Dell and Alienware have unveiled five new gaming notebooks that will be hitting the market soon. The new machines include the M15x laptop, the M17x laptops and new gaming desktops. Really, the machines aren’t all new models, but have been upgraded with new components.
In the battle for budget PCs, AMD is striking out with what they’re claiming is the first sub-$100 quad-core processor. The AMD Athlon II X4 620 has a $99 suggested retail price and, when paired with the company’s 785G chipset and ATI Radeon HD 4200 graphics, is potent enough to run Windows 7’s high-definition features.
It’s all part of AMD’s Mainstream Desktop Platform, the desk-bound counterpart to the company’s Mainstream Notebook Platform announced last week. The company are promoting the platform both as economical – Blu-ray playback using less power than a 75W lightbulb – and practical.
It’s not all premium ultraportables and new netbooks from HP’s holiday line-up. Elsewhere there’s a pair of new MediaSmart Home Servers, the EX490 and EX495, together with a compact home all-in-one, the HP MS200. Finally business users have the new HP Compaq 6000 Pro and 6005 Pro desktops and various new HP and Compaq LCD displays to choose from. More details after the cut.
We’re frankly not convinced that Vigor Gaming Computer’s Stealth NE gaming PC could avoid radar detection while flying low-level bombing missions, but we’ll give the compact desktop credit for using NVIDIA’s Ion GPU in an interesting way. The Stealth NE packs a choice of Intel Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad processors in with a Zotac Mini-ITX motherboard bearing NVIDIA’s GeForce 9300, all squeezed into a 8.74 x 10.87 x 6.93 inch SFF casing.
Dell have outed their latest XPS performance desktops, the 8000-series and 9000-series, based on Intel’s Core i5 and Core i7 processors, together with pushing their latest CULV notebooks, the Inspiron 14z and 15z, out of the door. The 8000 and 9000 desktops have optional Blu-ray drives, standard DVD burners, and start from $799.
Where netbooks go, their deskbound nettop brethren eventually follow, and as NVIDIA’s Ion GPU has made its impact on the graphics capabilities of budget ultraportables, so it has its sights set on compact desktops too. ASRock and NVIDIA worked together on the ION 330-BD, a Blu-ray toting nettop that pairs Intel’s Atom processor with NVIDIA’s ION platform, and sent one over to prove to SlashGear that just because the footprint is small, it doesn’t mean the performance is too.
Lenovo’s growing Idea-series of notebooks and desktops is joined by this, the IdeaCentre C300. A range of budget all-in-ones, the C300 packs a 20-inch display, DVD drive and serious levels of storage and RAM; however they also adopt Intel’s low-power Atom processors. Disappointing mismatch, or bargain second machine? Check out the full SlashGear review to find out.
Acer’s Veriton N260G has been launched in the US, shortly after its arrival in the UK, but unfortunately the company hasn’t seen fit to slot in the NVIDIA Ion GPU while it chugged across the Atlantic. The Veriton N260G-U2802CP still packs Intel’s 1.6GHz Atom N280 processor, paired with 2GB of RAM and a 160GB hard-drive, but unlike its Aspire Revo consumer cousin the business-focussed N260G uses Intel GMA 4500M graphics.
The ASUS EeeTop ET2002T first shown back in June at Computex has apparently made its official debut in France, with Blogeee spotting the full spec-list and some press shots. As expected, the ET2002T brings with it a 20-inch 1,600 x 900 touchscreen display along with a DVD burner and – most interestingly – NVIDIA’s Ion GPU.
Acer are working on three touch-enabled devices, according to a project manager from their mobile computer department, which will take advantage of Windows 7’s native touchscreen support. While no specific product details were mentioned, the employee did suggest that touch-sensitive netbooks could better take market share if they were positioned as “cheaper alternatives to tablet PCs”, which may indicate that one or more of the Acer devices are just such a netbook.
SlashGear Japan
