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AMD Hardware

AMD Plants Turion Line of Mobile Chips 227

Posted by michael from the watch-it-grow dept.
dsginter writes "Today, AMD has blessed us with their Turion line of chips. Though it is supposed to compete with Intel's Centrino line, with such a name, one has to wonder if AMD is going after the Celeron, the name of which is derived from the latin word, 'celer', meaning 'fast' or 'swift', as in 'celery' - the fastest of all vegetables."
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AMD Plants Turion Line of Mobile Chips More

AMD Plants Turion Line of Mobile Chips

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  • I don't like asparagus though ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 07, 2005 @11:19AM (#11287400)
    Looks like I'll have to buy Intel or Apple for my next laptop then.

  • If the Celeron is named after celery... (Score:5, Funny)

    by TheSwirlingMaelstrom ( 580923 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @11:21AM (#11287419)
    ...does this mean that the Turion is named after the fastest of all roots, the turnip?
  • Turion and Centrino need to have adventures in a magical Roman wonderland. I think Nick Junior could do this justice ...
    • and I guess the main villian will be a G5.

      "A HA! I'am an artistic villian! I shall paint this town.. NEON PINK!"
      "OH NO YOU WON'T! WE COPYRIGHTED PINK TWO YEARS AGO! YOU HAVE TO BUY US BIG CARS AND LET US HOLD THE MONOPOLY IN THE MARKET FOREVER NOW G5!"
      "Curses.. where my open source pink?"

      Of course this will then air on Mtv, confuse the fanbase and be put back on Nick Jr. for a couple of weeks where it'll become cult among kids of geeks.. 3 of them who relised if they gave up Slashdot they could get laid.

  • Oh man... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by inkdesign ( 7389 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @11:22AM (#11287430)
    "The company said it considered the dictionary definition too rare to hinder the chip's prospects."

    Well, at least they KNOW it's a shitty name.

  • Isn't the CPU a Pentium III M?
    • I thought centrino was just a collection of a bunch of things like 802.11b wireless, pentium M, and the 855 chipset. And the Pentium M is very similar to the Pentium III I believe.

    • Re:I thought centrino was the supporting chipset. (Score:5, Informative)

      by hattig ( 47930 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @11:27AM (#11287492) Journal
      It's "Pentium M".

      The processors themselves have the codenames Banias (1MB 130nm part) and Dothan (2MB 90nm part).

      These AMD processors are most likely to be revision E0 core Athlon 64s. The E0 core is said to reduce power consumption by 25% over the D0 core. If processors have a 25W TDP already in the A64M range, then AMD should easily be able to get it down to 20W to compete with the Pentium M.

      Of course, the A64M will have half a northbridge incorporated into the processor, something that isn't included in the Pentium M TDP at the moment. Also the definition of Intel's TDP is different from AMD's TDP. Whilst arguments reign over the exact difference, it is agrees that Intel's processors generally run much closer to their TDP figure than AMD's.

      Also, the 533MHz Dothan processor, until recently, had a 27W TDP figure, because of the faster bus.


      • These AMD processors are most likely to be revision E0 core Athlon 64s. The E0 core is said to reduce power consumption by 25% over the D0 core. If processors have a 25W TDP already in the A64M range, then AMD should easily be able to get it down to 20W to compete with the Pentium M.

        If A64M had a 25W TDP even after the 25% reduction, I'd be extremely surprised.
        Maybe it draws that when in sleep mode...


        Also, the 533MHz Dothan processor, until recently, had a 27W TDP figure, because of the faster bus.

    • FYI: Pentium III M != Pentium M

  • Gardeners world (Score:4, Funny)

    by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @11:23AM (#11287451) Homepage Journal
    I thought I had the wrong site for a minute.

    I was expecting CPU trees and shrubs. Hanging baskets overflowing with ddr modules.
    A garden shed filled with all kind of GNU/Linux branded tools, and a Microsoft compost heap.
    Infact, all sorts of strange things came to mind.

    anyway, it doesn't matter, nothing to see here, please move along.

