HP Pavilion DM1 Now Just $399, Sports AMD E-series
According to HP, the laptop now runs on AMD's dual-core E-Series APUs – the 1.3 GHz E-300 and the 1.65 GHz E-450 – and Intel's second-generation Core processors (including the low-voltage Core i3), depending on your wallet. A new six-cell battery – promising a life of around 11.5 hours – now resides within the chassis like the previous cylindrical version which bulged out from the bottom. The taskbar and start menu in Windows 7 has also been tweaked to make programs easier to locate.
"Part of the HP Premier Experience, HP Launch Box allows applications to be better organized by grouping them for quick access on the Windows 7 taskbar," the company said. "A simple mouse-over and click launches an application directly from the taskbar, freeing up screen real estate on the PC’s desktop. Including the dm1, HP Launch Box is available on 70 percent of consumer notebook models."
As of this writing, an official product page doesn't seem to be up and running, but the company claims that the revamped HP Pavilion dm1 laptop will start at $399.99 USD. Currently specs aren't available either, but one sheet (pdf) does list a model sporting AMD's E450 APU, revealing 4 GB of DDR3 memory, a 7200RPM 320 GB HDD, a 11.6-inch HD BrightView LED-backlit display, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n connectivity, Bluetooth, an HP TrueVision webcam, and various external notebook ports.
HP is also boasting the laptop's Premier Experience feature which provides quicker boot-up, shutdown (29-percent faster), sleep and resume (25-percent faster) times. It's also boasting the HP CoolSense technology which uses "advanced hardware and intelligent software to automatically adjust performance and internal fan settings for a noticeably cooler PC." Other select models will include HP QuickWeb, HP ProtectSmart and HP SimplePass.
The HP Pavilion dm1 with AMD processors is expected to be available in charcoal on September 21 with a starting price of $399.99. The soft-touch ash black model will be available this fall. The HP Pavilion dm1 with Intel processors is expected to be available in charcoal on October 30 with an external optical drive included and a starting price of $599.99. The soft-touch ash black model will be available this fall.
... you right... but this kind of tech extend the lifespan a bit...
The greater performance of the i3 wont be shown that much due to the limitations of the graphics chip, but overall the i3 CPU would be better.
The word you were looking for is definitely.
I'll have to look this up; is the E-450's IMC a slight upgrade over the E-350? Since it's 1.65GHz and the E-350 is 1.6GHz, I figured it just uses a 16.5x multiplier instead of the 16x that the E-350 uses. I thought either chip could only really take advantage of DDR3-1333 though? I mean, I see E-350 mobos that have DDR3-1600 support, but haven't seen any benchmarks or articles on whether this offers a tangible benefit. I'll try and look for some now that you mention there's an advantage as it would be good information to have, but if you're thinking of a certain article would you mind posting a linky?
Anand did a Brazos update article a few months back which included a preview of the E-450. link
As for why Brazos boards can support DDR3-1600, it's become perfectly normal for the board itself to support faster RAM than a CPU's (or APU's) internal memory controller is capable of supporting. As an example, any memory speed above DDR3-1600 (for many current CPUs/APUs, any speed above 1066 or 1333) can only be achieved via overclocking, but many DDR3 boards claim support up DDR3-2133 speeds.
And yeah, the E-450 is a slight upgrade over the E-350, but not by much based on clock rate(s) alone. The 50 MHz CPU clock rate boost is rather paltry, but it's something. The GPU got also got a little boost to 508 MHz. (This is up from the E-350's 492 MHz GPU clock, and it can OC itself to 600 MHz in some instances.) The real advantage the 450 offers is it's increased memory bandwidth through DDR3-1600 use, which should increase performance within more memory intensive programs (audio/video editing & compression), as well as overall 3D performance (since the GPU uses system memory). (I wish more notebook makers would actually use the A6-3410MX, A8-3510MX, and A8-3530MX with their similar DDR3-1600 support for the same reasons.)
What I don't understand is the current pricing of machines using the E-450. No matter where I look, they're all in the $500+ range, which easily enters A6-3400M Llano territory. Sure, the E-450 uses far less power and you might not need the A6's quad-cores, but if 3- to 5-hours of battery life is enough and you're looking for something that you can game on occasionally, the A6 blows the E-450 away. So does the A4-3300, for that matter. This HP announcement that they're releasing one at $400 is a step in the right direction towards more affordable low-power computing.