An unofficial source is claiming that AMD plans to reduce the prices of its current processors in early April, which could suggest that new models are on the way. According to the information, prices on just about all Phenom and Athlon 64 X2 CPUs will fall, along with the company's low power Athlon 64 processors and budget Sempron processors. If this is true, that would hint at an April launch for AMD's upcoming Phenom 9550, 9650 and 9750 CPUs. No information about how much we can expect prices to drop by has been released, but the introduction of new Phenom models should help AMD compete better with Intel's Core 2 Quad range.

ComputerBase has revealed AMD's notebook processor roadmap for 2008, which list four "Griffin"-based chips. "Griffin" CPUs are part of the upcomnig "Puma" notebook platform. The roadmap shows AMD Turion 64 Ultra and AMD Turion 64 dual-core models, with 2MB and 1MB of L2 cache respectively. Both CPUs support DDR2 800MHz memory and have clock speeds ranging from 2GHz to 2.4GHz. Their power consumption ranges between 32 Watts and 35 Watts. There is also a single core Athon 64 chip with 1MB of L2 cache, DDR2 667MHz support, clock speeds starting from 1.9GHz, and a power consumption of 31 Watt. AMD also lists a range of "Sable" Sempron single-core chips with 512KB of L2 cache, 25W power consumption, and clock speeds starting from 2GHz. Codename "Sable" stands for the lower-end "Griffin" CPUs. Along with the new CPUs, "Puma" will deliver the RS780 mobile chipset with the DirectX 10 ready HD3200 integrated graphics and the Unified Video Decoder (UVD). In addition, the RS780 includes PowerXpress technology for dynamic switching between integrated and discrete graphics to extend battery life, as well as PCI Express 2.0 and HyperTransport 3.0 technologies. AMD has announced that the "Puma"/"Griffin"-powered laptops will start shipping at the end of the second quarter of 2008.

After first announcing it last April, AMD has now officially launched its Puma mobile platform, which is set to go head-to-head with Intel's Centrino platform. Puma is AMD's first attempt at a complete mobile platform and provides much stronger specifications than the company has had previously. In order to be branded as part of the Puma platform, notebooks must come with a Griffin CPU, RS780M chipset and WiFi adapter, with the option of a discrete graphics card. AMD has integrated a number of power saving features into the Puma platform, including the ability to dynamically change individual CPU core frequencies depending on processor load and PowerXpress technology, which can automatically switch from discrete external graphics to less power-hungry integrated graphics when running on batteries - without the need to reboot. Puma certified systems are expected to ship from the end of the second quarter this year, with prices ranging from around $700 to $2,500 at launch.

AMD demonstrated at the CeBit electronics exhibition its first 45nm quad-core chips running multiple operating systems and a range of processing intensive applications. The processors were produced in Dresden, Germany, in AMD's Fab 36 300mm manufacturing facility, using an advanced 45nm process co-developed with IBM.

AMD today announced the availability of the industry's most advanced motherboard GPU, the AMD 780 Series, delivering a rich computing experience for casual gamers and multimedia enthusiasts as the core of quiet and energy-efficient PC designs. When paired with an AMD Phenom 9000 series quad-core processor or Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processor, the AMD 780 Series delivers significant enhancements in gaming and high-definition experiences for mainstream PC customers. The AMD 780 Series motherboard GPU is scheduled to be widely available from more than 40 AMD partners at launch. Global OEMs are expected to offer AMD 780 Series-based PCs starting in Q2 2008.

AMD has released a YouTube marketing video for their upcoming 780 chipset. The 780 chipset is the first of its kind to utilize ATI Hybrid Graphics technology. This technology enables the user to combine the performance of both the integrated graphics chip and a standalone discrete graphics card for an affordable Crossfire-like solution.

The title says it all. Chinese magazine Bloomberg recently discovered plans of AMD to outsource chip manufacturing. Most likely, this move would be done to reduce capital expenditure. AMD has already been testing outsourcing with IBM, and is now ready to go all the way. This is all part of a strategy Hector Ruiz likes to call "asset light". Nobody on earth other than Ruiz seems to know what, exactly, asset light is, and Ruiz refuses to elaborate upon it at this point.

Things are definitely looking up for AMD, especially if this little rumor turns out to be true. ASUS just might have placed a very large order of AMD Sempron CPUs. If ASUS did, in fact, buy a bunch of Semprons, it would be a sign that ASUS is trying to get AMD some market recognition, and that AMD is going to get some revenue this fiscal quarter. These Semprons would most likely find themselves in EeePCs, especially considering ASUS announced plans to make more EeePCs.

Oh snap, another world record in the intense world of benchmarking. MemoryExtreme Team ITALY recently nabbed the 3DMark crown in both 3DMark05 and 3DMark06. System specs and screenshots are below. Enjoy.

• Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 @ 5800MHz
• ASUS P5E3 WS
• 2 x 1024 Cellshock DDR3 1800
• 2 x Radeon HD 2900XT 1250MHz/1880MHz
• Ultra X3 1600W power supply
• CPU pot MM rev3
• GPU pot Tek 9 3.0
• 80 liters of liquid nitrogen

AMD today announced that it has open sourced it's AMD Performance Library (APL). Now referred to as "Framewave version 1.0," the goal of this new open source project is to further enable the performance-optimized APL and expand its functionality beyond the existing core media capabilities, ensuring developers have an accelerated conduit to high performance application development. Contributions by partners, customers and the broader open-source software development community will accelerate library optimizations and feature enhancements in-line with their respective needs while AMD software engineers will continue to be dedicated contributors to the Framewave project.

AMD is taking the whole concept of a next-generation product flying out of NVIDIA's factory doors with an unnerving level of calm. The main points of a press conference...

• The 9600GT, in benchmarks scores roughly between an HD3850 and an HD3870. The HD3850 can be had for $169USD, and the HD3870 can be had for $189USD. Suggested MSRP for the 9600GT: $169-189USD.
• The current offerings from AMD are more feature rich than the 9600GT. Such features are DirectX 10.1, 55nm manufacturing, and built-in HDCP encoding.
• AMD's offerings currently beat the 9600GT in terms of heat, power consumption and noise.

The validity of the second point can be debated, considering DX10.1 games are still a ways away, and most users are hard-pressed to find the exact difference between DX10.1 and DX10.

It seemed that no matter what, nobody could get their A64 up past 4.2GHz. When people's chips didn't simply crap out, they got cold bugs. However, the Black Edition cards really changed things, and someone finally got lucky. An overclocker named Kris recently submitted the valid result of 4851MHz from their A64 5000+. Kris used an Abit AN-M2HD motherboard, based on the NVIDIA GeForce 7050 chipset. Nordic Hardware is currently working with CPU-Z to completely validate this claim. After all, this is a monumental achievement, considering the last A64 record was 4.26GHz.

TG Daily reports that Dell has developed a new line of AMD-based machines for businesses under the OptiPlex brand. Scheduled for a global launch next week on February 19th, these new computers will be named OptiPlex 740 and 740 Enhanced. The OptiPlex 740 will come with either a single or a dual-core Athlon 64 and GeForce 6150LE graphics/chipset combinations while the Enhanced version will utilize triple-core and quad-core Phenom processors mounted on a GeForce 6150LE/nForce 430 motherboard with Quadro NVS 210S graphics.

American Technology Research analyst Doug Friedman believes NVIDIA could acquire Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) despite AMD's x86 license from Intel being non-transferable. Friedman believes that AMD and Intel's long term roadmaps are a threat to NVIDIA and cites mounting pressure from AMD's stock holders as a reason for its vulnerability to a buyout from NVIDIA. AMD's recent troubles with its quad core processors and ATI's recent weakness in the high end graphics market have only exacerbated this pressure. Friedman sees AMD and Intel's plans for integration of CPUs and GPUs as a threat to NVIDIA and believes NVIDIA anticipates this future competition as well. Combining this information with rumors that Intel is attempting to develop discrete graphics adapters of their own leaves NVIDIA in a possibly weakened position. However, AMD's extensive cross-licensing of x86 and other technologies with Intel would not be NVIDIA's only obstacle. They would also face possible anti-trust investigation from United States and European Union law enforcement agencies.

After experiencing some technical problems with its next-generation Phenom processors, AMD could now be facing some issues with its new Puma line of devices for notebook PCs, according to an analyst. Last year, AMD announced its Griffin CPU, the first processor it has designed from the ground up for notebooks. AMD is pairing its new CPU with the Puma platform that aims to take on Intel's Centrino chips in high-end notebooks. The Puma platform is slated to ship in the second quarter and AMD insists the product is on track. But one analyst has a slightly different viewpoint. "Our channel checks suggest AMD's Puma platform for notebooks may have a technical glitch. We have not been able to confirm this with AMD and if a problem exists, AMD could have a fix in the works that saves the launch," said analyst Doug Freedman of American Technology Research Inc., in a new report. On the other hand, AMD denied that there are any issues with Puma. "AMD is not aware of any technical glitches with its next-generation notebook platform, codenamed 'Puma.' Per our commitment at the AMD Financial Analyst Day in December 2007, the 'Puma' platform remains on track for Q2 2008," the spokeswoman said.

In response to NVIDIA's recent interest in the mobile phone market, AMD would like to clarify that they already have a fine market share in the mobile phone market, and that they plan on increasing said market share. At the 2008 Mobile Phone conference in Barcelona, AMD unveiled three brand new Imageon processors. Out of these processors, one is a TV tuner chip, one is an audio processor, and the last is an "application processor" which can run 3D games. For full details and concept pictures, please follow the source link.

The San Jose Mercury News web site is reporting that at next week's Game Developers Conference a number of companies, including those that are normally fierce rivals, will be announcing a new effort to promote PC gaming. According to the article, which uses unnamed sources, the group will be called the PC Gaming Alliance and will involve a joint effort between companies like Microsoft, Intel, NVIDIA, AMD as well as a number of computer companies. The story states that the PC Gaming Alliance "will keep the PC competitive with game consoles to attract key game developers" and adds that it "will coordinate and expand those efforts to improve the experience of playing games on computers." The original story is found here, while the time when we'll see if this is all true is February 18-22, 2008 in San Francisco, or the date when GDC starts.

