AMD Offers Atom Rival in a $430 Notebook

Intel's Atom processor marked a huge success on the market, and it is now capable of covering quite a range of market segments, something that Advanced Micro Devices fails to do. Yet, the Sunnyvale processor manufacturer has come up with an entry-level chip meant to compete with Atom in the “Ultra-Value-Client” market. This is not a full grown solution from AMD, but it is aiming at the low-end PC area at the moment, since the manufacturer placed it right at the bottom of the market. Of course, Intel is pumping a much larger Atom volume than AMD would be able to handle, but, since we're talking notebooks and not netbooks, things are looking good for the Sunnyvale-based.

AMD already has on the market an Athlon 2650e processor which can be found at $298. The same chip is available from now on in a notebook for only $430. As you have surely figured it out, the notebook would probably be able to handle basic computing operations, yet it offers a larger screen than the average netbook does.

The notebook, dubbed eMD620-5777, features a 14.1-inch screen and includes a 160GB hard drive and a DVD burner. The processor has a core frequency of 1.6GHz and needs 15 watts of power. It also comes with 1GB of memory and an integrated ATI Radeon X1200 graphics solution with shared memory but which will use the system memory for its frame buffer needs. The notebook also has 802.11 b/g wireless connectivity and will feature other connectivity ports as well.

The new eMD620-5777 is made by eMachines and it’s available starting today. The price of this mobile PC will probably appeal to those in need of netbook capabilities on a machine that comes in the traditional notebook form factor. It has all the web browsing or simple office tasks capabilities required; it is cheap and somehow power-efficient.