AMD Vision Laptop Technology Preview
AMD Vision 2010
AMD isn't as keen on branding and marketing as Intel - both for financial and philosophical reasons, with the company preferring to leave the limelight to its partners. That said, AMD has become aware of the need to simplify the computer buying process for the less technically aware, and the success of Intel has enjoyed thanks to Centrino hasn't gone unnoticed. AMD's Vision branding for laptops is, to some extent, its rival to Centrino, and we recently had the chance to talk to the company about its plans for Vision in 2010 and beyond.
The new range of Vision logos, in order of performance. There is a Vision Pro logo, which means that the laptop is destined for business use.
AMD has just announced an update to the technology available, which it privately calls the Vision 2010 range. We say privately, because you’ll still see the same Vision logos in the shops – you won’t see Vision 2010 logos. The new technology includes 8-series chipsets and new processors, but in a new development, there will now be Vision badges on desktop PCs as well as laptops. AMD is claiming that Vision products will deliver twice the frame rate in Left4Dead 2 than a comparably priced non-Vision system, and will be 30-40 per cent faster in other tasks such as sharing movies with friends or creating slideshows from your photos.
There's also a new category of Vision, Vision Black, which is aimed as enthusiasts. These systems will be geared toward maximum performance and gaming - and Vision Black laptops will even allow for AMD-endorsed CPU overclocking.
The Vision lineup explained in one easy slide. Click to enlarge
Details are scarce about this overclockable laptop specification are scarce, but Bob Grim, Director of Client Product marketing for the Computing Solutions Group at AMD, told us in a one-on-one interview that Vision Black laptops would contain, "[i The first unlocked quad-core for notebooks we’ve ever had – we’re going to have one version... for users that want to go overclock.[/i]
"The challenge when overclocking on a notebook is a little bit different because you can’t throw crazy heatsinks at it, but certain gamers like to have that availability, and frankly a lot of the notebook designs can support some amount of overclocking." From AMD’s newly announced range of CPUs (see below) this CPU seems to be the 2.3GHz Phenom II X920 Black Edition.
| Vision 2010 CPU Specifications | |||||
| Mainstream Platform | |||||
| Model Name | Frequency | Cores | Cache | Floating Point Unit | TDP |
| AMD Phenom II X920 Black Edition | 2.3GHz | 4 | 2MB L2 | 128-bit | 45W |
| AMD Phenom II X620 Black Edition | 3.1GHz | 2 | 2MB L2 | 128-bit | 45W |
| AMD Phenom II N930 | 2GHz | 4 | 2MB L2 | 128-bit | 35W |
| AMD Phenom II P920 | 1.6GHz | 4 | 2MB L2 | 128-bit | 25W |
| AMD Phenom II N830 | 2.1GHz | 3 | 1.5MB L2 | 128-bit | 35W |
| AMD Phenom II P820 | 1.8GHz | 3 | 1.5MB L2 | 128-bit | 25W |
| AMD Phenom II N620 | 2.8GHz | 2 | 2MB L2 | 128-bit | 35W |
| AMD Phenom II N530 | 2.5GHz | 2 | 2MB L2 | 128-bit | 35W |
| AMD Phenom II P520 | 2.3GHz | 2 | 2MB L2 | 128-bit | 25W |
| AMD Phenom II N330 | 2.3GHz | 2 | 1MB L2 | 64-bit | 35W |
| AMD Phenom II P320 | 2.1GHz | 2 | 1MB L2 | 64-bit | 25W |
| AMD V120 | 2.2GHz | 1 | 512KB L2 | 64-bit | 25W |
| Ultrathin Platform | |||||
| Model Name | Frequency | Cores | Cache | Floating Point Unit | TDP |
| AMD Turion II Neo K665 | 1.7GHz | 2 | 2MB L2 | 128-bit | 15W |
| AMD Turion II Neo K625 | 1.5GHz | 2 | 2MB L2 | 128-bit | 15W |
| AMD Athlon II Neo K325 | 1.3GHz | 2 | 2MB L2 | 64-bit | 12W |
| AMD Athlon II Neo K125 | 1.7GHz | 1 | 1MB L2 | 64-bit | 12W |
| AMD V105 | 1.2GHz | 1 | 512KB L2 | 64-bit | 9W |
However, Vision and the launch event wasn’t really concerned with components and specs, but focussed more on strategy and specific products. And we saw a lot of laptops with Vision 2010 stickers, from all kinds of big-hitting manufacturers and from ultrathin to ultra-powerful – have a look on page 2.
