Available with the C-30 or C-50 AMD Fusion platform this is the Eee PC 1015B.
Max 2GB RAM breaks the mould a bit and we suspect this could come with Windows 7 OS options unlike many 10″ Netbooks
Posted from WordPress for Android with the Galaxy Tab
One of the biggest potential changes in the netbook market is being driven by AMD who think that high quality GPU and video decoding should be included. The C-50 / Ontario ‘APU’ is the part we need to take note of in the Fusion range and Netbooknews are now providing us with one of the first English language reports of an Ontario-powered device. This is the unboxing of the Toshiba N550d with a great Harmon Kardon speakers. The benchmarks will follow.
I’ve done my own analysis based on some reports that are already out there and I think that the X86 part of the platform is going to come in at just under Atom N550 performance. The 3D and HD performance will blow the Intel netbook platform, Pinetrail, away but it will be at the expense of about 10%-20% battery life. For those wanting 3D and HD video, its a small price to pay. For those more interested in general office-style computing, the high end dual core Atoms will probably be the way to go for the 1-1.3kg range of devices.
Via Netbooknews
Are you waiting to see how that 1Ghz dual-core AMD Fusion platform benchmarks before buying your next 10 inch device? I am. As someone who’s had a netbook for nearly two years now I am probably in the same boat as millions of other people I’m looking for an upgrade. I’m not buying until i’ve assessed Fusion though which means I’m scouring the web for information every day.
I’ve seen reports on the 1.6Ghz dual-core Zacate E-Series devices but they’re not targeted at the 10 inch segment. The one that’s going up against the Atom is the Ontario series. The C-50 being the dual-core 1.0Ghz version, the C-30 the single-core 1.2Ghz version. While the latter has been benchmarked, its the C-50 that is more interesting for day-to-day work.
Background on the C-series ‘APU’s’
The Toshiba NB550D has just hit the German online channels in the last week and is showing up for around 325 Euro (lowest price.) which puts it head to head with the ASUS EeePC 1015PN (with ION graphics.) The question is, which platform has the better day-to-day performance. The two platforms has a similar total TDP but the AMD part is going to be a lot better in 3D and HD video performance. With Flash 10.1 and HTML5 canvas elements taking advantage of GPU, the AMD advantage might be more significant that it first seems for non-gamers. For gamers, the advantage is clear.
Enough of the pre-amble. What have I found?
Well we’ve got a price as mentioned above. It’s Windows Starter 7 and 1GB of RAM for the 325 Euro price which doesn’t impress me so assume a 400+ price for 2GB and Windows 7 HP. The EeePC comes in at a minimum of 429 with those specs. That’s the entry point you want to be looking at if you’re upgrading though.
Secondly, we’ve got some unboxing pics.
The unboxing comes via eprice (translation link) and there are more images available. The keyboard reminds me instantly of the one on the Toshiba AC100. That’s good. I like the look of the speakers too.
Unfortunately the author doesn’t go as far as to benchmark the device (although I’d expect it to happen soon) but there are some YouTube tests. I’m looking at the results thinking, hmmm, that’s very similar to what I saw on the Samsung N350. The 720p videos are playing with >50% CPU load.
720P video playback time when most of the water is running between 56 to 68% will go to 7X% or even to 9X% off
All I can say at the moment is that given the C-30 performance data and this YouTube performance data it’s going to be a very close match between the CPU performance of the C-50 and N550 but as I said earlier, if you get the extra 3D performance and it translates to noticeable improvements in web and UI speed, Cedar Trail is going to have to really bump up the GPU performance in order to compete. (Unless, of course, it brings in significant power savings. Intel’s Oaktrail platform indicates that it might.)
Let’s keep an eye out for more data points, and battery life figures, over the next week.
The average weight of a 6-cell netbook is somewhere around 1200-1300 grams with true battery life of about 6hrs so seeing the specs for the Acer Aspire One 522 (AO522-BZ897) is quite encouraging considering the increase in CPU and GPU processing power that this will offer.
