In Cheap-Chip Market, It's Intel vs. Via

'Fact tags' only confused customers: Intel exec

(NEWSER) - PC makers seem to have gotten the hint and are beginning to hawk their wares not with dazzling technobabble but with information useful to the average consumer, the New York Times reports. For years, tech concerns have touted their achievements in impenetrable language on “fact tags” (DDR2 RAM, anyone?), but that approach may not fly when most people just want a fast Internet connection. “We have been stuck in 1995,” an AMD exec says. “We are basically the laggards.” More»

Before the iMac, there were mega machines

(NEWSER) - Convenience is a given when it comes to today's PCs, but the machine you're reading this on has come a long way. Major transformations date as far back as the early 19th century. Live Science gives the back-story on 10 revolutionary computers.

1. The Difference Engine, 1822: Designed by Charles Babbage but not built until decades later, today's replicas show this math-table-generating machine to work flawlessly.
2. ENIAC, 1946: This US Army computer weighed 30 tons, used 17,478 vacuum tubes, and consumed 150 kilowatts.

Major coup in battle between rival chipmakers

(NEWSER) - In an important win over its sometimes-struggling rival, Intel has wooed away AMD client DreamWorks Animation. DreamWorks will replace its current servers and computer workstations, which use AMD chips, with new Intel-powered ones. The studio said the change will make its computing faster and help it start producing 3-D animation, reports the Wall Street Journal. More»

AMD has accused Intel of banned business moves

(NEWSER) - With countless documents and hundreds of witnesses to sort through, chip maker Advanced Micro Devices’ antitrust lawsuit against Intel won’t begin until 2010 at the earliest, the Wall Street Journal reports. AMD has long accused Intel of corrupt business practices; the delay comes after a Korean court ruled that the PC giant had offered millions in rebates to computer makers for not buying from AMD. More»

Intel, Nvidia and AMD jockey over advanced imagery for PCs

(NEWSER) - Three Silicon Valley companies are jockeying to plot the future course for chips that create the most realistic computer graphics, the Wall Street Journal reports. "All of them agree that graphics are the field where the battle is going to be fought," one analyst says of Intel, Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices. "They're going down different paths but approaching the same thing." More»