AMD ships new silicon for value desktops

AMD has launched a new integrated chipset aimed at value desktops, and confirmed that it plans a dual-core Athlon Neo for laptops later this year.

Available immediately, the AMD 760G chipset has integrated DirectX 10-compatible graphics functions, but users can upgrade to higher performance by adding an ATI Radeon HD 3450 or HD 2400 series adapter card, according to AMD.

The new chipset, which is effectively a cut-down version of the existing 780G, is compatible with AMD's socket AM2 and AM3 processors, including various versions of the Athlon and Phenom.

Vendors such as Asus, ECS, Gigabyte, Asrock, MSI, Foxconn and Biostar are expected to provide motherboards based on the chipset.

With a projected price of under US$160 (£109) for a motherboard with CPU, AMD said that the new chipset is aimed at the value PC category and can deliver an improved computing experience.

The low-power energy efficient design offers a "compelling" out-of-box visual experience for novice gamers, according to the firm, yet is still expandable if higher performance is required.

The chipset has hardware acceleration for DVD playback, reducing the workload on the processor, and can accelerate rendering of graphics inside Adobe Reader and Microsoft Office applications using ATI Stream to unlock some of the processing power of the GPU.

Meanwhile, AMD confirmed last week that it will update its platform for ultrathin laptops later this year with a dual-core processor, but declined to specify a more precise release date other than the second half of 2009.

Codenamed Congo, the platform will feature a dual-core processor called Conesus. The current ultra-thin laptop platform, Yukon, was officially launched at CES earlier this month and is based on a new single-core Athlon Neo processor chip.