Remember AMD Barcelona? Delayed and disappointing, the architecture behind AMD’s first Phenom chips finally turned up in November 2007, six months behind schedule, with performance that left us “a little underwhelmed” after months of anticipation – and that’s before it was compared against its Intel equivalents.

At the same time, Intel was preparing to release its Wolfdale-based Core 2 Duo processors, which appeared in January 2008 using the more efficient 45nm architecture – a key improvement over AMD’s 65nm chips. The result? Our review concluded that the new Core 2 Duo E8000-series “wipes the floor with the [older] E6000 series” and that Intel’s new processors were an “unqualified success”.

Fast forward three years, and the similarities are startling.

The chips are down

Intel has recently unleashed its stunning Sandy Bridge architecture, which combines improved efficiency with markedly improved performance over its predecessors. The launch might have been marred by the firm’s well-publicised SATA problems, but they’ve now been fixed.

AMD, in the meantime, is floundering: its latest processors are retooled versions of old hardware, and forthcoming Bulldozer chips look like they’ll have an uphill battle, too. AMD is in second place when it comes to implementing 32nm manufacturing, with Bulldozer-based desktop processors not due until later this year and laptop parts only slated to arrive in 2012.

And then there are Bulldozer’s headline features, many of which sound awfully familiar. The chips will be built around individual modules that contain two processing cores with Multi-Threading and Turbo Core technologies, so they’ll be able to address two tasks independently and overclock at will, too – so the firm’s top-end consumer chips will include four modules with eight cores.

Bulldozer might not be as efficient as Intel’s chips, either. AMD’s new chips will have a maximum TDP of 125W, with Intel’s most powerful Sandy Bridge chips coming in with a top TDP of only 95W. That suggests great power efficiency, less heat, and more overclocking headroom.

By the time AMD releases its first Bulldozer-powered processors – rumoured to be in the summer – Intel’s latest Core i7 Extreme chips will also be on the horizon with eight cores and, consequently, 16-thread support as standard, and using a more efficient manufacturing process. They’ll likely be more expensive than AMD’s priciest Bulldozers but, if recent form is to be believed, they’ll also be far quicker, further establishing Intel as the chip of choice for the enthusiast.

The picture isn’t much rosier in AMD’s previous stronghold at the budget end of the market. Fusion is taking aim at Atom but, even though we’ve found it to be a better performer than its rival, we’re not exactly enthused about its prospects. Our review described it as “a year too late” to make a real impact. The desktop chips still aren’t due for several months, and the sheen that surrounded netbooks back in 2007 has faded as CULV laptops, smartphones and tablets – all of which are powered by non-AMD technology – have gained in prominence.

Nvidia fights back

At least AMD has spent the past couple of years delivering market-leading graphics cards, with the firm often finding the perfect balance between price and performance. The tide’s starting to turn here, though, with Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 460 and its successor, the GTX 560 Ti, proving to be better prospects than AMD’s own HD 6950, HD 6970 and HD 6870.

The firms are now trading blows in the high-end space, too, although Nvidia’s likely got the edge here, with its GTX 570 offering the “best compromise between cost and power”. And, while AMD currently holds performance records thanks to the new HD 6990, Nvidia is rumoured to be releasing its own dual-GPU card in the next few weeks – so you’d be wise to hold off if you’re thinking about dropping such a vast sum of cash on a graphics card.

There’s turmoil at the top, too. January saw the departure of CEO Dirk Meyer, allegedly because of the firm’s failure to capitalise on the growth of mobile devices, and other key staff left not long after, with COO Bob Rivet and senior vice president of corporate strategy Marty Seyer both announcing their resignations at the start of February.

In the meantime, AMD has appointed a couple of new faces to its board of directors. Henry Chow and Nicholas M. Donofrio, both veterans of IBM, bring plenty of chip-designing experience to the table – but, crucially, Meyer hasn’t been replaced, with Thomas Seifert manning the fort until a permanent CEO is appointed. That can’t come soon enough – while Meyer has an engineering background and personally led the team that developed the Athlon processor, Seifert is a manager with less technical expertise.

It’s a bleak picture. AMD doesn’t lead the way in any area at the moment, and few signs point to this situation improving. Beating rivals such as Intel and Nvidia might be one step too far for the Californian company right now – by the looks of things, it’ll have a hard enough time trying to keep up.

A glance at the exterior suggests that little about the classic netbook formula has changed: the 11.6in screen has a native resolution of 1,366 x 768, the trackpad is small but has a decent pair of buttons and supports multitouch functions, and the keyboard is reasonably spacious but also felt quite spongy. Three USB ports, an Ethernet socket and D-SUB output aren’t exactly groundbreaking, either.

Peek under the hood, though, and Packard Bell’s latest looks far more interesting than the average Atom-based products that have flooded the netbook market.

For a start, you need not choose an Atom at all – instead, Packard Bell is giving customers the choice of an AMD Athlon L110 processor, running at 1.2GHz, and the usual 1.6GHz Atom N280. While the Intel part means that the standard netbook specification of 1GB of RAM, a smaller hard disk and integrated graphics remains, opting for the AMD CPU means that an ATI Radeon Express 1270 chip is included instead, alongside 2GB of RAM and a 320GB hard disk.

While this means that performance should receive a welcome boost, that isn’t the only benefit that Packard Bell were touting at yesterday’s launch. The model we saw was running Windows XP but, because the new dot m doesn’t comply to Microsoft’s strict licensing specifications – such as an Atom CPU and 1GB of RAM – Packard Bell is free to install whatever OS it likes. Whispers of Vista were mentioned at the event but, sadly, nothing beyond XP was confirmed.

Packard Bell gave the price of the dot m as £349 inc. VAT, but also wouldn’t confirm which version this applied to – the Intel and XP flavour, which is presumably cheaper, or an AMD variant. We were also told that 3 and 6-cell batteries will be available and that some variations of the new netbook will have integrated 3G. Suffice to say that the 6-cell probably won’t be bundled with the dot m at launch, and we haven’t been told if the 3G modem will be locked to any one provider.

Packard Bell’s latest netbook, then, holds as many mysteries as it does cold, hard facts – while we’ve seen the AMD-based model and been told that Intel versions will follow, the final specification could change before the dot m arrives in the PC Pro Labs in the next few weeks. Suffice to say, whatever eventually turns up, we’ll be giving it the full review treatment.

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