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Intel Launches Centrino Duo Notebooks
An anonymous reader writes "Intel has officially introduced their Centrino Duo platform. The new Centrino uses the Yonah processor which I guess is now called Core Duo. AnandTech has a review of notebooks based on it and the results are pretty impressive. They tested two identical notebooks, one based on Centrino Duo and one based on Centrino. The Duo notebook lasted 30 minutes longer on battery and was faster in the benchmarks. You can't beat longer battery life and better performance."
How can they be identical if they are based on different motherboards?
I can't believe someone would rate the parent post as "informative" without ever looking at the article.
In the article, Anandtech clearly states that their request for identical notebooks was filled by Asus's W-series notebooks. Since Asus is a huge ODM, they provided identical notebooks with the only difference being the new chipset, processor combo. The processors (Dothan and Core Duo) were even matched clock for clock at 1.86Ghz. The comparison is amazingly good and shows very clearly that the new processor has a great boost and performance and battery time. Next time, please RTFA before posting drivel.
How well has Intel improved the performance of its integrated graphics chipset? I'd like to see what I can look forward to if Apple decides to go with Intel and not ATI or nVidia. While I understand these aren't meant to be gaming "powerhouses", I'd still like to do some light gaming on it. (FWIW, I've play World of Warcraft, at around 20fps, on my old iBook G4 800 and my desktop P3 750 (ti4200), which was acceptable. I'd like to see at least this level of performance).
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
You can't beat longer battery life and better performance.
How about a quieter fan?
You kids! Haven't you learned not to peak at your presents before Christmas Day?
Seriously, once I got over having expectations for either Christmas presents or the Keynote, I stopped being so disappointed and started enjoying both Christmas and MWSF much more.
I can remember a group of us being stunned that our hoped-for "Apple PDA" turned out to be the iPod. We felt so betrayed at the time. But look how that turned out. And meanwhile, the PDA market has mostly been stagnant, or has merged with (read: become a feature of) telephony.
So pull up a deck chair, grab a kool aid, sit back, and prepare to have the warm emanations of the RDF wash over you pleasantly.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
... the SLIGHTLY better power consumption is probably a result of moving from 90nm to 65nm - it is possible that a 65nm single-core would still have better power consumption !!!
As a result I would really want to see how things will be compared to a 65nm (dual-core or not) AMD Turion and before paying around 500 US$ for the CPU only I would rather wait for a dual-core 64 bit CPU (eventually with 4 MB L2).
Face it, this idea everything would be done on a server and you would only need a "thin client" or such has been nothing much more than a pipe-dream.
One major reason is cost, the end clients have become more powerful and the price has dropped. The difference in cost between having a low powered end client versus a standard one isn't enough to justify anyone moving to a different model.
Then toss in the adversion most people have to "not owning it" and it becomes clear why this has never taken off. Look at the adversion people here on slashdot have to subscription music! Do you think any of these people will want to subsribe to software? Sure there will be some people who put up a server at home and work that way but that isn't a killer-app.
Notebooks and even phones for that matter will continue to get more powerful. There will be markets for low cost phones, but those same markets are not of any interest to the central server market advocates as these markets most likely won't have the money or inclination to use the service.
If you want your central server model you have to look no further than the green screen systems that are in use in many industries doing real work. Its really hard to sell someone something when the solution already exists.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
(The point being that better lifetime and performance are no brainers only if all other quality measures don't suffer.)
You're kidding, right? They are THE processor for laptops. Almost everyone I know with a x86 laptop has one. I went from a P3 to a P4 to a first-gen centrino, and now a Sonoma for about the last half year (actually, a W5A like the one in the article). There's no way a regular Pentium or Celeron can compare to a Centrino when in comes to battery life or heat output. . And I'm no Intel fanboy at all, I actually do prefer AMDs on the desktops, but for notebooks Intel Centrinos are "it"
So, this new fangled wireless card Intel have produced, 3945ABG.
Are we Linux users going to get a driver for it?
An extra 30 minutes battery life, and a dual core CPU for multitasking, would both be quite beneficial for me, but without Linux wireless drivers (no ndiswrapper please) it's a no-go.
OP Said:You can't beat longer battery life and better performance."
Well, except with even longer battery life and even better preformance for even less money. I think that would beat it.
I don't know anyone who uses this chip
Centrino mobile technology is a chipset, not a chip. Until now, it has consisted of a Pentium M CPU plus specific supporting chips including a specific brand of onboard 802.11b adapter.
When's the P5 coming out?
Given that "Pentium" comes from the Greek word for the number 5 plus a Latin suffix, wouldn't "Pentium 5" be redundant?
Pretty similar?? I'd love to see those benchmarks.
Here in reality, the Centrino has the best performance per watt of any x86 CPU (or at least highest performance for lowest wattage). Why do you think Intel started pushing performance per watt anyway? Answer: It's the only thing they are good at right now.
Ok, pardon me for asking the obvious question:
How much are these laptops going to cost?
When are they going to be available?
I was going to buy a laptop for running Fedora Core at the end of January. I was planning to spend 1000-1200$ Is this out of my league (and time frame)?
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston