AMD

The landscape of budget laptops often looks like a police lineup of suspects: a muddy confusion of similar-looking faces and bodies. For $600 you can buy a lot of computer lately, though you're not likely to get something that's particularly sexy.

The $629 Gateway NV55S05u is one of more than a dozen 15-inch Gateway NV laptops with a galaxy of different processors. In the case of our 15.6-incher, an AMD A8-3500M APU is inside. AMD's A8 processor is part of a new line of AMD Fusion processors with graphics and CPU on one chip (called an … Read more

AMD's Fusion series of APU processors first grabbed our attention at the beginning of 2011 for their impressive showing in 11.6-inch ultraportable laptops like the HP Pavilion dm1z, offering great performance and battery life for a good price. The E and C-series APUs representing the entry-level and thin-and-light side of the laptop and desktop universe have been updated, with memory and graphics enhancements and a promised gain in resting battery life.

AMD claims 12 hours of resting battery life on a charge on the C-series APUs, and 10.5 hours on the new E-series. Of course, our battery … Read more

Shipments of PC processors failed to gain ground during the second quarter, but revenue still inched its way higher, according to data out today from IDC.

For the quarter, worldwide chip shipments rose only 0.6 percent from a year ago and fell 2.9 percent from the first quarter. Sales reached $9.49 billion, a 5.4 percent rise from 2010's second quarter but a 4 percent drop from the first quarter.

"The first quarter of 2011 was better than most first quarters due to the extra calendar week," Shane Rau, director of Semiconductors: Personal Computing … Read more

AMD's second-quarter earnings report was overshadowed by one massive question: when will the chipmaker find a chief executive.

The company is now nearly pushing eight months without a CEO. In January, AMD CEO Dirk Meyer resigned. CFO Thomas Seifert has been acting CEO this year. While current management has hit its targets and delivered new products, the company needs a leader at some point.

According to AMD General Counsel Harry Wolin the "search for a new CEO remains a top priority." However, AMD isn't going to be roped into any deadline. "The board is pleased … Read more

While it may feel like Netbooks have dropped off the face of the earth in the post-iPad era, inexpensive 10- and 11-inch laptops still lurk out there, although they're changing with the times. While many Netbooks used to be and still are Intel Atom-based, with minimal processing capabilities and hovering around $299, a few 11-inch laptops have emerged with more powerful AMD-based processors and onboard graphics.

We've reviewed several of these ultraportables with E-350 APUs, such as the HP Pavilion dm1z and Lenovo ThinkPad x120e. The $379 Acer Aspire One 722-BZ608 has an AMD APU (the company's … Read more

The high-end notebook graphics war is on for 2011. Nvidia was first to fire a shot a few weeks ago, unveiling the GeForce GTX 580M.

AMD has since counterpunched with the AMD Radeon HD 6990M, its new, most high-end laptop graphics card, which the company now claims, as Nvidia did weeks ago, is the "fastest notebook GPU." This time, the edge indeed seems to belong to AMD. The company boasts a 25 percent improvement over the next-fastest notebook GPU. According to slides from AMD showing head-to-head performance benchmarks versus the GeForce GTX 580M, that statement seems to hold … Read more

Far from being subsumed into the global Acer brand, Gateway continues to churn out new laptops, including a few fairly sharp-looking models. Today, Gateway has updated its NV and ID laptop lines with new looks and new features.

The thin Gateway ID47 manages to fit a 14-inch display into a chassis closer to the size of a 13-inch laptop. The minimalist, nearly monochrome design has a brushed-metal look to the flat lid, which Gateway calls "Brushed Platinum." An alternate design, called "Infinity Blue Liquid," is also available.

The ID47 has a large clickpad-style touch pad, a change from the previous generation, as well as edge-to-edge glass over the display and a USB 3.0 port that also offers a sleep-and-charge mode for powering accessories while the laptop is turned off or sleeping.

Under the hood, the biggest change is the addition of second-generation Intel Core i-series processors--pretty much a must-have for any new laptop halfway through 2011. Some versions of the ID will include discrete Nvidia graphics. … Read more

Today, AMD releases the desktop version of its Fusion laptop accelerated processing unit (APU) it launched earlier this month. The quad-core, 2.9GHz A8-3850 ($135) and 2.6GHz A6-3650 ($115) should appear in stores today, accompanied by a motherboard from multiple vendors using AMD's new A75 and A55 chipsets that are required to use the new chips.

Similar in design to Intel's second-generation Core CPUs (aka Sandy Bridge), the A-Series incorporates a graphics-processing core directly into the CPU silicon. The advantage of this design is greater power efficiency than separate CPU and GPU chips offer, as well as … Read more

Advanced Micro Devices lost a considerable share of the chip market to Intel in the first quarter, as the latter rebounded easily from a chipset glitch, according to a report today from IHS iSuppli.

AMD accounted for 10.1 percent of global microprocessor revenue in the first quarter of this year, falling from the 11.8 percent share during from the same period last year and down from 10.9 percent in the fourth quarter, according to the report.

AMD's loss was pretty much Intel's gain. Intel during the first three months of this year claimed 82.6 … Read more