Two weeks ago we saw the paper launch of the Radeon HD 6450, the low-end member of AMD’s Northern Islands family of GPUs. It was a solid product for HTPC use and a very notable improvement over the 5450 it replaced, but it was an uncharacteristically delayed launch for AMD. At the same time we noted that the Northern Islands family had one more GPU we had not seen: Turks.

As it turns out, Turks-based video cards will be launching alongside the 6450 today, delivering all of the remaining Northern Islands products in a single push. Turks will be powering the Radeon HD 6670 and Radeon HD 6570, replacing the Redwood-based Radeon HD 5670 and Radeon HD 5570 respectively. Considering that we saw AMD deliver a solid update for their low-end lineup with the 6450, will we see the same with Turks and the 6670/6570? Let’s find out.

AMD’s Northern Islands family is composed of four GPUs, roughly divided into two categories. At the top is the 6900 series powered by Cayman, AMD’s first VLIW4 GPU. Below Cayman are three more GPUs, all derived from the VLIW5 Evergreen generation (5000 series). The first of these GPUs was Barts, which is the basis of the 6800 series that launched back in October of 2010. However up until now we haven’t seen the other two mystery GPUs in the retail market. Today that starts to change.

The final two Northern Island GPUs are Caicos and Turks. They have been available in the OEM market for both desktop and mobile products since the beginning of the year, but as is often common with low-end/high-volume GPUs, a retail presence comes last instead of first. AMD is finally giving Caicos its first retail presence today; it will be powering the new Radeon HD 6450. Packing all the upgrades we saw with Barts last year, it will effectively be replacing the Radeon HD 5450. But how well does AMD’s latest stand up in the crowded low-end market? Let’s find out.

The last couple of weeks after the recent GeForce GTX 550 Ti launch have been more eventful than I had initially been expecting. As you may recall the GTX 550 Ti launched at $150, a price tag too high for its sub-6850 performance. I’m not sure in what order things happened – whether it was a price change or a competitive card that came first – but GTX 550 Ti prices have finally come down for some of the cards. The average price of the cheaper cards is now around $130, a more fitting price given the card’s performance.

The timing for this leads into today’s launch. AMD is launching a new card, the Radeon HD 6790, at that same $150 price point. Based on the same Barts GPU that powers the Radeon HD 6800 series, this is AMD’s customary 3^rd tier product that we’ve come to expect after the 4830 and 5830. As we’ll see NVIDIA had good reason to drop the price on the GTX 550 if they didn’t already, but at the same time AMD must still deal with the rest of the competition: NVIDIA’s GTX 460 lineup, and of course AMD itself. So just how well does the 6790 stack up in the crowded $150 price segment? Let’s find out.

It’s been quite a while since we’ve looked at triple-GPU CrossFire and SLI performance – or for that matter looking at GPU scaling in-depth. While NVIDIA in particular likes to promote multi-GPU configurations as a price-practical upgrade path, such configurations are still almost always the domain of the high-end gamer. At $700 we have the recently launched GeForce GTX 590 and Radeon HD 6990, dual-GPU cards whose existence is hedged on how well games will scale across multiple GPUs. Beyond that we move into the truly exotic: triple-GPU configurations using three single-GPU cards, and quad-GPU configurations using a pair of the aforementioned dual-GPU cards. If you have the money, NVIDIA and AMD will gladly sell you upwards of $1500 in video cards to maximize your gaming performance.

Today we’re going to be looking at the state of GPU scaling for dual-GPU and triple-GPU configurations. While we accept that multi-GPU scaling will rarely (if ever) hit 100%, just how much performance are you getting out of that 2^nd or 3^rd GPU versus how much money you’ve put into it? That’s the question we’re going to try to answer today.

When Eurocom offered to send us their latest Racer notebook, we were mildly intrigued. Then they upped the ante by giving us the chance to put AMD’s latest and greatest HD 6970M to the test and we jumped at the opportunity. The Racer is the “little brother” of the Clevo P170HM we reviewed a few weeks ago, sporting many similarities all wrapped up in a smaller package. This puppy doesn’t come cheap, but with a matte 1080p LCD sporting a good contrast ratio, awesome performance, and a better build quality than the previous Clevo models we’re quite happy with the result.

So, just what does an HD 6790M do for performance, and how much will it set you back? What else might Eurocom have to offer to sweeten the deal? Eurocom also likes to label their notebooks as mobile workstations, and while the system we have doesn’t necessarily cater to that audience, we’ll have some thoughts on that segment as well. Read on for our full analysis.

