AMD squeezes Athlon 4 into notebooks

AMD has officially launched its flagship Athlon and Duron processors for laptop computers. Compaq said it is shipping a 1GHz Athlon 4, immediately, in its Presario 1200 notebook line.

The move is the first time AMD has squeezed its top-of-the-line Athlon architecture into a laptop. Athlon 4, formerly code-named Palomino, consumes far less power than the desktop version, among other improvements.

Duron, introduced in the wake of Athlon, is based on the same microarchitecture as Athlon but is aimed at the low-cost end of the market.

"Our new mobile AMD Athlon 4 and new mobile AMD Duron processors have been designed with features specific to the mobile market, and like all of our processors, are designed to support existing Socket A platform architecture," said Dirk Meyer, group vice president of, Computation Products Group, AMD, in a statement.

The 1GHz, 950MHz, 900MHz and 850MHz mobile Athlon 4 processors cost $425 (£300), $350 (£246), $270 (£190) and $240 (£169), respectively, in OEM quantities. The 850MHz and 800MHz mobile AMD Duron processors are priced at $197 (£139)and $170 (£120), respectively, in OEM quantities.

AMD moved to name the new chip Athlon 4 as a way of competing more effectively with Intel's Pentium 4, which won't exist in a mobile version until next year.

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