  • Not safe for work, surely? (Score:4, Funny)

    by TheGrim ( 833455 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @11:24AM (#11287464)
    "A thick fleshy young shoot or sucker, such as an emerging stem of asparagus."

    Seldom has a new cpu made me feel so tingly inside.

  • Duron? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by vasqzr ( 619165 )
    Duron was pretty close to 'Celeron' in name.
  • The news for me is that AMD has 9% of the laptop market. I had no idea it was that large, especially since I have shopped for a laptop recently, and the share didn't seem that big on store shelves.

  • The Tolkien Chip! (Score:5, Funny)

    by hndrcks ( 39873 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @11:28AM (#11287502) Homepage
    Turion sounds like some person or place from The Silmarillion.
    • Turion sounds like some person or place from The Silmarillion.

      Sounds like "Turin" got mixed up with some other person whose name ended with "-ion" :)

    • It looks kind of like the word Torino, which was some kind of car in the early 70's I think, and may be some Spanish word.
    • You may be thinking of Turgon [glyphweb.com], Elven king of Gondolin, or Turin [glyphweb.com], a man who helped the Elves. There are also numberous proper nouns that end in "ion".

      Actually, I'd rather enjoy chips named after characters and events in the LOTR world. Intel could name its next chips after the fell creatures of Morgoth; AMD could name its chips after various humans; IBM could take Elvish names. Then we could read better flame wars, in which fanboys posit that, since Fingolfin rode alone and scarred Morgoth, IBM PPC rules; me

  • Veggie Tales (Score:5, Funny)

    by binaryDigit ( 557647 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @11:30AM (#11287520)
    Hi kids, this is Bob the Turion, and his sidekick, Larry the Celeron.
    • If you like to talk to transistors
      If big cache can make you smile
      If you like to waltz with capacitors
      Up and down the homebrew electronics aisle...(of Fry's)

      Have we got a processor showdown for you.

      Maybe now we can see AMD marching around the Intel headquarters while Intel hurls slushies at the competition.

      Or maybe I need to put a new CD in my car's player. But hey, my 3 year old isn't ready for Snoop Doog yet.

  • Turian rhymes with durian (Score:3, Informative)

    by ajlitt ( 19055 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @11:36AM (#11287585)
    Stinkiest of all fruits.
    • Dude, you know you could kill things with this fruit, so I supposed Turian could nicely spike and squish Celeron just like how a Durian could be used to spike and squish some Celery. It's a cool name for a possibly deadly processor!

  • PLANTS? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Hamstij ( 831222 )
    Huh? Does the modern chip require sandy soil? How much water does it need? Does it prefer lots of light but no direct sunlight?

    What colour flowers does it produce? And do they attract butterflies?

    Last of all, when is my local garden centre going to stock them?

  • Celer = Fast? (Score:3, Funny)

    by entrager ( 567758 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @11:46AM (#11287677)
    Anyone else find it interesting that the Celeron was named after a fast vegetable?
    • Sorry that is wrong. Celery is not named for a latin word that means fast. Explination here [plateaupress.com.au].

      Celeron sounds like the english word celerity:

      From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:

      Celerity \Ce*ler"i*ty\, n. [L. celeritas, from celer swiftm
      speedy: sf. F. c['e]l['e]rit['e].]
      Rapidity of motion; quickness; swiftness.
    • Random Simpson's reference time:
      Ralph Wiggum:Go bannana!
  • "Celeron, the name of which is derived from the latin word, 'celer', meaning 'fast' or 'swift'"

    'fast' and 'swift' are NOT words I often hear associated with Celerons. Perhaps they should have gone with insumption [websters-o...ionary.org] or vilion [websters-o...ionary.org]. Is implying that Celerons are fast some sort of cruel joke?

