AMD Launches Congo Ultrathin Mobile Platform
AMD's second generation ultrathin platform is here.
Along with the new Vision branding initiative, AMD today also launched its new ultrathin mobile platform – codenamed Congo.
AMD had already decided that it wasn't going to partake in a war against Intel for the netbook market by creating an Atom competitor, but instead would make chips that were for similar form factors (small notebooks) but with more processing power (along with heftier power requirements).
The new Congo platform is composed of a low profile, energy-efficient Athlon Neo dual-core and integrated graphics on par with the previous generation's discrete part.
Pat Moorhead, VP of Advanced Marketing at AMD, explains Congo in simple terms as how it relates to the company's previous efforts: "It's real easy to describe the 2nd generation ultrathin design: Take the 1st generation, give it a second CPU core and take nearly the performance of the first generation’s discrete card, shrink it and place it into the chipset decreasing energy consumption."
The result is hardware fit for small form factor notebooks with some decent multimedia muscle too.
Moorhead in his blog used a MSI notebook running with Congo as an example. It featured an Athlon Neo X2 Dual Core Processor L335 at 1.6 GHz and a Radeon HD 3200 GPU.
The demo machine was able to play YouTube HD and Hulu HD videos, as well as Blu-ray movies (through the use of an external drive) at 1080p without problems. The platform also has HDMI out, allowing it to output that 1080p stream.
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Mainstream games such as the Sims and Spore also ran decently, but getting more intense games such as Left 4 Dead required settings to be dialled way down.
Stay tuned for more after we get our chance to go hands-on.
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Kaiser_25 Hmmm not a big AMD fan, but sounds pretty good, but no mention of price...i wonder...Reply -
silversurfernhs they better do something, and break out big... which is what it looks like with the release of their 5 series and this notebook thing, are they ever going to recover in the top of the line processor market? I hope so, it would be nice if we could see a price drop due to competition again.Reply -
mactruck If AMD can keep the prices down this sounds like a great alternative to the Atom/Ion platform. Hopefully we can get a comparison of Ion vs. Congo vs. Pinetrail soon as I'm looking for a cheap and light laptop in Spring of 2010.Reply -
False_Dmitry_II Well, the previous yukon stuff was like $650. For that much just go to newegg, sort laptops by discrete graphics and get one at that price and you'll have something much better specs wise. Now if they manage to pull somewhere around $400-500 I think it will be worth getting.Reply -
skine I doubt that this will be too cheap or released too soon; MSI just released a 12.1" Wind with the MV-40 and x1250, priced at $429.Reply -
that_aznpride101 AMD is breaking into a new market for more beefier "netbooks" just as Intel released their Atom mobile platform. i'm assuming AMD did their market research on consumers wanting something more speed than a netbook can offer. hopefully, AMD is correct that the economy will recover so most consumers will be able to purchase this "beefy netbook."Reply -
mowston Hey, I thought they got rid of the "Congo" codename because of the rape, torture, and murder going on in that country for rare metals used in computers.Reply
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10267185-92.html -
leafblower29 It's great to see AMD do netbooks now.Reply
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