Sneak Peek: New Platform, Speed Boost from Intel
Posted by Anush Yegyazarian | Monday, January 10, 2005 11:35 AM PT
Later this month, Intel finally should be ready to launch its Pentium M/Centrino platform upgrade, code-name
Sonoma, and the company was giving CES goers a sneak peek--along with another demonstration of its
dual-core processor technology (code-named Smithfield).
Upstairs in a more private demo area of its booth, Intel showed off a number of notebooks running the new notebook platform from makers such as Toshiba, Gateway, and many more. The new platform brings a number of improvements: a front side bus at 533MHz, up from 400MHz in current systems; support for fast dual-channel DDR2 memory at 400 MHz and 533 MHz; support for PCI Express (both on the motherboard and via add-in cards); 802.11 WiFi in a, b, and g flavors; high-def audio; and improved integrated graphics.
The integrated graphics in particular were impressive--a game demo showed many more shadows and highlights than the older platform, and smoother action. Intel spokespersons, although not quoting any benchmark test results, said performance should be about twice that of the older integrated graphics. The mobile
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 is the same as that found on the 915G chip set for the desktop so, like its desktop sibling, it supports DirectX 9 and widescreen high-definition video. Like the older mobile platform, this one also uses a unified memory architecture, which means it's sharing main memory. You can add a separate graphics solution for more performance, though.
Separately, Intel also did another demo of its dual-core processor technology for the desktop, expected to debut late this year and ship in volume in 2006, according to Steve Short, Intel Consumer Education Manager. The system ran a Pentium 4-class processor at 3GHz and 1GB of RAM. The company demonstrated a reference design system playing a high-definition video (in my case, "Journey Into Amazing Caves," which made me want to take up spelunking) and simultaneously doing a sync with a portable media center device--which means heavy encoding and decoding of audio and video content.
Both functions ran smoothly concurrently, which Short said would not be the case even with today's Pentium 4 chips with Hyperthreading Technology.
Curious about the dual-core processor technology and how it will be manufactured. Logic says it will not be 2 separate chips (meaning 2 of the current P4 chips) but a single chip with 2 processing cores. This would allow for a lower price point I assume. Did Intel shed any light on this topic? Also, any word on the P4 with 2MB cache?
I take it that this chip is another obsolete 32bit processor because nobody said anything about it's 64bitness - which means you can't upgrade to Windows64. What a waste.