Acer's Aspire 5551G: AMD's Budget Gaming Laptop

A couple months ago, we looked at AMD's quad-core P920 processor and HD 5650 GPU combination (with HD 4250 switchable graphics) courtesy of the Toshiba A660D/A665D. The combination wasn't without promise, but we walked away with a few concerns. First, we didn't think the Toshiba notebook was the best-built system on the block, with its glossy textured plastic. Then there's the issue with the CPU: the Phenom II P920 may be a quad-core processor, but the slow 1.6GHz maximum clock speed can be a serious bottleneck. And while we like the idea of switchable graphics, Toshiba garners two more marks against their offering: first, they don't participate in AMD's mobile driver program (you can get around this by downloading the drivers on a different laptop from a vendor that does participate, interestingly enough); second, they take the Radeon HD 5650 and clock it at 450MHz instead of 550MHz. Combine all of the above with a minimum price of $800 and we walked away without a clear winner. Here's our wish list from the conclusion of the A660D review:

    Frankly, it just doesn't seem like anyone has yet come up with an ideal AMD-based laptop—not that they can't, but more like they won't. So to help, here's what we want. First, give us more than a 48Wh battery—look at ASUS' U-series laptops with 84Wh batteries for inspiration here. Second, keep the CPU clock speed above 2.0GHz, because when Intel's i3-330M beats a quad-core 1.6GHz part in virtually every benchmark you know there's a problem. Third, give us a decent GPU (5650 or faster), but don't force us into 16" and larger notebooks; P520, 5650, and a 63Wh battery (at least) should all fit in a 14" chassis. Bonus points for the first laptop to provide all of the above and not use a cheap LCD (and we'd even pay an extra $50-$100 for such a display). Considering the competition on the Intel side of the fence, realistically all of this needs to fit into a budget of under $800, since an extra $100 brings Core i5 parts into direct competition.

Besides the above, we also had to question whether P920 made sense with the 5650—a higher clocked dual-core processor seemed like a better overall gaming solution, given the dearth of games that truly benefit from having more than two cores. Not long after that review, AMD contacted us and asked if we'd like to look at the Acer 5551G-4591, a laptop that at least meets several of the above wish list bullet points. Now, we haven't been particularly kind in our comments on some of the Acer/Gateway laptops of late, but that doesn't mean they can't fill a niche. We still think the keyboard is one of the least desirable options for a notebook (which is putting it kindly), and they're not likely to ever win an industrial design competition, but one thing Acer tends to do better than anyone else is to pack some decent performance options into very affordable offerings. So just what does the 5551G-4591 bring to bear? Here's the spec rundown.

Acer Aspire 5551G-4591 Specifications
Processor	AMD Athlon II P520 (2x2.3GHz, 45nm, 1MB L2, 25W)
Chipset	AMD RS880M + SB850
Memory	2x2GB DDR3-1066 (Max 2x4GB)
Graphics	AMD Radeon Mobility HD 5650 1GB DDR3 (400 Shaders, 550MHz core clock, 1540MHz effective memory clock)
Display	15.6" LED Glossy 16:9 768p (1366x768) AU Optronics B156XW02-V2 Panel
Hard Drive(s)	500GB 5400RPM (Seagate Momentus 5400.6 ST9500325AS)
Optical Drive	DVD+/-RW Drive (Matshita DVD-RAM UK890AS)
Networking	Gigabit Ethernet (Broadcom BCM57780) Wireless 802.11n (Atheros AR928X, 300Mb capable)
Audio	Realtek ALC272 HD Audio Stereo speakers, headphone and microphone jacks
Battery	6-Cell, 10.8V, 4400mAh, 48Wh battery
Front Side	Flash reader
Left Side	Headphone and microphone jacks 1 x USB 2.0 HDMI Ethernet jack VGA Exhaust vent AC plug
Right Side	2 x USB 2.0 Optical drive Kensington lock
Back Side	None
Operating System	Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Dimensions	15.0" x 10.0" x 1.0"-1.3" (WxDxH)
Weight	5.7 lbs
Extras	1.3MP Webcam 103-Key Keyboard with dedicated 10-key Flash reader (MMC, SD/Mini SD, MS/Duo/Pro/Pro Duo, xD)
Warranty	1-year standard warranty
Pricing	Estimated price of $649 [Possibly discontinued]

Acer To Use AMD Zacate Chip In 7-inch Tablet?

Acer will become the first major manufacturer to use AMD's next generation Fusion processors (potentially a Zacate APU, the direct competitor to Intel's Atom) in a tablet format device.

