Today we launched the AMD Center, a portal on AnandTech that aggregates all of our AMD content in one place. Thanks to AMD's sponsorship you'll get a cleaner interface on all AMD articles, as well as reduced advertising on those pages. The portal will also serve as a way for AMD to reach out to you all directly as we're pulling in AMD tweets and have a feed of AMD's own blogs on the right hand side. AMD also wants to hear from you, and we've got some opporuntities to help with that going forward. Finally, the AMD Center serves as a destination for a bunch of pretty awesome AMD giveaways we've got planned. With AMD's support we've got better prizes and more of them to give away. We're kicking off the giveaways with three ultra thin 11.6-inch notebooks: Acer's V5.

The V5 features a touch enabled 11.6-inch 1366 x 768 IPS display, 4GB of DDR3L memory (2GB on board, 2GB in a single SO-DIMM slot, expandable to 6GB total) and normally ships with a standard SATA hard drive. I asked AMD if they would be willing to swap out the hard drives for SSDs and they agreed - so if you win, your V5 will ship with a 128GB Samsung SSD 840 drive (you can thank me later ;)). 

The 2.65 pound Acer V5 features AMD's quad-core A6-1450 APU. That's four Jaguar cores running at 1GHz (1.4GHz max turbo) with a Radeon HD 8250 GPU. It's a nice little system with a very power efficient APU.

Here's the deal. To enter, simply post a comment below (US residents only, please only make a single post, contest requirements below) explaining your current PC setup and why you want, or need to win a V5. What I'm looking for here is an understanding of what you currently own in terms of computing devices (PCs, notebooks, tablets, etc...), how you use them and how winning a V5 would change/improve your current setup. Make your entries good as they may come in handy for some other stuff we've got planned in the future.

If you win, AMD wants your feedback on the machine after you get it. You'll be asked to provide a short review (a paragraph or two) talking about your experience with the system. Do a good job and your feedback may even be featured on AnandTech.

Good luck!

Entries will be accepted from 6:30 PM ET on 9/5/2013 through 6:30 PM ET on 9/9/2013. We will draw 3 winner(s) who will be selected by 9/10/2013.

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Upon entering any contest, sweepstakes, or promotion (a “Promotion”) offered by anandtech.com (the “Site”), a website owned and operated by AnandTech, Inc. (“AnandTech”), you must agree to the following Official Rules and Regulations (the “Rules”) as well as any additional rules governing a specific Promotion that AnandTech publishes on the Site.

BEFORE ENTERING A PROMOTION, READ THESE RULES AND THE SITE’S TERMS, CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY INFORMATION.   BY ENTERING THE PROMOTION, YOU AGREE TO COMPLY WITH THE RULES AND THE SITE’S TERMS, CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY INFORMATION. 

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN.  PURCHASE DOES NOT INCREASE CHANCES OF WINNING.

  1. Eligibility.  Promotions are open to entrants who are 18 years of age or older at time of entry, and a legal resident of the United States (excluding Puerto Rico).  Entries are limited to individuals only who are not presently banned from AnandTech’s website or comments section; commercial enterprises and business entities are not eligible.  Directors, officers, employees, contractors, and agents of AnandTech (excluding volunteer AnandTech forum moderators) and members of their immediate families (spouses, parents, siblings, and children) are not eligible.  Subject to all applicable federal, state, and local laws and regulations.  Void where prohibited.  Participation constitutes entrant’s full and unconditional agreement to these Rules and AnandTech’s decisions, which are final and binding in all matters relating to a Promotion.
     
  2. Entry Period.  Each Promotion will contain a specific time period within which entries will be accepted (a “Promotion Period”).   The Promotion Period for this Promotion shall run from 6:30 PM ET on 9/5/2013 through 6:30 PM ET on 9/9/2013.  Only entries received during the Promotion Period will be accepted. 
     
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  4. Limits on Entry.  An individual may enter a Promotion once only.  The use of any automated launching or entry software or any other means that permits an entrant to automatically enter repeatedly or in excess of the entry limitations is prohibited. 
     
