Aside from the HP Pavilion dv2, there aren’t any big name laptops powered by AMD’s Neo platform right now. The AMD Neo platform was meant to provide a relatively cheap and low power processor and GPU setup that would offer noticeably better performance than Intel’s Atom platform. And when it comes to some high-performance video tasks, it does. But for day to day tasks like web browsing, most users won’t notice the difference between an Atom powered PC and one with the Neo chipset… at least not until their battery gives out on them. While many Atom powered netbooks last for 5 hours or more on a charge, the HP Pavilion dv2 reportedly gives up after just about 2.5 hours.
But you know where battery life doesn’t m27atter so much? In computers that aren’t meant to be used unplugged. And an AMD spokesperson tells The Industry Standard that’s where the company’s Neo processor is headed. The goal is to equip small, cheap desktops (or nettops) and all-in-one PCs with Neo chips.
The move makes a lot of sense. After all most people expect better video game or HD video performance from desktops than from notebooks. AMD’s Neo chips can handle Blu-ray video playback, while the only way to get an Intel Atom processor to perform the same task is to bundle a higher performance GPU like the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, which is what NVIDIA is doing with its ION platform.
via Engadget
I really don’t see the Neo in anything other than a niche market. Perhaps it would be best if it was built into large HDTVs. I wish AMD would bring out a true competitor, but I am afraid they simply can’t afford the new research and development.