Thoughts on Tigris and MSI's CR610
AMD's Tigris is the platform for the company's mainstream notebook designs for the next six months, at the very least.Offering partners a choice of 45nm, two-core chips - Athlon II and Turion II (Ultra) - that are based on newer Phenom technology, sat on top of a chipset with integrated graphics that feature DX10.1 compliance, the new platform is an incremental upgrade over incumbent Puma.
Pragmatically, a change in chip sockets - S1G3 vs. S1G2 - means that notebook makers will need to purchase the new CPU-and-chipset combination when building Tigris notebooks. Users cannot drop the new chips into existing Puma platforms.
MSI's chosen Tigris as the backbone for a number of SKUs in its Classic range. Taking the £450 model as an example of Tigris technology, performance is reasonable on the CPU front and, considering the discrete-card heritage of the Radeon HD 4200 IGP, decent for the graphics.
Thinking of the mainstream market, where Intel's Core 2 Duo and X4500MHD IGP hold sway, AMD's Tigris, if competitively priced, can offer a user experience that's at least as good for the majority of applications, and, objectively, better for multimedia/gaming usage, based on our testing.
AMD and its partners need to do two things if Tigris is to succeed. Firstly, a large number of designs need to come to market, quickly - there's little point in having design wins if partners procrastinate over release schedules. Secondly, from a technology point of view, better efforts need to be made with respect to battery life. The MSI CR610's 2.5hr mobile usage is good, but Intel's pushing low-power usage, via CULV notebooks, with 4hr-plus mobile longevity. Increasing this facet of performance will undoubtedly be difficult as it's largely predicated on underlying technology.
Bottom line. AMD's Tigris notebook platform has intrinsic technological merit that needs to be realised quickly. MSI's CR610 large-screen notebook is a decent example of the technology, and should garner interest if released soon and priced below competing solutions featuring Intel's Centrino platform.
