Compaq ships sub-$900 AMD 1GHz laptop

As AMD rolled out a 1GHz version of its mobile Duron processor, Compaq claimed to be the first PC vendor to offer sub-$900 laptops based on the chip.

Available immediately in Compaq's Presario 700 series notebooks, the 1GHz chip, when configured with a 13.3-inch display, starts at $899. The price is $50 less than that of a notebook with a 1GHz mobile Athlon 4, with the same configuration.

The mobile Duron features 192Kb of on-chip cache memory and a 200MHz front side bus, as well as support for AMD's 3DNow technology. AMD said the processors would be available from other vendors in the first quarter of next year.

The new mobile chip follows the introduction of a 1.2GHz mobile Athlon 4 and a 950MHz mobile Duron in early November.

Competitor Intel's top budget mobile chip, the 933MHz mobile Celeron, was introduced on 1 October.

Rob Enderle, an analyst at Giga Information Group, said that the Duron outperforms the Intel mobile Celeron in a category that cares first about price but will take any free performance it can get.

"More importantly, it is a category that seems to like AMD and where the brand has performed well," he said. "I would expect Hewlett Packard and others to follow."

"However, the continued use of desktop chips in this segment may provide another alternative that could hold mobile Duron sales down: too many parts right now in this segment and that may mean one or more will have to go," he added.

Earlier this month, in part because the sales of cheap PCs have remained unexpectedly strong, both AMD and Intel boosted their sales and revenue forecasts.

Noting a quarterly report from Dataquest on PC chip market share for the third quarter, AMD said it has more than doubled its market share in certain geographic and market segments. The chipmaker's largest gains in the third quarter came in desktop consumer PC markets outside the US.

The Japanese consumer desktop PC market jumped by 30 per cent in 2000 and AMD increased its desktop market share in western Europe in the quarter to 40 per cent from 25 per cent, according to the company.

AMD said it will ship a record number of microprocessors this quarter and that total revenue is likely to grow 10 per cent or more on the $766m it gained in revenue from the third quarter.