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AMD's Fusion has been a great success this year, with millions of units already shipped. Kitguru has reviewed many motherboards and systems powered by Fusion hardware. AMD are updating the range with the new A-Series chips which are targeting consumer notebooks and desktops.
The Fusion APU places both GPU and CPU functionality on the same silicon making for lower power demands. The new chips now bring quad core power to the end user.
Raymond Dunbeck, a marketing executive for AMD's Mobile unit said “What used to be accomplished in 85 watts or so. That same class of performance–quad-core combined with discrete-level graphics–will now be accomplished in about half the power that it used to take in a traditional system.”
Dunbeck added “We've allocated about a third [of the chip] to x86 and a third to graphics.” With Microsofts continued software support, the chip design will continue to grow in strength.
The Quad core design can also dynamically adjust to different processing scenarios. Dumbeck said “Software either takes advantage of frequency (speed) or cores. If the software is frequency dependent, you'll slow down the back two cores and boost the front two cores, increasing frequency. Or if the software is core dependent, you'll normalize across all four cores, having more cores available for core-dependent software.”
The first company to announce a new range of A series AMD laptops is Hewlett Packard in the US. Kitguru reviewed their DM1Z a short while ago and we came away with positive impressions.
AMD A series will be included in the following range of laptops from HP. We have no information as yet on UK pricing, so we are quoting the US prices.
Pavilion dv4 – $599
Pavilion dv6 – $599
Pavilion dv7 – $699
Pavilion g4 – $449
Pavilion g6 – $498
Pavilion g7 – $499
ProBook 6465b – $679 (b-series)
ProBook 6565b
ProBook 4535s – $519 (s-series)
ProBook 4435s
ProBook 4436s
Kitguru says: Are you going to move to Fusion?
I was considering Llano for my general purpose web browsing and media pc, the only draw back for me was the lack of support for 3D movie play back.
While there are several 3D TV’s that support AMD’s HD3D there is only one monitor….and that one has had poor reviews.
So until AMD actually get some support in terms of actual hardware available to buy rather than companies just signing up to support it…..then I’ll have to stick with an Nvidia solution……..shame because I would have preferred to have gone the Llano route.
Why not go with one of the TVs then? (unless they were all very large, which would be fine for a HTPC)