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Intel Core i7 For Laptops — First Benchmarks
Barence writes "PC Pro has benchmarked the first Intel Core i7 processors for laptops. The chips mark the debut of Intel's Turbo Boost technology, which ramps up the speed of the working cores if two or more cores are sitting unused. For the quad-core i7-820QM, this can take the stock speed of 1.73GHz up to a maximum of 3.06GHz. The 2D benchmarks show comparable performance to Core 2 Extreme chips running at 2.53GHz. Power consumption and processor temperature is dramatically lower, which should lead to significant improvements in laptop battery life."
Litterally
Seriously, couldn't the marketing droids come up with a better name?
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
They must have the most shameless shit-for-brains in their marketing dept.
"Power consumption and processor temperature is dramatically lower, which should lead to significant improvements in laptop battery life."
compared to? Because from the graphs the core2duo had much better battery life, and core2duo battery life sucks imho. Wish they'd focus more on improving the battery life of two cores because 4 cores in a laptop is overkill 99% of the time, I'd rather have a extra hour of battery life and suffice with two cores.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Although faster is better and will be every Slashdotter's wet dream, but I'd rather have power-efficient laptops rather than a gazillion Ghz laptop. I don't get why an average Joe needs a Core 2 Duo laptop for Word processing and surfing the web, which is what most people have and what most people do now. And now they're going to put i7 on the laptops. There will be some people who needs it, but not the majority of casual laptop users, who don't do video encoding or kernel compilation (which should be the work of a desktop IMHO).
I have two atom powered laptops and I even sold my laptops because I was so in love with those machines, which wouldn't burn my lap and my balls whenever I have to sit them on my laps. Other than the pitiful 950 graphics, I have nothing to complain about.
And I heard they fixed it with the Z5x0 chipset - on Windows at least, but as I don't have one, I can't verify it.
coming to a macbook pro near you in january, i'd guess....
I really like it when chips have small idle power usage, and this chip seems to run pretty cool when it is not taxed. Intel always had the lead in manufacturing capability, and it seems that this is one of the nice results.
I'm really waiting for the day when you (can) just leave your computer on at all times. Most of the times the chips are doing nothing anyway, so why should it use any power? Where is the technology to switch off memory banks when they are not used? Just page the stuff to my SSD (yes, I'm talking about the future here). Why don't processors have a small power efficient core for running the OS and applications at idle? Gigabit ethernet is getting power saving functions as well, and Wifi N has power saving features as well. Having the computer almost idling without having the fan of my PSU or processor switch on should be a killer feature.
One thing missing seems to be software support. I don't like it when my laptop drains much power just because one core is using 100% power because of a friggin flash ad on one of the tabs in my browser. We need more ways of restricting processes to use as many resources. What use is a computer that runs on almost no power when idle when it is never idling? And we'll need OS support for cores with different feature sets as well.
The article doesn't seem to suggest that this will really be enough to bring quad core laptops out of their current niche - we're talking an expensive machine which will clock in a bit over 3 hours battery life if you don't use its power, and potentially under an hour if you do. This would presumably be even worse with the higher clocked chip mentioned. I just don't feel there's much demand for such portable workstations - I can't see a good case for doing anything that processor intensive on the go. What does look very interesting is the 32nm dual core version - if they can carry over a comparable power consumption improvement to what they've achieved at the quad-core level that could be a very fast, very power efficient machine.
Power consumption and processor temperature is dramatically lower, which should lead to significant improvements in laptop battery life.
worry not. Microsoft and Adobe will find a way to offset that....
Where is the middle? Atom based equipment is changing how we define portable computers and is very exciting. These new chips are going to bring amazing power in a portable format. The problem for the average user is that these are two extremes that currently don't help them. The middle of the road laptop that can be used for everyday use has not had any major innovations or significant price drops for some time. I understand diversifying is important, but where is the new tech for that more middle of the road work load?
"Dynamic Load-based Overclocking" just doesn't sound as good as "Ultra Speedburner" or "Turbo Boosters" on the tin.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
...I just had an orgasm. I don't even own the chip yet so I guess that was a bit premature... (yeah, I went there.)
"Freedom Through Vigilance"
HEY SUPER FASTER WAS TAKEN. CARTOONS ARE ON
KTHXBYE
ROXXOR MARKETING INC
(brought to you by the lameness filter, which ruins every joke worth telling)
How about pairing one of these with an Intel Atom? The atom turns on cores within the Core I7 when it is pegged, and turns them off (potentially turning off the entire chip) when things quiet down.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Flash is even worse for power consumption than you think. On Vista if you have Flash loaded in your browser (maybe you watched youtube or an advertisement or something), it prevents Vista from going to into sleep mode per your power settings. Even if the video is over (e.g. youtube is showing the "replay?" button).