The device will sport a 10.1-inch screen (possibly 1024x600 pixels) and will combine a touchscreen with a physical keyboard (a full size version) with the latter being presented as a docking station that enhances the tablet's connectivity as well.

The tablet, which has yet to be named, will weigh less than 1Kg and will be less than 15mm thick. Acer says that it will come with two 1.3-megapixel cameras, Wi-Fi, 3G connectivity and will be available as from February 2011.

As expected, the tablet that doubles as a netbook, will come with Windows 7, possibly Starter; we couldn't see any connectors on the docking station or on the tablet itself.

No pricing details have been published yet and we're not sure whether the device will be marketed as a consumer-oriented Aspire brand or for a more professional, upmarket one with the Timeline.

AMD claims its image quality is on par with Nvidia

FINGER POINTING has broken out again between the pixel pushers Nvidia and AMD over the image quality of their graphics drivers.

On Monday reports surfaced that Nvidia claimed its arch-rival, AMD, has lowered the image quality of default settings in its Catalyst drivers. Essentially the Green Goblin charged that AMD is cheating in order to attain higher benchmarking scores and thus garner more favourable reviews.

Nick Stam, the technical marketing director at Nvidia hammered home the point in a blog post, saying "Nvidia GPUs provide higher image quality at default driver settings, which means comparative AMD [versus] Nvidia testing methods need to be adjusted to compensate for the image quality differences."

It was a pretty serious indictment of AMD and not surprisingly it drew a response from Nvidia's competing GPU designer. In a statement sent to The INQUIRER, AMD said it takes the issue of image quality seriously, writing, "We are committed to the PC gaming community and take all feedback on image quality very seriously."

The firm continued, "To that end, we have recently revisited the current default image quality settings used in Catalyst drivers and found them to be on par with the default settings provided by our competitor. We take great care in determining the default settings of Catalyst drivers and believe current settings deliver a very good gaming experience."

Questions over image quality settings in drivers have been around for years, first hitting the headlines back in 2003 with Nvidia's decision to treat the popular 3DMark benchmark with disdain by lowering image quality and not rendering out of frame objects. Many INQUIRER readers still remember that saga and not surprisingly shouts of the pot calling the kettle black were heard in response to Stam's recent claims.

Nvidia has said that it won't go down a similar route of image quality reduction in order to seemingly perform better in benchmarks, however with AMD holding firm that it doesn't compromise image quality in its drivers' default settings, a race to Lego-esque image quality might be just around the corner.

Acer 10.1 inch tablet supposedly has AMD C-50 APU

We’ve reported on Acer’s 10.1 inch Windows 7 tablet before, and there is a rumor that it may be powered by an AMD C-50 APU.

According to DigiTimes, it will have AMD’s dual-core C-50 Ontario APU, which “consumes just 9W of power and packs a built-in Radeon HD 6250 graphics chip”. There is even reports that Acer will produce a 10.1 inch Android slate with Tegra 2 with support for WiFi and 3G. As far as any other features that we know, it will have a”1GHz processor, 4 megapixel rear facing camera, an HDMI port capable of outputting 720p HD videoand the ability to playback Flash 10.1 content”.

Amazon Cyber Monday sales Sony Black 17.3″ VPCEF22FX/BL Laptop AMD Athlon II

Now is the most opportune time to find deals on workbooks which you have been waiting for all year. During the sales of Cyber Monday, Amazon.com gives away unbelievable laptop sales and coupons on a huge number of nearly all brands of eReaders. No matter whether you’re purchasing for yourself or a loved one, you absolutely should not let Amazon.com laptop bargains pass you. Check out Amazon.com for the newest laptop Cyber Monday bargains!VPC-EF22FX/BI Vaio Notebook, Black
Enjoy powerful performance and massive multimedia entertainment on this affordable 17.3″ widescreen laptop PC from Sony. With Sony VAIO, you can experience an AMD Athlon II X2 processor, loads of RAM and amazing picture quality, giving you everything you need to keep track of your mobile life in one sleek package. It even includes an integrated number pad, ensuring that you feel just as comfortable with your laptop as you feel with your desktop.

