes, the demand in the market just wasn't there (thanks, recession!), so everything was pushed back until November. Lo and behold, our Gregorian calendar has that very month on deck for next, and according to mythical sources at laptop makers, the platform should make its super-duper official debut within a matter of weeks. The dual-core Turion Neo X2 L625, Athlon Neo X2 L335/L325 and / or single-core Athlon Neo MV-40 should be front and center, and AMD is apt to announce progress on its Nile and Brazos platforms -- both of which should help carry the chip maker through the next two years. Look out Atom, you've got some delayed competition coming your way.Update: Seems as if this may all just be a "second wave" of sorts when many PC makers choose to launch machines based on this platform alongside Windows 7's debut. AMD informed us that the November delay notion was also false, and we get the feeling that Congo's just been waiting for Win7 to really get itself out there.
AMD Tigris and Congo mobile platforms focus on multimedia, longer battery life
Stop the presses! AMD has kept to its roadmap. Alright, start the presses up again. The Tigris laptop platform, announced today, is all set to become AMD's "mainstream" weapon of choice, with the centrally touted features being full 1080p, DirectX 10.1 support and offloading video encoding to the Radeon HD 4200 GPU. Add in the new 45nm dual core Caspian CPUs, with speeds ranging up to 2.6GHz, and the result is a substantial 42 percent improvement in multimedia performance to go along with 25 percent longer battery life. Alas, that'll still only net you an hour and 55 minutes of "active use" and just under five hours in idle, according to AMD. The Congo, offering the same HD video and DX10.1 support, does a little better at two hours 26 minutes of utility, thanks to its HD 3200 and dual core Neo chips inside. That'll hardly trouble Intel's CULV range of marathon runners, but then Intel's processors don't pack quite as much grunt. AMD's own Pat Moorehead got to test drive laptops based on the two new platforms and was enraptured by their raw, snarling power. Of course, he would be. The majority of OEMs have signed up for this party, with models expected to arrive in time for the release of Windows 7. [Via TG Daily] Read - Tigris processors Read - Pat Moorehead tests Tigris laptop Read - Congo features Read - Pat Moorehead tests Congo laptop
AMD to flood Computex with mainstream Tigris laptops, reveal Danube?
Besides being overwhelmed by Intel's CULV thin-and-lights at Computex, it looks like AMD will use the event to punish Engadget editors and readers with the launch of its Tigris platform. Since you've most likely supplanted any memory of Tigris with something useful, let us remind you that Tigris is AMD's mainstream laptop platform built around a dual-core 45-nm Caspian processor supporting 800MHz DDR2 memory and ATI M9x series graphics. The Commercial Times is also reporting that Computex might even bring a possible unveiling of AMD's next-generation Danube laptop platform featuring a quad-core Champlain processor with support for DDR3 memory. Unfortunately, Champlain won't be available for consumers until 2010 -- 2009 is all about Tigris laptops and the Athlon Neo thin-and-lights for AMD. Where's the AMD netbook? Oh they ceded that market to Intel a long time ago; a bad move now that Atom-based netbooks are plundering mainstream laptop marketshare that AMD was betting on with Tigris.
AMD releases another notebook roadmap, does not release Fusion chips
Well, well, a new AMD roadmap promising a superior hybrid CPU/GPU chip sometime in the distant future. That doesn't sound like the same old vaporware refrain we've been hearing about Fusion since 2006 at all, does it? Yep, everyone's favorite underdog is back in the paperwork game, and this time we've got a sheaf of pointy-eared details on the company's upcoming notebook plans, all culminating in the "Sabine" platform, which is wholly dependent on Sunnyvale actually shipping a mobile variant of the delayed Fusion APU in 2011 once it finds the Leprechaun City. In the meantime, look forward to a slew of forgettable laptops getting bumped to the "Danube" platform, which supports 45nm quad-core chips, DDR3-1066 memory, and an absolutely shocking 14 USB 2.0 ports. Ugh, seriously -- does anyone else think AMD should suck it up, put out a cheap Atom-class processor paired with a low-end Radeon that can do reasonable HD video output, and actually take it to Intel in booming low-end market instead of goofing around with the expensive, underperforming Neo platform and a fantasy chip it's been promising for three years now? Call us crazy.[Via PC Authority; thanks Geller]