It may have taken some time for AMD’s Fusion to finally arrive, but now it’s here and we’re starting to see a decent number of Brazos laptops. We’ve already reviewed HP’s dm1z, which set the bar that other manufacturers will have to match or exceed. Today, we add two more E-350 laptops to the mix of reviews, one an 11.6”-screen and the other a 13.3”-screen chassis.

In the black corner, we have MSI’s ultra-slim X-series laptop, the X370; in the silver corner is a smaller competitor in Sony’s VAIO YB. How do these two compare with the HP dm1z and with each other? What are the benefits and detriments involved with moving to a larger chassis?  And is the Brazos platform right for you? That’s what we’re going to discuss in this head-to-head matchup.

While the drought of Sandy Bridge notebook hardware is thankfully approaching its sweet, merciful end, there are still a healthy amount of AMD-based notebooks on the market at good prices awaiting happy homes. Toshiba was kind enough to send us their L645D, a 14" notebook sporting a mobile Phenom II dual-core processor running at a speedy 3GHz, Radeon HD 4250 integrated graphics, and a Blu-ray drive: all yours for a potentially exciting value proposition of just $619. Is it worth it?

The AMD Radeon HD 6990, otherwise known as Antilles, is a card we have been expecting for some time now. In what’s become a normal AMD fashion, when they first introduced the Radeon HD 6800 series back in October, they also provided a rough timeline for the rest of the high-end members of the family. Barts would be followed by Cayman (6950/6970), which would be followed by the dual-GPU Antilles (6990). Ultimately Cayman ended up being delayed some, and as a result so was Antilles.

So while we’ve had to wait longer than we anticipated for Antilles/6990, the wait has finally come to an end. Today AMD is launching their new flagship card, retiring the now venerable 5970 and replacing it with a new dual-GPU monster powered by AMD’s recently introduced VLIW4 design. Manufactured on the same 40nm process as the GPUs in the 5970, AMD has had to go to some interesting lengths to improve performance here. And as we’ll see, it’s going to be a doozy in more ways than one.

Our last comprehensive server and server CPU review focused on some of the best and fastest x86 servers on the market. This time, we focus on more humble servers. Performance is not necessarily priority one for many businesses; chances are that low power and budget are higher on the list. So we did our best to get the most interesting power sipping and inexpensive CPUs in the lab.

We selected three AMD Opterons and two Intel Xeons. On the Intel platform we test with the older but very cheap Xeon E5506 and the newer but more expensive low power Xeon L5630. AMD sent us three different Opterons: the low power Opteron 4162 EE, the performance/watt balancing Opteron 4170 HE, and the ultra cheap Opteron 4122. Read on to find out which of the five CPUs make sense in which situation. As always we use very realistisic benchmarking and power measurments to find out.

It's fair to say the refreshes HP announced for their consumer computers earlier this month seemed fairly lackluster. While nobody can complain about improved notebook speakers and the triumphant return of dedicated mouse buttons, there wasn't anything else remarkably fresh or exciting about their spring line. When we got a chance to meet with HP representatives in San Francisco to see their new business lineup, however, we saw very nearly the complete opposite.

You can't buy it from Sony's website. If you blinked you might have missed the news popping up on a couple of different sites about its existence. If you were on the phone with me when I called Jarred about it, you might even have shared his reaction: "Sony makes a budget AMD laptop?" But sure enough they do, and we have a  budget Sony EE34 notebook on hand that's liable to raise more than a few eyebrows. Around $600 for a Sony Vaio AMD-based notebook with a Blu-ray drive standard? They make those?

HP's been on board AMD's ultraportable bandwagon since the chipmaker first shipped the underwhelming Congo platform, and HP continued to produce reasonably compelling not-quite-netbooks with the Athlon/Turion II Neo-equipped Nile platform. But now that AMD has made a concerted effort to dethrone Intel's Atom with Brazos, HP has been able to produce a true netbook competitor. We have the shiny new dm1z equipped with the AMD E-350 in our hands: is this the netbook we've been waiting for?

Dell is one of the leading vendors in the PC market to have a play in the SFF HTPC (small form factor home theater PC) space. In 2009, they introduced the first Zino HD HTPC, the Zino 400. It used the AMD's Athlon 64 2650e/2850e / Athlon 64 X2 3250e/6850e on the AMDRS780G chipset with the option of the integrated 3200 GPU or a discrete 4330 mGPU. It received a decent enough response to warrant a refresh of the lineup after a year.

