Which chip should you choose?

The CPU lineup from AMD and Intel this year is making us wonder if the Windows laptop is getting its cool back.

Intel
First off is Intel’s 2nd generation generation Core chips, previously dubbed Sandy Bridge

MSI has announced a massive 16 laptops using the Intel chips, while HP, Lenovo, Toshiba and others all have 2^nd generation Core laptops for 2011.

Intel is pushing three key advantages of the new Core:

• etter integrated graphics. By combining the graphics unit and the processor, Intel claimed it has drastically increased performance for things like converting video files on the fly. The claim is a laptop with Intel’s new Core chip can convert a four minute high definition video to a mobile handset or iPad in 16 seconds. The hype was more than a little over the top at CES, with Intel vice president Shmuel Eden boasting: "Our processor graphics are going to outperform 40-50 percent of discrete graphics that exists in market today."
• Ditch your discrete graphics? Not quite, but Intel claimed you won’t need one if you’re playing games like World of Warcraft or the Sims. A brief demo of Portal 2 was also shown running on the new 2^nd-generation Core chip.
• Widi 2.0 – streams high definition video from a laptop to a TV. The new version lets you stream 1080p video, but you need to have a laptop with the 2^nd generation Core chip. There are a bunch of other ways to do this, but Intel’s WiDi is looking more useful than before, because it lets you stream anything you can see on your laptop to your TV (you don’t have to worry about codecs and limitations on what sites you can stream), even programs.

AMD

Equally enticing were systems running AMD’s Fusion chips. Don’t get AMD’s approach confused with Intel. The big deal here is that like Intel, AMD has built in graphics onto the same piece of silicon as the CPU. But the first Fusion chips we’ll see are 1.6GHz netbook-class, like the one in HP’s Pavilion dm1, though a variant for larger laptops is also on the way.

Laggy netbook have always been an annoyance – if Fusion can lend a kick up the rear to this category, at the price of a netbook, we’ll be more than impressed. Add on long battery life (up to 10 hours on the dm1), and Intel Atom netbooks will have a worthy rival.