AMD mushes out 'ultrathin' Yukon notebook
Chipmaker joins HP in Atom challenge
AMD has mushed out its new 'Yukon' mobile platform today, which is set to indirectly compete with Intel's Atom platform in slim, low-cost portable PCs.
The platform bundles AMD's new Athlon Neo MV-40 chip with ATI Radeon X1250 integrated graphics. Computer builders also have the option of including ATI mobility Radeon HD 3410 discrete graphics for a bit more oomph.
AMD claims Yukon fits a price and performance gap between low-cost netbooks and beefier notebook PCs - a new category which the chipmaker was so kind to have designated for us as "ultrathin notebooks". Mark that in your notes.
"In introducing the AMD ultrathin notebook platform, AMD enables a balanced PC performance, including the option of advanced graphics and video for true HD entertainment, all in an affordable, ultrathin notebook, bringing consumers uncompromised mobility," philosophized Chris Cloran, veep of AMD's client division in a statement.
The single-core Athlon Neo chip runs at 1.6GHz, with a 512KB L2 cache and a thermal envelope of 15 watts. It was jointly developed with Hewlett-Packard, which not coincidentally will debut the first laptop with the Yukon platform.
First out of the pen is the HP Pavilion dv2 Entertainment Notebook PC, set to "officially" unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show. The computer sports a 12.1-inch screen, up to 4GB of DDR2 memory, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3410 graphics, and an HDD ranging from 160GB-500GB. The Pavilion dv2 weighs only 3.8 pounds in its base configuration — in part due to its lack of an internal optical drive. It can support an external Blu-Ray player, although that would be a questionable benefit considering the small screen.
The starting price for the Pavilion dv2 is about $700. The notebook ultrathin notebook is expected to be available in April. ®
COMMENTS
Nice
Liking the look of this one, for the options it has to customize it and the holy grail of DVI + HDMI outputs.
I'd probably just go for the basic model (maybe with a little extra RAM for good measure), but I can see a lot of people liking the idea of a bigger hard drive and discrete graphics on a lightweight netbook-like machine.
Outputs on the thing look perfect for the odd bit of media centre usage, assuming the integrated graphics can handle HD output.. nvidia's already demo'd their new netbook chipset that can handle it, so that'll be the dealbreaker for me.
Linux would be nice to keep the cost down a bit, paying for yet another vista OEM before wiping it off would bug me.
@ Eric
Actually I managed to pick up an Acer Aspire 2920 with 12.1" widescreen (1280x800 res) with a Core 2 Duo 2Ghz, 2GB Ram and a 250GB Hard Drive from Comet for £350 (managers special reduced from £400). I'd say that's a pretty reasonable sub notebook.
If HP release this in the UK for about £300 AND it has a decent size keyboard then I'm sure it'll be snapped up. Hopefully it will have a Linux option as well as whatever Microsoft peddle.
Rob
SO?
My VAIO SZ weighs a bit less, has an optical drive, and a larger screen. Only the price of this piece of kit is interesting, but even that is not very good.
Isn' this a subnotebook?
I always believed that portables weighting 3 to 4 pounds with 12 to 13 inch screens were subnotebooks, so to me this looks more like the first affordable subnotebooks than a new product category. This doesn't mean that this isn't a smart move (it is), as a lot of consumer want the performance and portability of a subnotebook, but most models were priced for "enterprise" customers (around 1000€).
This will also compete well against budget notebooks, since these machines probably have enough power to be you "main" computer if you don't need too much performance, as opposed to atom powered netbooks that are more secondary machines.
What worries me however is that no mention is made of the OS that the HP will feature. If it is XP or Linux it will be OK as the performance of the AMD processor and chipset will clearly differenciate it from atom based machines, but if the machine is encumbered with Vista the benefits may not be that apparent.
On the other hand if HP bundle the dv2 with a Linux distribution that includes a video player that support AMD's new XvBA video acceleration for Linux this would completely outclass the intel platforms for HD video playback!