In Q4 2010, the Zino 410 HD HTPC was launched. It made use of the same formula from the previous generation product (usage of CPUs meant for the laptop market, and pairing it with either the integrated GPU or a discrete mGPU). However, Dell learnt some important lessons from the first generation launch, which they have put to good use in the design of the Zino 410 HD HTPC.

We have had the highest end Zino 410 HD HTPC configuration in our labs since October 2010.   Read on for our take on the second generation Zino HD HTPC, and also why it took us so long to publish the review.

With the recent launch of Sandy Bridge, we had hoped to put together some Buyers' Guides covering the changes in the market. Unfortunately, with the recall/bug of the 6-series chipsets, SNB is now on hold. There will always be newer and faster parts just over the horizon, but while we await SNB and Bulldozer, we felt the time was ripe for a Budget Buyers' Guide update. We have three complete system builds, as well as a variety of potential upgrades, with pricing ranging from $400 just for the main box and components up to nearly $800 for a complete system with some worthwhile upgrades.

The past week shook up the whole computer industry with Intel’s announcement that a potential flaw in their Cougar Point chipset required a respin to fix. In the ensuing chaos, we’ve had quite a few reviews put on hold or pulled altogether as we await the revised chipset. We also have a few other items to discuss in regards to the mobility sector, so if you’re debating purchasing a new laptop/notebook vs. waiting for “fixed” hardware, we hope to shed some light on the situation.

AMD has been curiously absent from the value netbook and nettop segments since Atom’s arrival nearly three years ago. These markets are highly profitable only for component vendors, as the OEMs that sell netbooks and nettops must survive on very slim margins in order to hit aggressive price points. It wasn’t too long ago that we were shocked by $699 desktop PCs, but to now be able to get a fully functioning portable PC with display at below $300 is impressive. In order for the profit equation to work out however, you can’t simply scale down a larger chip - you need an architecture targeted specifically at the type of very light workloads you expect to encounter in these segments. Underclocking and undervolting an architecture targeted at high end desktops or servers won’t cut it.

Generally a single microprocessor architecture can cover an order of magnitude of power envelopes. You can take an architecture from 10W - 100W using clock speed, voltage scaling and disabling features (e.g. cutting cache sizes). You can’t efficiently take a 100W architecture and scale it down to 1W. Intel realized this with Atom, and what resulted was a new architecture designed to span the 0.5W - 5W range. Given the constraints of the process (Atom was built at 45nm) and a desire to keep die size down to a minimum (and thus maximize profits), Intel went with a dual-issue in-order architecture reminiscent of the old Pentium - but with a modern twist.

AMD came to the same realization. For it to compete in these value markets, AMD couldn’t rely on its existing Phenom II derived architectures. The Phenom II and its relatives currently span a range of TDPs from 9W to 140W, and at the lower end of that spectrum we’re talking about some very low clock speeds and performance targets. Getting down to 1W was out of the question without a separate design.

What AMD came up with was a core called Bobcat, initially targeted for netbooks, notebooks, nettops and entry level desktops. Architecturally Bobcat is a significant step ahead of Atom: while still dual-issue, it features an out-of-order execution engine making it the Pentium Pro to Atom’s Pentium.

It isn’t just CPU architecture that AMD surpassed Atom with, the first incarnation of Bobcat is an integrated SoC with on-die DirectX 11 GPU. AMD calls this combination a Fusion APU (Accelerated Processing Unit) as it places both a CPU and GPU on a single die. Read on for our full review of AMD's first Fusion part: the E-350.

Today was originally supposed to be about the newly released GeForce GTX 560 Ti – NVIDIA’s new GF114-based $250 video card. Much as was the case with the launch of AMD’s Radeon HD 6800 series however, AMD is itching to spoil NVIDIA’s launch with their own push. Furthermore they intend to do so on two fronts: directly above the GTX 560 Ti at $259 is the Radeon HD 6950 1GB, and below it one of many factory overclocked Radeon HD 6870 cards.

As a result today we're looking at not only the GTX 560 Ti, but also AMD's counter-offensive. Amidst the backdrop of a product launch brought in by nearly a month, we'll see how AMD's counters stand up to NVIDIA's latest, and why for many situations a 2GB Radeon HD 6950 is no better than a 1GB Radeon HD 6950.