AMD defends CPU market share with new round of price cuts

AMD has quietly reduced prices for a handful of its desktop Phenom II and Athlon II processors this week in an attempt to defend its market share against competition from Intel. The discounts apply mostly to the higher-clocked options in each processor class. For example, those looking to build an affordable quad-core system can now get their hands on the 3.0GHz Athlon II X4 640 for just $100 -- an 18% drop from the previous price of $122.

The Phenom II X4 955 and 965 Black Edition processors are also getting $20 price cuts to $145 and $165, respectively. The latter of these already ranked among the top choices in our recent $100 - $200 CPU round-up, but the new price could certainly help it compete against Intel's well-regarded Core i5 750. Meanwhile, the 3.2GHz Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition has dropped from $105 to $93, the Athlon II X3 445 now costs $76, and a pair of Athlon II X2s also received minor cuts.

AMD's six-core Phenom II X6 CPUs remain unchanged, however. Overall, there isn't much to get excited about, but it's always good to see AMD keeping the pressure on Intel with aggressive pricing on their budget and mainstream parts.

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AMD makes small gains in notebook CPU market

Market research group IDC has put out a new round of quarterly numbers for the x86 processor market, which Intel continued to rule all across -- no surprise there. Worldwide shipments and revenues in general showed uncharacteristic growth during the second quarter of 2010, according to IDC, with mobile units rising while desktop parts fell. AMD did particularly well in the first segment due largely to the arrival of its Nile and Danube mobile platforms.

Specifically, AMD's share of laptop processor shipments increased to 13.7% in the second quarter, from 12.1% in the first quarter and 12.6% a year earlier, while Intel's share dropped 1.7% sequentially and 0.8% year-on-year to a still dominant 86.1%. It was a different story in the desktop and server segments, where despite aggressive pricing and good price vs. performance ratio AMD continued to lose ground while Intel further cemented its No. 1 position.

Taken as a whole, AMD actually gained slightly to an overall x86 market share of 19%, thanks to its strong performance in the notebook segment. Intel saw a similarly small drop to 80.7% and Via accounted for a small 0.3%. IDC forecasts a major yearly growth of 19.8% for the CPU industry in 2010 after a recession hit 2009. It'll be interesting to see how -- or if -- these numbers are affected a few months from now with the release of Intel's Sandy Bridge and AMD's Fusion chips.

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ADATA announces USB 3.0, SATA II dual-interface SSD

ADATA has announced the release of a new solid-state drive equipped with both USB 3.0 and SATA II interfaces. Like Super Talent's recently announced UltraDrive MX, the new N004 can double as an external or internal drive, allowing users to install it as their primary drive or take it on the go. However, the latter stands out for its support of USB 3.0, which means you'll be able to take advantage of faster transfer rates when using it as a portable storage device.

According to ADATA the N004 boasts blazing transfer rates up to 200MB/s and 170 MB/s in sequential read and write performance, respectively. It is housed inside a 2.5-inch 'plush' aluminum case colored in sapphire blue, offers up to 256GB of storage capacity, and comes bundled with ADATA's UFDtoGO and a 60-day trial of Norton Internet Security 2010. Unfortunately, no pricing or availability information has been announced at the moment.


As Super Talent pointed out when releasing their UltraDrive MX, one particular area of usage where dual interface drives might come in handy, is for users looking to transition from traditional storage to SSD, allowing them to create an image of their internal HDD using the USB connection and then swap it out with the much faster SSD.

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