CES 2011: So which of Intel and AMD's new chips should you be choosing?

AMD and Intel's new laptop CPU line-up for 2011 is seriously tempting. In fact, there may just be enough too make both camps worth a look

The new CPU lineup from AMD and Intel this year is making us wonder if the Windows laptop is getting its cool back.

Intel
First off is Intel’s new 2nd generation generation Core chips, previously dubbed

Sandy Bridge

MSI has announced a massive 16 new laptops using the new Intel chips, while HP, Lenovo, Toshiba and others all have 2nd generation Core laptops for 2011.

Intel is pushing three key advantages of the new Core:
- better integrated graphics. By combining the graphics unit and the processor, Intel claims to have drastically increased performance for things like converting video files on the fly. The claim is a laptop with Intel’s new Core chip can convert a four minute hd video to phone or ipad in 16 seconds. The hype here has been more than a little over the top, with Intel Vice President Shmuel Eden boasting "Our processor graphics are going to outperform 40-50% of discrete graphics that exists in market today."

- Ditch your discrete graphics? Not quite, but Intel claims you won’t need one if you’re playing games like World of Warcraft or the Sims. A brief demo of Portal 2 was also shown running on the new 2nd-gen Core chip.

- Widi 2.0 – streams high-def video from laptop to TV. The new version lets you stream 1080p video, but you need to have a laptop with the 2nd gen Core chip. There are a bunch of other ways to do this, but Intel’s WiDi is looking more useful than before, because it lets you stream anything you can see on your laptop to your TV (you don’t have to worry about codecs and limitations on what sites you can stream), even programs.

AMD
Equally enticing are systems running AMD’s Fusion chips. Don’t get AMD’s approach confused with Intel. The big deal here is that like Intel, AMD has built in graphics onto the same piece of silicon as the CPU. But the first Fusion chips we’ll see are 1.6GHz netbook-class, like the one in HP’s Pavilion dm1, though a variant for larger laptops is also on the way.

Laggy netbook have always been an annoyance – if Fusion can lend a kick up the rear to this category, at the price of a netbook, we’ll be more than impressed. Add on long battery life (up to 10 hours on the dm1), and Intel Atom netbooks will have a worthy rival.