It’s not enough for a 14-inch notebook to deliver decent runtimes, a little processor grunt and pleasing looks any more; now we expect graphical excellence too. In response, Lenovo have outfitted their IdeaPad Y460 with a dedicated ATI Radeon GPU, and they’ve even thought to put a switch on the front which allows you to turn it off when you’re feeling more spreadsheet than gaming minded. Two birds with one stone, or just a lame duck? Check out the full SlashGear review after the cut.
Apple has finally unveiled its new Mac mini, and as expected the ultra-compact desktop packs an HDMI port along with "up to twice the graphics performance" and an SD card slot. The new, smaller Apple Mac mini comes with a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM, 320GB HDD and NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics; the regular model has a slot-loading 8x DVD burner, but as before an OS X Snow Leopard Server version will be offered with no optical drive but two 500GB HDDs instead.
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ASUS has just sent us over some shots of their new ASUS Immensity concept motherboard, along with a few scant details to whet our appetite. The new 'board is confirmed as having a Lucid Hydra chipset and ATI Radeon 5000 Series GPU, along with a fair few of the latest ports like USB 3.0.
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AMD have officially demonstrated their Fusion APU ("Accelerated Processing Unit"), in effect a combined CPU and GPU living on a single chip. Fusion is capable of crunching through HD video and 3D graphics, including DirectX 11 games, and will first show up in Llano and Ontario form for mainstream desktop/notebooks and netbooks/tablets respectively.
Video demo and overview after the cut
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NVIDIA have announced their first Fermi-based GPU intended for notebooks, in the shape of the GeForce GTX 480M. Described as "DirectX 11 done right for notebooks", the GTX 480M has a dedicated Tessellation engine that apparently boosts performance 5x over that of competing mobile GPUs, and three times more CUDA cores than the previous generation of chips.
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NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 470 certainly fell into the shadow of its more-capable GTX 480 sibling, but are the two cards so similar that the company has decided to axe it altogether? That's the rumor coming out of KitGuru, who have heard from sources in Taiwan that NVIDIA are no longer taking orders for the Fermi-based GTX 470.
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NVIDIA are looking to take on Qualcomm in the Android arena, with CEO Jen-Hsun Huang positioning the company's second-gen Tegra chipset as a more multimedia- and performance-focused alternative for high-end devices. Huang complimented Qualcomm and TI's mobile chipsets, describing them as "wonderful application processors", but went on to say that "our differentiation and our contribution to the space is where multimedia, high resolution snappy graphics [are] really necessary." He also highlighted Tegra's possibilities for larger-scale, iPad rivalling Android tablets, such as Notion Ink's Adam.
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Details of NVIDIA's upcoming mid-range Fermi based video card - until now known as the GeForce GTX 460 - have leaked, with Chinese site eNet claiming to have acquired a GF100 GPU based video card. According to their sources, the chip will show up in the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 465 on June 2nd; they've also been testing it, discovering that NVIDIA have disabled several elements of the GPU (the GF100 also powers the GTX 470/480) including limiting stream processors to 352 and RAM to 1GB.
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AMD have outed their latest 2010 Mainstream and Ultrathin Notebook Platforms, together with their 2010 Desktop Platform, and the emphasis looks to be on multimedia strength. The new push brings AMD VISION system - first announced back in September 2009 - to the desktop, with both dual- and quad-core Athlon II CPUs for the mainstream and quad- and six-core Phenom II CPUs for enthusiasts. Meanwhile AMD reckons its new dual-core 23w Turion II Neo and Athlon II Neo, together with the Athlon II Neo chips will be storming the Ultrathin market, while there are twelve new Mainstream notebook CPUs for regular laptops.
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We've been talking about Moorestown for months now, but the platform has finally come of age and matured into Intel's Atom Z6xx series of mobile processors. The new 45nm chips currently range from 1.5GHz through to 1.9GHz, and bundle Intel GMA600 3D graphics, video encode and decode, as well as memory (up to 2GB) and display controllers onto a single SoC; that's good enough for PC-style multitasking, 1080p Full HD video and lengthy battery life in smartphones, MIDs, tablets and smartbooks.
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NVIDIA's mainstream and entry-level versions of the Fermi-based GeForce GTX 470/480 will arrive in July and August respectively, according to graphics card manufacturers who have been whispering to DigiTimes, with a new GeForce GTX 460 expected to debut in June 2010. The mainstream model will use NVIDIA's GF106 core and the entry-level will use the GF108; pricing, we're told, is a little higher than early predictions suggested, coming in at around $180 for the GF106 and $100 for the GF108.
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NVIDIA haven't been particularly upfront about their mobile plans for the Fermi GPUs but, according to a premature product page from gaming notebook maker Eurocom, it looks like we can expect some movement in June 2010. Eurocom are listing an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480M Fermi GPU with 2GB of GDDR5 memory as arriving that month, a 40nm chipset that will add $380 to their 18.4-inch X8100 Leopard notebook.
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