AMD presents a Core Duo notebook rival

WE HAD THE the chance to be part of this year's Distree 2006 conference in St. Wolfgang, an hour's drive from Salzburg, Austria, and some three hours from Vienna.

Many vendors, including AMD and Benq, as platinum sponsors, plus MSI, Sony's disk division, Western Digital and others are showing wares there.

A bunch of AMD partners are also here showing off AMD's first dual core mobile CPU. It took some time to get it ready, as Intel has been selling its own two core offerings for some six months now, but Intel's still doesn't support 64-bit.

MSI showed us its new Turion X2 64 laptop, called the S271.

It is a 12-inch machine with the ATI integrated chipset based on a R485 M north bridge and a SB460M south bridge. The machine uses new DDR 2 memory, as the CPU is AM2-based but uses a smaller notebook socket.

It weighs in at 1.9 kilos, is two centimetres thick and has a 12.1-inch display with 1280x800 resolution. It wirelessly supports Bluetooth 2.0 and 802.11 B/G. The machine uses AMD's TL50 CPU that works at 1.6GHz. µ

L'Inq
Digital Consumer Channel