AMD announces Radeon HD 7000M series with Enduro graphics-switching technology

AMD kicked off 2012 by refreshing its desktop graphics, and now it's back, giving its mobile GPUs the same treatment. The company just announced its third generation of DirectX 11 mobile chips, the Radeon HD 7000 family. All told, the collection includes three 28nm GPUs: the high-end 7900M, the mainstream 7800M and, last but not least, the 7700M, a darling little chip intended for AMD's thin and light Ultrabook competitors. Across the board, the series ushers in a new feature AMD is calling Enduro, a graphics-switching technology that takes direct aim at NVIDIA Optimus. Building on older AMD technologies like PowerXpress, it doesn't require you to close apps, reboot your system or manually specify which apps will trigger the GPU.
Additionally, it's designed to work with both Intel CPUs and AMD's own application processing units, so presumably you'll find this inside some Ivy Bridge machines too. With this generation, too, the two higher-end chips support the PCI Express 3.0 interface, and all three make use of AMD's existing ZeroCore Power and Power Gating battery-saving features. That's the abridged version, but we also have a full breakdown of the specs awaiting you past the break.

Via engadget.com

NVIDIA: there's nothing 'Ultra' about Ivy Bridge Ultrabooks unless you add Kepler

This is a vaguely awkward message for NVIDIA to be putting out. On one hand, the company is best buddies with Intel and is hoping to see its next-gen GPUs bundled with a large portion of the Ivy Bridge notebooks that will ship this year. But to reach that target, it must risk irking Chipzilla by emphasizing the limitations of Ivy Bridge's integrated graphics. That's exactly what happened at a recent presentation, when NVIDIA told us there'll be "nothing Ultra" about the performance of a regular Ivy Bridge Ultrabook because the integrated HD 4000 graphics will only handle around 43 percent of current games.
By contrast, if you add in a GeForce GT 640M you'll find that 100 percent of current games are playable with frame rates over 30fps and high detail settings, including Battlefield 3, Batman: Arkham City, Crysis 2 and many others. If you leave the lightweight Ultrabook spec behind and combine Ivy Bridge with a GT 670M GPU then you can go even higher -- as we just discovered in our review of the MSI's GT70 gaming laptop. Fortunately, Intel was pretty magnanimous about HD 4000 when it briefed us, and readily accepted that enthusiasts will still want discrete graphics, so we don't imagine the slide above will cause too many hurt feelings.

Via engadget.com

Intel Shows Off Ultrabook-Tablet Hybrid Running Windows 8 (video)

Intel's Cove Point ultrabook can serve double duty as a Windows tablet.

Super-thin, super-light and super-speedy, ultrabooks were designed to make us forget about traditional PC notebooks. They were all the rage at their big CES coming-out party in January, but now even “traditional” ultrabooks are passe.
At IDF 2012 in Beijing last week, Intel showed off a clever new take on the ultrabook platform when it demoed an ultrabook-tablet hybrid reference design dubbed Cove Point.
“When we started talking about ultrabooks last year, we talked about different form factors, and touch and convertibles,” Gary Richman, Director of Marketing for Intel’s PC Client Solutions Division, told Wired. “This has been an evolution over time. Ultrabooks were never meant to be just clamshell designs.”

Intel’s Cove Point — aka Letexo, a former code name still used by some journalists — looks similar to two-in-one tablets like the Asus Transformer, which caters to consumers who can’t decide whether to buy a tablet or notebook.
Cove Point sports a touchscreen that can be used as a tablet when the device is closed. The keyboard rests flush against the back of the screen in this position, so the device more closely resembles a standard tablet than a clamshell notebook. You can also push the screen forward and prop it up against a stand to reveal a full-size keyboard — voila, you now have an ultrabook. Cove Point also boasts other folding modes that make it easy to watch a movie, or type on the touchscreen.

Most importantly, Cove Point isn’t just another Android tablet with an attached keyboard, a la the Asus Transformer. The hardware can be used as a full-fledged PC — Intel showed off the device running the Consumer Preview of Windows 8. At the demo, Cove Point also ran on an early sample of Intel’s upcoming Ivy Bridge CPU. Just like you’d find in a full-fledged notebook, the device sports a 12.5-inch screen, two USB 3.0 ports and an HDMI port.

Cove Point's screen lies flush against the keyboard when in tablet mode.

Richman and his team have been working on the Cove Point project since last year.
“Where we see the future of computing going, with tablets and Windows 8, is the importance of the touch experience,” Richman said. “[With Cove Point] we were looking to define the compelling form factors, usages and benefits of having a notebook design, while taking advantage of the touch experience in Windows 8.”
Currently, no OEMs have made a Cove Point announcement, but we would be surprised if manufacturers ignored the ultrabook-hybrid form factor entirely. As it’s currently configured, Richman estimates Intel’s Cove Point device would probably cost consumers around $1,000. You can catch a glimpse of Cove Point in this video of highlights from IDF 2012:



Via wired.com

MacBook Air, ultrabook chips coming as second Intel launch

Ivy Bridge chips for laptops like the MacBook Air, the Dell XPS 13 ultrabook, and HP Envy series will come in a second wave, Intel's CEO said today during the company's first-quarter earnings conference call.
"The first versions of Ivy Bridge that we're shipping are quad-cores," CEO Paul Otellini said during the call today. "And then the second launch of the products is the dual core, which is the mainstream notebooks," he added.
The first launch will happen on Monday, the second launch is likely in June. That's the timeframe that a crush of Ivy Bridge laptop announcements are expected.

And some of them, sporting touch screens, will be targeted at Windows 8, Otellini said in response to an analyst's question. "The biggest change, and the one that we're really focused on, is trying to make sure that we intercept the Windows 8 launch with sufficient quantities of ultrabooks that have touch enabled," he said.
He also mentioned that 100 more ultrabook design are on the way. (That's a jump from the last number that Intel threw out there -- 75.)
And Otellini also threw cold water on the ultrabooks-need-to-be-cheap-to-be-successful argument. "I'm not a subscriber that it takes mainstream price points to get us to high volume. I think...that just helps. And what you're going to see is an incredible amount of differentiation from $699 to $1,299," he said.

Via Cnet.com

Intel Ivy Bridge chips, Σε ultrabooks από τον Ιούνιο και μετά

Τα πολυαναμενόμενα chips της οικογένειας Ivy Bridge της Intel, σύμφωνα με τα όσα είπε σε δηλώσεις του ο ίδιος ο CEO της εταιρείας, αναμένεται να τοποθετηθούν στο Macbook Air, το Dell XPS 13 και τα HP Envy, ως μέρος του δεύτερου κύματος προώθησης των νέων επεξεργαστών στην αγορά. Θα προηγηθούν τα τετραπύρηνα και μετά θα ακολουθήσουν τα διπλού πυρήνα που θα εξοπλίζουν την πλειοψηφία των ultrabooks. Αυτό το δεύτερο κύμα θα λανσαριστεί τον Ιούνιο.

Ο CEO της Intel, απαντώντας σε ερωτήσεις, είπε ότι ένα μέρος από το δεύτερο κύμα των νέων επεξεργαστών θα πάει και σε υπολογιστές με λειτουργικό Windows 8. Αξίζει να σημειωθεί ότι τόνισε πως άλλα 100 σχέδια για ultrabooks θα πρέπει να αναμένονται στο προσεχές διάστημα.


Via techblog.gr