A mini-guide on AMD mobile processors ?

I have some idea about intels mobile processors, but I know nothing about AMD's processors. Anyone mind giving me a brief tutorial ? I want to know about current gen, last gen, and next generation AMD laptop processors, and how they compare to intels processors.

 

Theres not to much to know, They have Turion x2 which is dual core 64 bit, They have AMD 64 Mobile, and Semprons which is the equivalent of the Celeron under Intel. AMD unfortunately has fallen back into the budget market since the Core 2 duo was released, And I havent seen any High powered 8 series Nvidia cards paired with AMD yet.

 

To add to what matt_h1 said, AMD last year released their Turion 64 X2 line (recently they dropped "64" from the names of their processors, so now Turion X2), and this is still their product range. I have noticed that they have been steadily and gradually releasing Turion X2 processors with higher clock speeds. However, the impression that I get is that they have not been able to capture much/any of the more profitable markets, for example the "designer"/"high-style" laptop market and the "high-performance" market.

Why is this? Well, there is definitely a widespread belief that Intel's mobile stuff is strongly superior clock-for-clock, and even dollar-for-dollar. I myself am quite skeptical. I sense that due to inherent differences in how the AMD and Intel processors work, different types of programs and different types of benchmarking tools will perform very differently. In particular I found this post (yes, old I know, but still relevant) most interesting. Certainly NBR's benchmarking thread seems to yield a much more uncertain picture, using an apparently 'fairer' piece of software. {Edit: Indeed, looking at it again, it seems to put AMD ahead clock-for-clock, which would put it greatly ahead on price. But I'm not sure...}

So much for CPU speed, but as for graphics power Intel-based laptops seem to have an undeniable upper hand. In fact, I have not seen any AMD laptops sporting anything greater than low-end discrete graphics - but I am happy to be corrected on that, given that in my own research I have been focusing on the low end since my needs require only integrated graphics anyway. AMD seems to be committed to fixing this in the future, see this article. {Edit: I found an Asus laptop with AMD CPU and nVidia GeForce Go 7600, which I believe to be a pretty good GPU.}

Apart from this vaguely-described notion of their "Fusion" processor (CPU and GPU in one), I am not sure what else AMD has in store. They held an analyst day very recently; perhaps they clarified things there.

 

I believe there is a new line of Turion X2s coming out within the next few months which are supposed to close the gap between Turions and Core 2, but this is just what I heard on the forum.

 

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Notebook-Processors.129.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Processors-Benchmarklist.2436.0.html

 

In the old days prior to the Core Duos there were AMD laptops with powerful graphics cards, usually from Alienware or Sager.

Until they release the new CPUs we wont know if AMD will be more competitive, but AMD have usually not been so against Intel in the laptop market for a very long time. In the desktop market however, AMDs X2 had the lead until the C2Ds took over and ever since then AMDs old K8 architecture just hasnt been able to hold up.

It is only hopeful they can come up with a solution to their woes but it is just speculation right now.

 

Alienware's top gaming rig (cost and screen size 19” only comes With AMD, M590K (20.1” screen) only AMD top GPU's even SLI. These are boutique brands "designer"/"high-style", and has been this way for a while.
AMD has been winning the low end graphics for a long time because they don't run GMA 900/950 (god I love Intel). I have seen laptops with AMD and 8600m GT, just not Dell and that is thier marketing!

 

A useful 101 level tutorial that compares the basic technology of the AMD chipsets to the Intel chipsets can be found at the following link: http://arstechnica.com/articles/pae...tion-mobile-architecture-griffin-and-puma.ars

The article begins with a discussion of AMD's next generation of chips, but then moves into a basic discussion of how the basic AMD architecture differs from the Intel architecture. The usefulness of this discussion lies in the fact that it makes it easier to figure out what the real-world performance effect is of the formal differences in the formal specifications of the AMD chipsets and the Intel chipsets. For example, because of the different architectures, the Intel FSB clockspeed and the AMD FSB clockspeed cannot simply be directly compared, instead, the two FSBs have different strengths and weaknesses which must be evaluated against the predominant types of uses you intend to put your computer to in order to determine whether or not the AMD or the Intel chip will provide better performance.