  5. Prizes.  Winning a gift, prize, or other promotional item (a “Prize”) in a Promotion is contingent upon fulfilling all requirements in these Rules.  Winners will be selected in a random drawing of eligible entries received during the Promotion Period.  AnandTech will notify Prize winners using the contact information provided in the winning entry.  Failure to claim a Prize by the time or in the manner specified in the particular Promotion will invalidate any claim to the Prize.  Prizes are not transferable.  The odds of winning a Prize or the Grand Prize depend on the number of entries received by AnandTech.  TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, ALL PRIZES ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” AND ARE NOT EXCHANGEABLE FOR FAIR MARKET VALUE.  TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, ANANDTECH DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE PRIZES, INCLUDING THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. For this Promotion, 3 winner(s) will be selected by 9/10/2013 and will each receive a Acer V5 Notebooks described above (“Grand Prize”).  The Total U.S. Retail Value of the Grand Prize is $450.  The Grand Prize may not be substituted for cash.  The Grand Prize winner will be solely responsible for all applicable taxes, fees, and surcharges associated with receipt and/or use of the Grand Prize.  After the Grand Prize winner has been notified and has complied with all applicable Rules, AnandTech will post the Grand Prize winner’s name on this website.
     
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  8. General Terms.  Any failure by an entrant, including any prize winner, to comply with any of the Rules or the Site’s Terms, Conditions and Privacy Information may result in disqualification from the Promotion.  All entries, whether they are eligible entries or ineligible entries, are the exclusive property of AnandTech.  AnandTech is not responsible for any typographical errors in the Rules or in any other communication surrounding a Promotion or for any technical malfunction or error relating to the Promotion.  AnandTech reserves the right to amend or interpret the Rules at any time, upon published notice to participants on its website.  Promotion participants agree to release, indemnify, and hold harmless AnandTech and its directors, officers, employees and agents from any and all liability regarding the Promotion, including any injuries, losses, or damages (compensatory, direct, incidental, consequential, or otherwise) regarding the use or misuse of any Prize, any event beyond AnandTech’s control resulting in the disruption, cancellation, or postponement of the receipt of the Prize, or any typographical errors or technical malfunctions associated with the Promotion.  AnandTech reserves the right to disqualify any entry that it, in its sole discretion, determines (i) to be in violation of the Rules, (ii) submitted by fraud or by tampering with the entry process, or (iii) contains inaccurate or fraudulent information.  ANY ATTEMPT BY ANY INDIVIDUAL TO DELIBERATELY DAMAGE THE SITE OR UNDERMINE THE LEGITIMATE OPERATION OF THE PROMOTION IS A VIOLATION OF CRIMINAL AND CIVIL LAWS.  IN THE EVENT SUCH AN ATTEMPT OCCURS, ANANDTECH RESERVES THE RIGHT TO SEEK DAMAGES FROM SUCH INDIVIDUAL TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW.

 

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  • aarong - Monday, September 9, 2013 - link

    Electrical engineering grad student here who'd like to enter the laptop contest. As a grad student, I could use a new laptop (mostly for better battery life and an IPS display), but can't really afford one!

    I use computers for scientific computing and artificial neural network simulations. I have a ~15 PC Linux cluster that runs Debian. The compute nodes are all either Ivy Bridge or Haswell boxes. These boxes typically do not need much RAM (2GB is fine), and are mostly quad-core i5 processors. In theory, overclocking would be helpful, but in practice it's cheaper to buy more PCs with lower-end chipsets. (Keep in mind that you need a K-series processor, a more-expensive motherboard, and a better fan to overclock. All of these things add up.)

    I am also using NVIDIA GPUs for accelerate some of my neural network computations. For small matrix multiplication, I've found that the GPU kernel launch overhead is a major problem, so many of my simulations use the CPU only. I have run experiments with AMD GPUs, and the kernel launch overhead for AMD's GPU BLAS implementation (clBlas) is an even bigger problem than with the NVIDIA software (cublas). This is a shame, because otherwise the 7950 would be ideal for my computations.

