AMD decided about a year ago it wasn't doing netbooks (since it already lost) and was going to focus on cheap-and-light notebooks with 12 to 13 inch displays (the HP Pavillion dv2 was one example). Sound familiar? It's just what Intel is doing now with its ULV (ultra low-voltage) chips.
The next generation of these chips (which includes the 1.6GHz Turion X2 Neo processor, even though AMD doesn't want us to say processor names anymore) supposedly boosts graphics (1080p video!) and battery life—an extra hour over AMD's last-gen Ultrathin Notebook chips. (Which we'll be believe when we see, since this is really where Intel's Atom and ULV chips have spanked AMD's. Not to mention, Intel's new ULV chips promise almost 6 hours without bulky extended batteries.)
Not surprisingly, AMD's boasting on performance, with up to 77 percent better gaming performance than Intel's set. They even have a nice chart on how confident they are that they can wreck Intel ULV:
I won't be surprised to see key notebook manufacturers using both Intel and AMD platforms in the same product lines, but for now, AMD says both Acer and ASUS will start shipping notebooks with the new chips and 20 more models will have them come Windows 7 timeframe—so like, October. [AMD]