6hrs sounds good but let me send a quick warning out because the power envelope of this device is likely to reach much higher than any netbook. I predict that you could run this baby dry in under 3hrs if you pushed it hard, especially as the 6-cell battery looks to be a relatively low-capacity one. (4400mah)
Still, when you think about the upgrade thoughts of tens of million of existing netbook users that have 3hrs battery life on their 1-2 year old netbooks, this is quite an attractive upgrade in the 10 inch segment. It’s certainly one that I’m looking at very closely indeed, especially at the $329 price shown on Amazon.com now.
AMD look to be filling the big gap left between Atom and the new Core processors quite well. Let’s see what Intel come up with the for the next generation of their netbook platform (Cedar Trail) which really needs to hit similar performance to the AMD Fusion platform (Ontario AMD C-50 APU) in a smaller power envelope to be competitive. With HD video, HTML5 and Windows 7, the requirements for CPU,GPU and memory have changed a lot since 2008.
Via. Netbooknews
In our podcast on Monday, we spoke briefly about AMD’s ‘Atom killer.’ Coming from the ultra-mobile sector we were fairly negative about the potential impact of Fusion architecture. A comment on Carrypad made me think twice and take a closer look at the low-end of the Fusion processors (or APU’s Accelerated Processing Units- as AMD calls them) to see just what might be possible with Ontario.
I’ve seen a demo of Zacate, the dual-core 1.6Ghz version of the APU and yes, it was impressive. What demo isn’t? What was deeply imprinted on my mind though was the scary TDP of 18W. Even if that part is able to get things done and let an OS sleep faster than others, thus reducing average drain, designing around it is going to result in netbook sized devices. It’s nothing for mobile tablets.
Zacate is dual-core running at 1.6Ghz so seeing an opportunity for another part, AMD have cut down the clock and managed to reduced the design power to 9W with the Ontario part. (The overall platform is called Brazos.) We’re probably looking at 900Mhz to 1.2Ghz clock speed on a single-core here. Remember, this is a dual-core out-of-order CPU so not directly comparable with the 1.5Ghz Atom parts.
The power-envelope will be similar too. The N550 is an 8.4W part.
At this point though, it’s time to say ‘stop’ because once again, we’re talking about a netbook platform. Sure, we’ll see it in a tablet or two (it’s highly likely to be in the Acer slate) but don’t expect them to be much less than 1KG and average less than 8 to 10W drain. With the standard 30Wh battery inside this isn’t going to break new ground in terms of battery life and with battery life the #1 consideration for ultra-mobile computing, what’s the point of talking about HD decoding and GPU-accelerated HTML5?
AMD’s Zacate and Ontario will help bring competition to the netbook sector for sure and that’s a good thing. It will highlight how badly the Atom Netbook platform needs HD video decoding and a boost in 3D performance (although that is likely to be fixed in the Cedar Trail product in 2011) but it isn’t something for the ultra-mobile market. Looking at the roadmap, it looks like the 28nm ‘Wichita’ might be competition for Oaktrail with Windows but don’t expect huge leaps forward.
What the X86-based ultra mobile market needs is a change of platform AND operating system to permit always-on, ultra-low-power sleep states, high integration of Wi-Fi and 3G on new platforms. This is why ARM/Android devices are idling, connected, at 0.5W and a netbook is taking 10x that amount! It’s also why MeeGo and Oaktrail/Moorestown are being developed. Migrating away from Windows desktop support is probably the best long-term strategy there is.
Some information in this hothardware article was used in this report.
At last. We’ve been seeing tiny slivers of information on the XPPhone for months but without a price, no-one could even start to consider it.