List Price: $ 699.99

dell7-inch Streak | Dell to launch 7-inch Streak next year

BANGALORE, INDIA: With lot of talks about the small size of Dell's tablet Streak, the company is looking at launching the bigger version in a few months and stay in the competition-driven market.
Addressing the media, during the earnings call at Dell's quarterly financial results announcement today, Steve Felice, president – consumer, small and medium business, Dell, said, “We are looking at the launch of the 7-inch version of our tablet called Streak somewhere around early next year.”
Though he declined to divulge further details he added that the 10-inch tablet from Dell will come around latter half of the year. The present model has a scree size of 5 inches.
He shared that the company is buoyant about the tablet business and is glad to see the performance of the consumer business.
The performance of Streak and the bullish expectation of the company comes with the concern for their mobile unit. According to a report by Wall Street Journal, Ron Garriques, president, Communication Solutions, for Dell is parting ways from Dell, as the company is closing down its mobile unit.

Dell third-quarter profit more that doubles

Dell Inc. more than doubled its profit in the third quarter thanks to stronger sales to corporate customers and falling prices for computer components, the company said Thursday.

"We had a very good quarter with solid revenue growth and good profitability and cash flow," said Chief Financial Officer Brian Gladden .

The computer-maker made a profit of $822 million, or 42 cents a share, on revenue of $15.4 billion for the quarter ended Oct. 29. Revenue was up 19 percent from a year ago, while profit jumped 144 percent.

The company said it saw a richer mix of profits while keeping costs down and benefiting from the falling prices of components such as memory chips, storage drives and flat-panel displays.

Analysts were pleased with the profits, which were well ahead of estimates. Dell shares jumped almost 7 percent in extended trading, to as high as $14.58 a share.

"Revenues were light, but earnings were solid and profit margins were very solid," said Brian Marshall with Gleacher & Co.

"They hit gross margins out of the park," said Ashok Kumar with Rodman & Renshaw .

Gross margins for the company totaled 19.5 percent of revenue, compared with 16.6 percent in the second quarter. Analysts had criticized the company earlier in the year for disappointing gross margins, which are sales minus the cost of production.

Dell's strongest growth came in large corporate products and services, where revenue was $4.3 billion, up 27 percent from a year ago. Public sector revenue totaled $4.4 billion, up 20 percent, and small and medium-size business revenue totaled $3.7 billion, up 24 percent. Consumer sales totaled $2.9 billion, up 4 percent.

The company said it generated $913 million in cash in the quarter and ended with more than $14 billion in cash and short-term investments.

"Our strong results demonstrate that we are listening to customers and delivering what they want," said CEO Michael Dell.

The company said it expects to see continued strong growth in sales of desktop and notebook computers to large corporate customers.

It expects its revenue growth for the fiscal year ending next January will "track toward the mid-point of the 14-19 percent" projection made this summer.

For the first three quarters, the company made a profit of $1.7 billion, or 87 cents a share, on revenue of $45.8 billion. That compared with a profit of $1.1 billion, or 56 cents, on revenue of $38 billion for the same period of last year.

Gladden said Dell continues to make good progress with its infant business of making mobile Internet devices despite the abrupt departure of Ron Garriques , the head of that business, which was announced Wednesday. Garriques, a former Motorola executive who has worked at Dell for nearly four years, will receive more than $8 million in severance, bonus pay and consulting fees from the company over the next year.

"We are the pleased with the progress there," Gladden said.

The CFO also discounted repeated speculation about whether the company will go private, although he also said recently that the idea has been discussed at Dell.

"We have no plans to take the company private, period," he said.

dell :- Dell Q3 net income doubles to $822 mn, revenue up 19%

Computer-maker Dell Inc today reported an over two-fold jump in net income to USD 822 million for the three-month period ended October 29 on robust growth in commercial and enterprise business, coupled with the strong performance of emerging markets like India.

The company's net income stood at USD 337 million in the corresponding year-ago period, Dell said in a statement.

The company's revenue rose to USD 15.39 billion in the third quarter ended October 29, 2010, from USD 12.89 billion in the same quarter last fiscal, translating into a 19 per cent gain.

Dell has registered double-digit revenue growth in all operating regions, with revenue in Brazil , Russia, India and China rising by 30 per cent overall, led by a 55 per cent jump in revenue from Dell's India business.

"The company continues to expand its presence in these important countries, which now represent 13 per cent of total company revenue," Dell said.

In addition, Asia-Pacific and Japan revenue grew by 29 per cent, while Dell's Europe, Middle East and Africa revenue increased by 15 per cent. Furthermore, revenue from the Americas was up 18 per cent.

Commenting on the result, Dell Chief Financial Officer Brian Gladden said: "Our teams delivered outstanding results in the quarter. With solid demand in our commercial segments, we executed well and that led to record profitability for the company and especially in our important enterprise solutions and services business."