  • CentTurion? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lispy ( 136512 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @11:54AM (#11287747) Homepage
    I think they were after a pun for the ancient roman general: The Centurion

    Centrino - Turion

    This makes more sense to me than the celery ananlogy.
    • Actually this sounds like an episode trom STNG:
      "The celery analogy"

    • I think they were after a pun for the ancient roman general: The Centurion

      Actually a centurion was a low ranking officer who was in charge of a hundred men.

      Yes, you can actually learn something on slashdot! ;-)

      • Obvious, isn't it? But a hundred man is not that bad after all. Given that I am in charge of a cat and it won't follow my orders...

      • The closest analogue in modern armies to the centurion is probably a sergeant, in terms of the number of ranks and in that centurions, like sergeants, were usually in for life. On the other hand, in terms of the number of soldiers commanded, a centurion was more like a captain, since a Roman century was roughly the size of a modern US company, which is normally commanded by a captain.

    • And w/r/t Centrino, Turion is less likely to provoke a trademark lawsuit than Turino.

  • No, my fine friend.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by adeyadey ( 678765 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @11:56AM (#11287763) Journal
    The rapid radish is by far the swiftest of all vegetable crops! Kneel to the power of the radish! Bow, I tell you!

  • Celery NOT fast (Score:5, Funny)

    by kahei ( 466208 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @12:00PM (#11287807) Homepage

    The article is factually wrong. I took a stick of celery, a beetroot, an artichoke, and a handful of lettuce and put them at one end of a track. At the other was a bowl of water and a sunlamp, to give them an incentive.

    After 5 minutes, they were all STILL moving at the SAME speed! One hour later, they are still neck and neck although the lettuce is beginning to look a little worn-out.

    I've had about enough of people pumping up one particular fruit or vegetable, with NO BASIS in actual testing. MOST vegetables travel at the SAME SPEED (unless you drop one, or fire it from a gun, or something) and there is no point paying more for a faster one.

    • So in your neck'n'neck vegetable race, did any of the vegetables consume less energy to go the given distance? No fair sticking pieces of copper and zinc into them, and this is a "vegetable" race, so you can't use lemons or other citrus fuits, either.

      OTOH, when they were in grade school, one of my kids' friends plugged line current into a pickle. (under adult supervision, of course) It made some pretty flickers of light inside, and rather smelled. But it didn't go any faster than your vegetables, even with
    • Fool. You need to overclock them first.

      Place one foot in bucket of water, one hand in the bowl of water, wet edge of finger and stick into nearest NON-GFI electrical socket and voila.

      Instant results.

    • You've made a common amateur mistake when benchmarking vegetables. You see, vegetables are very shy and in fact won't race at all while you are watching. Don't try putting a camera on them either; their evolved shyness allows them to easily detect when they are being observed.

      So put your vegetables back on the track, and leave them alone so they can race in privacy. They'll certainly have moved back to their starting positions by the time you return, but I'm sure you'll find them in concensus that the c
    • It's not your fault; vegetables are notoriously hard to benchmark accurately. What you need is to come up with a real-world test for them to measure up against.

  • AMD whupped Celeron long since (Score:5, Informative)

    by Selanit ( 192811 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @12:11PM (#11287952)
    AMD doesn't need to release a whole new line of processors just to compete with the Celeron -- they've had the Celeron beaten for years. AMD's Duron line was consistently cheaper and faster than Celeron -- I refer you to any one of a number of tech sites. Anandtech had a good "budget processor" article comparing Durons and Celerons a while back. Tom's Hardware would do too.

    More recently, AMD released the Sempron, meant to replace the Duron as its budget-level processor. Consider Anandtech's conclusion [anandtech.com] from a Sempron vs. Celeron test they did last July:

    "Sempron, at a glance, surpasses its goal to be a powerful budget processor. Cheaper than the current fastest Intel Celeron, both flavors of Sempron that we tested here outperform the competition in almost every test."