The wait is over. The XPphone team have just sent us this info:
2999 ~ 4500 RMB (400 ~ 650 USD)
Clearly there will be a range of models to choose from but although this is, in ultra mobile PC terms, a fairly low computing power device, the web experience should still match everything you get on a high-end smartphone today. (I used to own a ‘netbook’ in 2006 that used the same CPU) and if you’re getting 3G thrown in for $400, er, this isn’t a bad choice for a basic UMPC. Suddenly we’re quite interested in this one because the battery life should be in the 4hrs range.
It looks a lot better than when we saw it at Computex but of course, you’ll be looking at something like $499 before it gets to the US or EU and that certainly takes a little of the shine off.
We’re trying to get availability details. [We’re also adding it to the database. Stand-by]
Update: XPPhone added to database.
I wonder what AMD think of this!
Customers and bloggers spend a lot of time feeding back what they think about UMPCs and MIDs. Wouldn’t it be great if the same happened from the other direction? I mean it’s a given that everyone in the smartphone and netbook business should be buying up a few MIDs and UMPCs so that they can analyse the designs, scenarios and potential. Right? If Apple haven’t got a lab full of UMPCs and MIDs then I’ll eat my motherboard!
One company that is now providing feedback and that should be praised for their openness is AMD. Patrick Moorhead, VP and member of the ‘Office of Strategy’ of AMD has just kicked off an 8-part blog series called “Will MIDs and UMPCs Inherit the Earth? inch It started yesterday with an introduction (and a hat-tip for myself and our podcast partner over at Meet:Mobility, Sascha. Thx Patrick!) and will go on to present general thoughts on MIDs and hands-on feedback with 4 mobile and handheld devices. The UMID M1, Viliv S5, Viliv X70 EX and Archos 5 Internet Tablet.
In Part 2 today we’ll get a feel for Patrick’s thoughts . Let’s hope that they are positive and influence AMD to take some of that cash and re-build the momentum that was lost when the Geode project was put to one side. AMD have publicly said that there isn’t a successor to Geode but maybe the Bobcat and Brazos projects gives us some clues. How about a gaming-focused UMPC?
One of the big questions for me is ‘What Operating System’?’
Stay tuned to Patrick’s blog here on the AMD website.
There has been a rush of news around the xpPhone recently culminating in a rush of posts by top blogs and, over the last 24 hours, an article from the IDG news service that hit PCWorld and others top-tier reporting sites.
The xpPhone news has been around for a while and at Computex, we even got some hands on with a prototype. JKK has a video and I’ve got some photos of the prototype.
Since Computex we’ve had two updates from In Technology Group. One, a general marketing info-set and the other including the ‘leaked’ (bloggers like to use that word!) photos of the user interface and an update include a link to the latest information on the website.
“Xpphone” —The world first breakthrough “Mobile Phone, GPS, Notebook, Three-in-one pocketable mobile terminal”
it creatively breaks through the technical bottlenecks of the mobile phone and PC industries, achieving their functions based on
x86 platform at low cost and becoming the global first x86-based mobile phone. it supports all three 3G standards globally and the
future 4G , has many built-in wireless modules, such as WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, 3G modules and auto rotated 4.8 inch touch screen,
and supports various VoIP calls and numerous Windows XP softwares.
It’s not the first XP/Phone device we’ve seen so why the blogging excitement? It all appears to stem from one line in the product literature, ‘AMD Super Mobile CPU.’
Just a quick heads up to you all that this isn’t anything new from AMD. It’s the, rather old, but ahead-of-its-time (why did you kill it AMD?) Geode LX CPU that was found in early UMPCs and netbooks. The Raon Digital Everun was an example and funnily enough, that had a phone function too. [Post and Video here]
There are still people out there that swear by the Geode so don’t discount it yet.
In Technology Group appear to have done quite some work on integrating the phone into the Windows XP ‘pc’ side of things so from a technical angle, I’m quite interested in testing one out but I can’t see this being used by too many consumers.
Some Promotional materials and UI images are shown below.
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