At this point, it seems as though Intel has just about everything in the world going right for them. They're getting a lot of money, their CPUs are in just about every computer, and they have had the best products on the market for the past several months. However, AMD and the European Union don't feel like Intel got this success in a legitimate manner. And so, the European Union sent law enforcement agents to do surprise raids. The raids being sent out are searching for one thing in particular: hard evidence that Intel pressured retail stores to avoid AMD-based products. These charges are added on to similar monopoly charges already put upon Intel by the European Union.

So a company made a suite of software for their products, and released it. Big deal, right? The thing is, AMD launching AMD Overdrive is surprisingly important. Instead of various hardware enthusiast boards hosting buggy beta code, AMD hosting their software is a sign of maturity. Overdrive's upload signified that AMD is happy enough with their software to label it official, and is confident enough with the code to host it on their website.

Alright, enough chit-chat. You may download the AMD Overdrive software, which overclocks AMD processors of most sorts, and checks the overclock stability of all processors, here.

In a hilarious and somewhat cruel twist of fate, market research has proven that AMD sells more when Intel really lays down the advertising. Stephen DiFranco, vice president of worldwide sales and marketing at AMD, had this to say in regards to Intel's advertising.

I wish they would advertise more. I beg them publicly, please advertise more. Create more demand. Some weeks in the United States there are more AMD desktops and notebooks sold than Intel.

Granted, DiFranco later admitted that most consumers hardly know the difference between AMD and Intel. However, going from a 5% retail market share to a 50% retail market share without spending any money on advertising is pretty hard to explain any other way.

With the launch of the GeForce 9 series getting closer and closer, AMD is hard pressed to find something to keep themselves competitive. While the RV670 and R680 are regaining some much needed market share, they will both pale when the GeForce 9 series is released to the public. Thankfully, AMD is not going down without a fight. About the same time as the GeForce 9 series is released, AMD is releasing a little something called the RV770. At this point, it appears that the RV770 is about 50% faster than the current HD3870, which is certainly respectable. How this compares to the GeForce 9 series is still a mystery. The release of CrossFire X technology ought to really help benchmark numbers, assuming AMD can make buying four AMD GPUs cost about as much as two from NVIDIA.

The current drivers available from ATI (Catalyst 8.1) support an interesting new mode: interoperability between an HD3870 and an HD3850 in CrossFire mode. Fudzilla had both the time and resources to test this out, so they did. Before the test results are considered, please remember that these are just initial drivers. Both Catalyst 8.2 and 8.3 will offer more impressive CrossFire results. To make a long story short, and to sum up a lot of bar charts, AMD is well on their way to making Hybrid CrossFire a feasible solution for a lot of people, especially once more graphics cards can be mixed-and-matched. Please check out Fudzilla for all the benchmarks.

The most notable increase was 50% in Half Life 2. NVIDIA does not have anything comparable to Hybrid CrossFire.

Yesterday, we brought you the tragic news that Dell recently stopped selling computers based on AMD processors on their website. Today, Dell made a statement to attempt to clarify the situation. Dell explained that there is a delicate balancing act that must be done between retail, phone, and internet sales channels. Dell also assured that there will be ample supply of AMD-based computers coming through retail channels, and that Dell hasn't quite stopped selling AMD computers on their website just yet (Inspiron 531 is still available). Dell also clarified that Dell is still selling plenty of AMD-based computers online, just so long as the customers are business. To sum it up, Dell said this:

We are committed to the AMD product lines as a long-term partner to provide the maximum choice for our customers.

For years, users wanted Dell to include AMD processors in Dell builds. In May 2006, Dell was happy to announce that they were bringing AMD on board. Everything seemed to be working out, until now. Dell recently announced that they're discontinuing almost all AMD-based Dell computers. The few ones that are left cannot be purchased online, and are only found in stores like Best Buy and Circuit City. This is likely to be a huge blow for AMD, and could not have come at a worse time. AMD recently posted abysmal revenue/loss figures for Q4 2007, and is running a company (ATI) that is worth 30% less than it was at the time of initial purchase. Hopefully, AMD will find more people to sell their processors.

The AMD HD 3870X2 graphics processor needs no introduction. However, as some overclockers have already found out, there's no easy way to control voltages to get extremely high clocks out of their $400+ graphics card. Assuming you do not have a VCO PLL divider bug in your card's BIOS (which will limit the core clock to 860MHz no matter what), the only thing really stopping you from reaching 3DMark record books is a pesky voltage problem. Since the power layout of the 3870 is completely different from the 3870X2, the 3870X2 voltages cannot be controlled through software.

Fortunately for all you hardcore overclockers out there with 3870X2s and meaty power supplies, extreme overclocker "Shamino" published a voltage modification guide.

Enjoy.