AMD banks on Tigris platform for notebooks in 2010. MSI's CR610 first out of door.

by Tarinder Sandhu on 22 October 2009, 16:06

Tags: MSI CR 610, AMD (NYSE:AMD), MSI

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qaukp

Add to My Vault: x

MSI's CR610

MSI will be one of the first to market with the a Tigris-powered notebook.



Tigris is primarily designed for notebooks featuring 14in-plus screens. The CR610 packs in a 16in WXGA panel with a native resolution of 1,366x768, presented in a 16:9 aspect ratio - good for watching movies.



Tipping the scales at 2.5kg, the CR610 can be considered light for laptop in its class.


Equipped with a choice of Turion II Ultra chips, the UK spec. will likely ship with a 2.0GHz model that draws a maximum of 35W under load.

An eSATA/USB combination port; HDMI; VGA; ExpressCard34; Gigabit Ethernet, and a further two USB ports line the laptop's sides. Connectivity, then, is good.



The integrated graphics, Mobility Radeon HD 4200, will be able to play basic games at low-ish resolutions. The UVD2 part of the IGP enables GPU-based decoding of high-definition content. As such, the CR610 will ship with a Blu-ray drive.



Further kitted out with 4GB DDR2 RAM, a 500GB hard drive, 802.11b/g/n WiFi and Windows Home 7 Premium, the overall specification, on paper at least, is decent.
 


As standard, the CR610 will ship with a six-cell, 49Whr battery. Our concern is that, based on previous experiences with Puma, battery-life may not be long enough to run an entire Blu-ray film from start to finish. We'll be testing just this in a forthcoming review.

The CR610's most attractive feature may well be the value proposition. MSI suggests an etail price of around £500 for the Blu-ray-totin' model.

Looking reasonable on first glance, the CR610 is an example of AMD's mainstream notebook technology for at least the next six months. We'll be giving it a closer look next week.

« PREVIOUS PAGE

HEXUS Forums :: 3 Comments

Login with Forum Account

Don't have an account? Register today!
Posted by deleted - Thu 22 Oct 2009 17:35
That laptop looks cheap and nasty - hopefully Acer and HP will provide something which looks more conservative.

Puma wasn't really a speed bump from the last generation was it, nor did it provide much of a battery performance increase. So I imagine Congo is going to provide the same old technology wrapped up for the past two years.

I must say though for laptops under £400, they can't be beaten for value.
Posted by deleted - Thu 22 Oct 2009 23:08
Deleted
That laptop looks cheap and nasty - hopefully Acer and HP will provide something which looks more conservative.

Puma wasn't really a speed bump from the last generation was it, nor did it provide much of a battery performance increase. So I imagine Congo is going to provide the same old technology wrapped up for the past two years.

I must say though for laptops under £400, they can't be beaten for value.

The Turion II is a 45nm processor and it should hopefully mean better battery life. Also the Turion II is based on the Phenom II architecture so it should mean improved performance in theory.
Posted by deleted - Sun 25 Oct 2009 01:54
Firstly, “Welcome” to Hexus, BillyBear (@ 2 posts).

I agree that the laptop looks a bit minging.

I don't recall seeing 4200 graphics mentioned before. I know from experience that 3200 (780g) is excellent. So I'll be keeping a close eye out as to what the 4200 update brings to the table.