Mobile Phenom II?

[Tchamber]

It's already available from HP's site on a couple of their laptops. I was wondering why we don't see any tests on it yet...any ideas? Should be a viable less expensive alternative the the i5 for entry level gaming rigs...I read it'll be up to 3GHz for the x2 and 2GHz for the x4.

 

[BD231]

Wondering that myself, my Turion just died this weekend (one to many falls off the coffee table, damn dogs).

Here's a general idea on the quad part.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Phenom-II-X4-X920-BE-Notebook-Processor.30503.0.html

 

[richierich1212]

I wonder if you will be able to overclock the Black Edition processors. Doubt it, though.

 

[BD231]

Being that it's still May we just need to wait a little for review's. All Athlon XP mobile chips were unlocked so I wouldn't put it past AMD to offer an unlocked multi, though I doubt that'd do you any good on a name brand laptop.

 

[VirtualLarry]

http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Phenom-II-X4-X920-BE-Notebook-Processor.30503.0.html

Clever, clever, marketing. They must be taking a page from the mobile GPU market, marketing this chip as a "Phenom II", but missing the L3 cache, so it's in actuality only an Athlon II.

I guess that's like NVidia's mobile 260GXM part, that's really just a G92 chip.

 

[extra]

I was just in Costco and they had an HP laptop with a mobile phenom II. It, unfortunately, only had crappy integrated graphics.

 

[BD231]

Clever, clever, marketing. They must be taking a page from the mobile GPU market, marketing this chip as a "Phenom II", but missing the L3 cache, so it's in actuality only an Athlon II.

I guess that's like NVidia's mobile 260GXM part, that's really just a G92 chip.

Indeed. With the i3 through i7 mobile lineup they don't have a choice but to release something to compete. They've had time to revise the Athlon II process and they're still stuck at 45 watts on a cpu that's not only 500mhz slower than a 45w i7, but also slower clock for clock.

In any case the 3ghz mark is where the lack of L3 starts to hurt the Athlon/Phenom, so overall you're not loosing to much in the way of performance. That's part of the reason why you still don't see any mobile AMD parts with an L3.

 

[BD231]

Here are the first impressions/benchies from PC mag and some tech log.

Benchies~> http://www.pcmag.com/image_popup/0,1871,iid=259908,00.asp

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2364554,00.asp

http://www.dailytechlog.com/tag/phenom-ii-n930

Conclusion: " AMD 2010 platform for notebooks: it’s OK, but too expensive for the performance "

Looks like we'll have an x3 mobile part as well.

 

[lopri]

Two things:

1) AMD's mobile products are terrible.
2) AMD's OEM designs are terrible in general as well.

1) should be self evident, and 2) is more complex. When I went to BestBuy and checked out Dell/HP systems some months ago (both mobile and desktop), I was shocked to learn how outdated designs were still used for new AMD CPUs. Lots of nForce chipsets (with weird names, but undoubtedly age-old) are still half of them, and yester-years ATI chipsets the other half. On the desktop side, the most up-to-date match I saw was Phenom II X4 + 785G. If AMD wants to be serious about retail OEM market they need to modernize their designs. Even then, I'd say no to mobile Phenoms.

 

[richierich1212]

Well maybe the OEMs are trying to be cheap as possible and the only way they'll use AMD components are if AMDs selling parts on the cheap.

 

[Lonyo]

Clever, clever, marketing. They must be taking a page from the mobile GPU market, marketing this chip as a "Phenom II", but missing the L3 cache, so it's in actuality only an Athlon II.

I guess that's like NVidia's mobile 260GXM part, that's really just a G92 chip.

Whereas Intel just releases 2 core/4 thread Core i7 mobile parts, which isn't as bad at all


I hope AMD decides to focus more on mobile and maybe tries to get some 32nm processors out the door for mobile before 2012. They do seem to lag their mobiles behind desktop in terms of process technology as well as architecture.
I mean, launching an ultraportable platform in September 2009 using 55nm chipsets and 65nm CPUs? Seriously?

(Posting from an Athlon64 X2 with HD3200 laptop which runs rather toasty on occasion and has poor battery life, but it was cheap).

 

[VirtualLarry]

(Posting from an Athlon64 X2 with HD3200 laptop which runs rather toasty on occasion and has poor battery life, but it was cheap).

Hey, I'm posting from an Emachines E627 laptop, which has an AMD TF-20 1.6Ghz single-core CPU, and HD3200 integrated graphics. It was also cheap ($200).

 

[DrMrLordX]

Well maybe the OEMs are trying to be cheap as possible and the only way they'll use AMD components are if AMDs selling parts on the cheap.

Seems like the OEMs are dredging up parts from the bargain bins of yesteryear. With AMD's comparative lack of market leverage, there's really nothing they can do to stop it, and the superb backwards-compatability of K10.5 procs almost ensures that OEMs can use new(er) Phenom II parts with older chipsets/motherboards.

If AMD wants OEMs to use modern chipsets, they need to release backwards-incompatible parts, and if they do that, then they may simply lose market share.

Bobcat may change that on the mobile front. Or maybe it won't.