I'm guessing they did this because they had a suspend-resume bug that was hard to debug, and decided to burn lots of (our) coal instead of fixing their bug. Way to go Adobe!
Battery usage is fine and all that, but the current rage is thermal management. This has gotten more than one manufacturer (literally and figuratively) in hot water. The biggie was Apple with their 175-200F Intels in their MacBook Pros. All they had to say was don't run them so hard.
Heh.
Next you got Dell and their weenie-cooking laptops that seared some poor Padre's phallus, giving him 2nd degree burns.
No comment from Dell's higher-ups... What a way to make it right with the Lord guys...
And last, but not the least, HP and their tabletop scorching units that don't seem to quit cooking until some poorly designed component that can't stand the heat finally either cooks or fall off the board. No comment from them either, not even a canned statement with some instructions about how to keep your laptops cool.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
HP is releasing a Core i7 based laptop in mid-October. Apple is known for getting new Intel processors sooner than anybody else, so I do expect an announcement in the next three weeks, and it will include the phrase "shipping NOW".
So, what, do you use a fucking Cryix or something?
Obviously, laptops have caught up to desktops in terms of power. Now it seems like a good buy to get a high end laptop instead of a desktop. Hell, I'll do that.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ahem. I know a few VMWare and Citrix engineers and salespeople building and selling virtualization, VDI and virtual SAN solutions. Also network engineers with complex networks. It's one thing to show some slideware and draw on the whiteboard, it's a whole other thing to build the whole solution in your laptop and show people how it works.
The thing has its uses. 8 threads in a laptop. Very nice.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Excluding some special cases, I presume you would still get the best real-life performance by just running one core all times at that 3.06GHz speed.
These laptops have all different hardware. The screens on the quad core and the i7 are bigger than the one for the Core 2 Duo, and they're using different video cards. Seems like a worthless comparison to me.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
It "scored better"? You are vastly overestimating how much thought Intel Marketing put into the choice of the name. *grin* Actually, Intel Marketing is just copying Maybelline Turbo Boost mascara. Or maybe Vidal Sassoon Turbo Boost hair dryers?
Actually, in comparison, "SuperUltraMoreFaster Maker" isn't so bad. "Turbo Booster" gets 1,850,000 hits in Google. "SuperUltraMoreFaster Maker" gets exactly none. You're a creative genius!! Sorry, that means you'll never be hired by Intel Marketing.
My partly joking theory is that the staff of Intel Marketing long ago realized that Intel doesn't need marketing, since there is no one else besides AMD from whom to buy fast processors. So, it doesn't matter what they do. Mostly, they seem to do nothing. Sometimes, apparently due to boredom, they experiment with marketing. For example, buyers were offered Intel Bunny People dolls. How many buyers said, "Wow!!! A doll! I think I'll buy from Intel, rather than AMD"? The Intel web site is better now, but a few years ago, it was difficult or impossible to discover the Intel SKU of an Intel processor from the Intel web site, even after you spent 2 hours joining Intel's hardware buyer's organization. You could research processors on Intel's web site, but the Intel SKU wasn't listed. Wholesalers listed the processors by Intel SKU.
Intel's consumer division was so bad it ceased business. It would take many, many paragraphs to tell you how bad it was.
About 2 years ago, Intel Chairman Craig Barrett got bad press by announcing that Intel would go into competition with OLPC, One Laptop per Child: OLPC on 60 Minutes: Intel is evil. Typical story: Negroponte: "Intel should be ashamed of itself" for dumping its low cost PC. Look at the photo of Barrett! The photo looks like the personification of evil. *grin*
Now, Intel is trying to correct problems it has created by encouraging the sales of mobile computers with the Intel Atom processor, without communicating openly and honestly to customers that the Atom processor is very slow. For example, Intel: Some Netbook resellers saw 30% return rate.
Am I saying that, if I ran Intel Marketing, I could do better? Yes, I'm saying that. Maybe you could, also.
I'm somewhat curious how some specific gaming engines will perform with this new i7. For example, the source engine (valve) was originally a single core engine but they upgraded the engine to run on multiple cores within the last year. Some games like Left 4 Dead run well on a quad core while other games like Team Fortress 2 struggle to take advantage of two cores but is designed to do so. Would TF2 run better using a single 3.06ghz core or would it run better using two cores at 2.6ghz? Oh the curiosity!