    In the performance market segment, Intel and AMD have been locked in battle for ages -- sometimes one is up, sometimes the other -- but if you're building a budget system, AMD offers more bang for less buck.

    I'll be interested to see how this unfortunately named "Turion" chip compares to the PentiumM.
    • More recently, AMD released the Sempron, meant to replace the Duron as its budget-level processor. Consider Anandtech's conclusion from a Sempron vs. Celeron test they did last July:

      "Sempron, at a glance, surpasses its goal to be a powerful budget processor. Cheaper than the current fastest Intel Celeron, both flavors of Sempron that we tested here outperform the competition in almost every test."

      Maybe the prices they saw had the sempron cheaper, but at retail price I see just about no difference between
      • celeron 2.6 GHz and a sempron 2600+, which should be slightly slower


        You apparently don't understand. Clock for numerical rating, Semprons are faster than Celerons.
        • Not according to the benchmark I saw, which gave the sempron 2800+ a benchmark of 20.1, and the 2.66 GHz celeron 18.5. The 2600+ wasn't benchmarked, but we can estimate its performance at almost exactly the same, under the assumption that the numerical rating is proportional to benchmark speed (although note that this isn't true between the 3100 and the 2800).

          Of course, if you look at the different application domains, the figures vary wildly. The Sempron's better for some applications, the celeron for t
          • Go back through your "the benchmark I saw" paragraph, and see if it means anything.

            Let me repeat.

            Comparing Performance Rating to Clock Speed In Mhz, the Semperon outperforms the Celeron in the vast majority of tests.

            Reference: (You may need to remove a space in the URL)
            http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040728/se mpron- 08.html
            (That's the first page of results, *all* the results back my claim - note that the Celeron 335 is clocked at 1800mhz)
            • Different benchmark, different results. As I said, "Of course, if you look at the different application domains, the figures vary wildly. The Sempron's better for some applications, the celeron for the other."

              Obviously for the applications tested by the Toms Hardware benchmarks, the Sempron is better.

              Also, results for comparing a 1.8GHz celeron to an 1800 sempron may vary from 1.6 to 1600, as there are many factors other than clock speed that affect performance. As far as I'm concerned, there are benchm
  • AMD's announcement comes following their failed "Alderon" line of chips, which after just a few months in production were all simultaneously destroyed by a giant moon-shaped pun laser.

  • Yes, it's a goofy name, when can I buy one? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Brian Stretch ( 5304 ) * on Friday January 07, 2005 @12:28PM (#11288147)
    The new Turion 64's are intended for the new thin-and-light notebooks like these: regular [arima.com.tw] and widescreen [arima.com.tw]. The eMachines/Gateway AMD64 notebooks are built by Arima, so I'd expect these things to show up under the Gateway label.

    I'd prefer a nVidia chipset and GPU though for 64-bit Linux compatibility, like my current HP zv5000z has. It'll be interesting to see what HP has to offer in the way of Turion notebooks.
  • The article says that the folks at AMD linked the word with 'tour', to me it's just as easy to associate it with 'turd'! So I would stick with dictionary meanings, because phonetic sounds can differ widely in meaning.

  • The question is... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Entropius ( 188861 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @01:25PM (#11288866)
    ... what sort of advantage do these chips have over the low voltage Athlon 64 mobiles? From what I understand, those have the power economy of the
    Centrinos but much better performance.
  • I would use a Turion processor but I don't like all of those damn Metroids [classicgaming.com]. Why couldn't they call it a Brinstar or a Norfair?

  • "..'celery' - the fastest of all vegetables."

    That reminds me something I read years a ago...

    "Everyone bet on the eggplant, figuring if a vegetable challenges a live animal with four legs to a race, it must be that the vegetable knows something."

  • turion
    A young, scaly shoot budded off from underground stems.

    Now THAT sounds like it could crunch numbers like nothing ever seen before!

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