Intel Prescott notebooks coming in Q1

EARLIER THIS week we wrote that, as expected, Intel will introduce "desktop" Prescotts in Q1 of next year. We saw roadmaps at a system builder conference that confirmed our earlier stories that Intel would position Prescotts in a similar way to Pentium 4s - as suitable chips for notebooks that act as desktop replacements.

We've already noted that the initial clock speeds of Prescotts will be at 3.2GHz, 3.4GHz and 3.GHz, and now details of a Sager 8790 machine has appeared on the Talk Notebooks web site.

Machines that use these types of processors will be quite clearly differentiated from those using the fab Pentium M/Centrino combination. But it appears that when Intel starts rolling out Prescotts, it won't be long before we see them replacing the current Pentium 4 desktop/notebook chips that some vendors are selling.

Intel, generally speaking, is better at winning designs for notebook machines than its competitors AMD, Via and to a lesser extent Transmeta.

That's not because of the technology - never underestimate the marketing muscle Intel brings to the design win game.

Come Q1 next year, this means that there are going to be some real bargains for notebooks using the Pentium 4 desktop chip, and to a lesser extent the Pentium 4M. And the introduction of a 90 nanometer "Dothan" Pentium M with 2MB of cache means that Centrino notebooks will also present some real bargains too, if you choose the time to buy wisely.

Currently, Pentium M chips clock at 1.7GHz - during the course of the next three to four months we'll see them clock higher, come with 802.11g wireless and other tweaks. But it's important not to measure these machines on chip frequency ratings.

We've now used a 900MHz low voltage Centrino based notebook on the move for close to three months. Its performance is way out of proportion to any clock speed. We intend to bring you our conclusions on this technology as we've used it in another article in the near future. µ

See Also
Prescott notebooks will scale to 4GHz