AMD CEO Dirk Meyer recently revealed that his “company is currently developing a platform that features lower-power, smaller-sizes, more complete functionality, and a cheaper price than Intel’s Atom for netbooks,” according to DigiTimes. Sounds great. The fact that AMD owns ATI should make for an awesome mish-mash of processors and graphics. So let’s start rolling these things out, eh?

Whoops, not so fast. The platform won’t be ready until next year.

Don’t count AMD as being out. In response to the ever growing netbook/small laptop market, AMD has announced their new CPU “Congo”, along with putting it into the updated HP Dv2 which is coming out on June 10th. We liked the original Dv2 — however, adding a little more grunt to it with the improved AMD processor can only be a good thing.

Last week AMD invited CrunchGear down to Austin to check out an overclocking event they were holding, at which many, many liters of liquid nitrogen and the much colder liquid helium would be consumed by thirsty processors.

They asked us, however, not to video the entire event, since they’d have their official video coming out shortly and some of the technology being used was still in development. No problem, we said, we’ll just dip our pulled-pork tacos in the spare liquid nitrogen.

AMD launched the Break Free Page: a collection of articles and quotes ramming about Intel’s bad behavior. I understand that Intel was a bad boy and revenge is sweet but making a website about it seems a little cheap. Maybe the time and effort put in slapping Intel should go to making processors.

AMD gained 4.6 percent of the CPU market this past quarter, making it the first time in five quarters that AMD’s made up some ground against Intel. It’s now got 22.3 percent to Intel’s 77.3 percent, according to analysts at IDC.

The Phenom II X4 has been shown to be an excellent overclocker, and recently the world record was set by a group called Limit Team, who took the 3.2GHz stock processor and took it up to an insane 7127Hz. That’s an increase of just over 221%. Of course, while with good ventilation you could probably overclock yours a good 10-15% with no ill effects, this particular hack required “exotic cooling materials” in AMD’s words. Does that mean… like a piña colada?

What’s the matter with AMD? The number two chip maker in the whole world just posted some numbers that don’t reflect too kindly on its performance over the last few months. The big, bad Sunnyvale, Calif.-based corp lost $416 million last quarter; about $195 million of that was related to a corporate spinoff (see: GlobalFoundries). When put into scary percentages, AMD’s sales fell off 21 percent. Meanwhile, Intel, what with its Core 2 Duo and, more importantly, its Atom, continues to hum along nicely, expecting sales to rise for this same quarter. So what gives, AMD?

The eternal quandary for system builders has been much less quandarious (to coin a term) for the last year or so. Intel processor, AMD video card — anything else would be uncivilized. AMD’s 48xx series has been the only choice for a while, but the latest products from AMD and NVIDIA are a little less starkly separated.

For around $250 (the mid-high sweet spot), the 4890 and GTX 275 are remarkably well-matched — more so than any two equivalently priced cards from the companies have been for some time. So which do you buy?

As much as we like the giant-killing 4870 graphics cards from AMD, they have been around for quite a while now. It’s past time when more needs to be done than tape two together and call it “X2.” Luckily, they’ve had the successor to the 4870 in the pipe for a while now, and someone’s just gotten their dirty hands on one.

If you didn’t already have enough reasons to buy a Radeon 4870 in one of its many forms, well, here’s another one. AMD’s been trying to push sales of its graphics cards, hoping to lower inventory and get a little dough, maybe to offset the enormous loss they posted this last quarter.

Their strategy was to lower the 512MB 4850 to ~$120, and its big brother the giant-killer 4870 to an incredible $150. But their partners said “no thanks,” comparing the 4870’s performance to much higher-priced NVIDIA cards. So wait, it’s too good?

SATA 3.0 is about to bring the goods - and fast. Seagate and AMD partnered together to demo just what the hopeful revision will be capable of with a prototype Barracuda drive and AMD chipset. If Seagate gets its way. - you see, not all manufacturers are signed on just yet including Western Digital - SATA 3.0 will be a full 200% faster than the current generation while still being backwards compatible.

Video card technology seems to compete with CPU technology, both of them continuing to obey Moore’s law, and becoming faster and faster with each iteration. Many manufacturers have also taken to increasing the amount of memory on their existing cards to make them run better. Most the time, this results in at least noticeably better performance, as we’ve seen.

Currently, if you want a netbook, you’re going to get an Intel atom chipset. This is just understood. They are fast, have low heat and power consumption, and are the defacto standard. But AMD is looking to get in on some of that action, and they could be a serious threat to Intel.

AMD enthusiasts should mark February 9th as a red-letter day. Five new processors have been unleashed by the ailing but effective CPU company, and they look like a serious value. If you’re looking to upgrade your box right now, these new processors are pretty much the only reasonable option.

Plus, you can upgrade now with your DDR2 setup, and then move to a new DDR3 setup in six months and keep the processor, since it’ll be compatible with both. More deets inside.

While Intel is working on taking on the GPU sector (and may just have a deal with Sony to do it), its main rival, Nvidia, is looking to get into the x86 processor business. The video hardware giant is assembling a team from scratch to make a competitor to the Intel and AMD’s CPUs — but doesn’t seem to care that the technology is proprietary and must be licensed from the very companies they’re trying to overthrow.

A little creative thinking over at the Inquirer has led them to suggest that Nvidia may get left out in the cold come the new generation of gaming consoles. Intel and AMD are set to split the spoils between them, leaving Nvidia (in its glory and its ego) to play with the PC market, which, as we are constantly being reminded, is dying.

A Dutch retailer briefly lists a “Radeon 5870 X2,” along with specs — conspiracy? Coincidence? Sham? Legit? Or just a typo?

Well, check out the specs and then… you be the judge.