During the quarter, sales of Dell's consumer products rose by 4 per cent vis-a-vis the year-ago period to USD 3 billion, while commercial sales grew 24 per cent to USD 12.4 billion.

Revenue from large enterprises climbed 27 per cent to USD 4.3 billion and revenue from the public sector was up 20 per cent to USD 4.4 billion. Revenue from small and medium-size businesses grew 24 per cent to USD 3.7 billion.

The computer-maker ended the quarter with cash reserves and investments worth USD 14 billion.

amd :- Leaked AMD slides claim to reveal CPU timeline and new 'FM1' socket

Summary

Two slides have surfaced which it is claimed detail the company’s timeline for the release of upcoming CPUs and APUs (Accelerated Processing Unit, CPU/GPU hybrids).

wo slides have surfaced which it is claimed detail the company’s timeline for the release of upcoming CPUs and APUs (Accelerated Processing Unit, CPU/GPU hybrids).

Origin of the slides is the German website ATI-Forum which claims the slides came from a ‘business-related source.’

    Note: I don’t speak German so I’m relying on Google translation.

If accurate this is excellent news because it means AM3+ compatible 4, 6 and 8 core CPUs based on the Bulldozer architecture and all featuring Turbo Core by the middle of next year, with the 8 core version coming in 95W and 125W TDP.

Nice.

But there’s more …

What we have here is the timeline for the Fusion APUs (the CPU/GPU hybrids. What’s interesting here is that this slide introduces a new socket - FM1. This was to be expected given that the silicon features both CPU and GPU. Maintaining AM3+ compatibility couldn’t really be expected. If a new socket is in the pipeline I’d expect that we’ll start to see samples of these board by early next year.

This slide also backs up the rumor that Fusion has been delayed until the second part of 2011.

Looks like we can expect some really good stuff from AMD next year.

amd :- Office Depot Black Friday Ads 2010- HP AMD Quad Core Desktop for $550

New York- Office Depot Black Friday Ads 2010- Office Depot is offering deals on the HP AMD Quad Core Desktop. This desktop is now available at a price tag of $550.

HP AMD Quad Core Desktop would come for $550 after rebate only. There won’t be any cost for the shipping of the product.

This $50 mail-in rebate drops it to $549.99. With free shipping, that’s $170 off and the lowest total price we could find for such a quad-core Pavilion bundle.

Sales tax is added where applicable. Features include an AMD Athlon II 635 2.9GHz quad-core processor, 4GB RAM and 750GB 7200 rpm hard drive.

At the same time, it has dual-layer DVD burner with LIghtScribe, memory card reader, 802.11n wireless, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. Deal ends November 20.

Quad-core processor offers extra power to handle today’s complex software.

amd :- Mage XLC M1 Extreme Liquid-Cooled AMD Gaming PCs Introduced by iBUYPOWER

A custom, liquid-cooled PC gaming system capable of delivering an extreme level of performance within the latest graphics-intensive titles is a dream for quite a lot of gamers from all over the world, and since at least some of the respective gamers tend to favor AMD CPUs over Intel's processors, iBUYPOWER has decided to add an AMD powered system to its popular new super-cooled XLC (Extreme Liquid Cooling) line of gaming systems.

As the custom gaming systems' integrator informs us, its new Mage XLC M1 can be configured with a AMD Phenom II X6 1055T, 1075T or 1090T six core processor cooled by Asetek’s maintenance free 240mm large radiator liquid cooling system.

The new Mage XLC also comes ready to do battle out of the box with 8GB of DDR3 memory, AMD Radeon HD 5770 graphics card, 1TB of storage space and Windows 7 Home Premium.

iBUYPOWER is also now offering Black and White Phantom case options with the XLC line.

Previously available only in red, the NZXT Phantom offers some very interesting cooling solutions that include up to 7 fans - dual 200mm, single 230/200mm, triple 120mm and a front 140mm fans.

Furthermore, gamers looking to get the most out of their new Paladin XLC system can take advantage of the iBUYPOWER Labs’ Power Drive Overclocking Service, which overclocks the CPU by as much as 30%.

“We try to offer the highest level of customization possible across all our product lines,” said Darren Su, Executive Vice President of iBUYPOWER.

“AMD’s powerful six core Phenom processors are a natural fit with the XLC line’s commitment to best in class performance through advanced cooling solutions,” added Mr. Su.

Of course, such best-in-class performance does come at a pretty hefty price point, the Mage XLC system starting at $1,099 (but going a lot higher, should one decide to add only top-range, latest-gen components to it).