    Please let me know if any more information would be helpful. Thanks!
  • Mario1 - Monday, September 9, 2013 - link

    I have an Acer Aspire and am learning about gaming PCs and hand command pcs Im looking to do a build in the future I recently saw a 5Mhz gaming rig impressive
  • redpie - Monday, September 9, 2013 - link

    I am University student with a Lenovo laptop. My hard drive has started to fail due to the jostling associated with commuting to school and back. The prize is compact, light, and has a nice battery life that is able to last me though a day of classes and the need to meet group members outside of class. The compact build also allows me to more easily fit it in my bag and carry it around. In most University situations you don't need that much commuting power, rather you need a long battery life to save you from the battery life panic and the scramble of finding an open working outlet.
  • thesavvymage - Tuesday, September 10, 2013 - link

    I already own a desktop, and a Toshiba Portege P56x, but the laptop is a little big for school even at only 13". An 11" laptop would be ideal for me due to cramped spaces on my bus commute and small desks in lecture halls.
  • DPOverLord - Tuesday, September 10, 2013 - link

    Good luck to the winners
  • sushimpp - Tuesday, September 10, 2013 - link

    I own a gaming PC with an 4770K and an OC'd 7950 Boost. I am admittedly an AMD fanboy and this is the first Intel CPU in years and nothing would make me more happy than a comeback of the FX line! I also own a Lenovo X200 for portability, great laptop but it's getting old :/

    Loving the APUs though!

    Cheers
  • rhughesjr - Tuesday, September 10, 2013 - link

    I don't currently have a home PC setup. I've been subsisting using my work laptop, a quite powerful but gigantic Dell Precision.

    I've been hankering to get a home machine that is smaller and much easier to lug around the house and set up wherever I may be needing it.

    I'm a developer, so bonus points if it's powerful enough to let me do some hacking on the side in VS/Eclipse without being horribly slow. :)
  • Dan Whitehouse - Tuesday, September 10, 2013 - link

    HP pavilion dm1 netbook with early AMD Fusion processor. Use it all around the house, inside and outside and take it to school to teach LEGO mindstorms to 5th graders.

    Intel NUC – Celeron with 21” monitor, running Ubuntu - used for web browsing primarily

    Old Gateway desktop in the garage/office, Runs Windows XP. Mostly used as a file server but also logs the weather station to the Weather Underground.

    Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop (XP). Recipe machine. Sits on top of the refrigerator. It's very slow and getting slower with every windows update.

    Raspberry Pi running XBMC for all TV watching

    Awaiting arrival of a second Raspberry Pi and Brick-PI (kickstarter) to interface with LEGO Mindstorms.

    Pogoplug used as media server, backups and web server.

    Samsung GS2 does everything for me when I'm away from a real computer. Hoping to replace it with an LG-G2 when it comes out.

    If I had the Acer V5 it would replace the HP dm1 which is a little slow running Mindstorms in the classroom. The HP would replace the ancient Dell atop the fridge. I'm interested in Windows 8 but nothing I own is really suitable. The Acer looks like a perfect fit toe Windows 8.
  • lichoblack - Tuesday, September 10, 2013 - link

    I currently own a BYO desktop PC, a smartphone (Nexus 4) for me, an older smartphone (Samsung Galaxy S Captivate on CyanogenMOD 10.1) for the wife and a tablet (Samsung Galaxy Tab 2) for the wife to entertain herself and the 9-mo baby Cesar. I need this ultraportable so I can keep the desktop PC running XBMC with series or movies while doing the ever-needed better-job search/online-banking/bill-payment cycle from the bed without angering tha'missus. It would also help alleviate the one-pc-only enviroment at home.
  • alembic5 - Tuesday, September 10, 2013 - link

    I currently have an aging Dell precision T3500 and a Dell D630 laptop that just lost it's video card! This would be the perfect replacement machine for me. It's much smaller and lighter than my work laptop/boat anchor, and would be the perfect machine for working on the train or taking with me while I'm on-call. Thank you for putting this on!

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