14 DAY TRIAL // Although the competition between Advanced Micro Devices and Intel is tight and spans across many areas of the computer industry, their products seem to get along quite well when put inside the same system. That's why Hewlett-Packard, one of the world's largest PC makers, has on display a lot of notebooks that feature, besides Intel chips, an AMD-ATI graphics processor. That, without even including upcoming notebooks, most of which will come with the same architecture.
It seems that Hewlett-Packard considers a fortunate choice the inclusion of Advanced Micro Devices' ATI graphics chips in many of its future notebooks, such as HP Compaq 6730s, 6830s, 6530b, 6930b, all also set to feature an Intel Centrino 2 processor. Also, HP's both Compaq 6830s and EliteBook 6930p notebooks are coming equipped with comparatively high-end AMD-ATI mobile graphics cards.
"It reflects new design wins," said Dean McCarron, principal at Cave Creek, Ariz.-based Mercury Research.
"Those design wins were locked down last year," new AMD CEO Dirk Meyer said Thursday, during a conference call announcing the company's financial stats, referring to AMD graphics-chip design wins on the Centrino 2 platform. "So, now is when they will start to pay off. [We're] getting 60-plus percent design win share on [Centrino 2]." he added.
Needless to point out, most media outlets are always talking more about the consumer segment of the market, yet the business area seems to be the one registering the higher sales. "The prime purchaser of notebooks still remains, as a segment, business," Intel CEO Paul Otellini said during the Intel earnings conference call earlier this week.
The business notebook HP EliteBook can be given as an example of a good combination between Intel's Centrino 2 platform and the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450 graphics chip, packing up to 256MB of memory. This is a powerful graphics configuration for a business mobile PC, and we might as well mention that, about a year ago, when Intel's integrated graphics was used in almost all of the design wins, such a combination was rather unheard of.
Besides the AMD-ATI graphics, many new HP business notebooks models also offer an improved GMA 4500HD Centrino 2 graphics from Intel. Nevertheless, HP also sells notebooks configured only with AMD parts, using the Puma platform, released by the chip manufacturer as a rival to Centrino 2. Also, the AMD Turion X2 Ultra (2.2GHz) with integrated AMD graphics is featured on the forthcoming HP Compaq 6735s.
An overall look at HP's mainstream business notebook lineup shows quite a monopolization of AMD-ATI graphics. 10 models out of the 16 systems listed by HP on its "Balanced Mobility" notebook page feature an AMD-ATI card. Also, five of the systems are offered with AMD Turion and Athlon X2 processors.