Intel Launches Five 45nm Mobile Processors

I am not quite sure if new launches were to be expected, but Intel has updated their price list to include five new Penryn-based 45nm mobile processors, including a brand-new entry to their Quad-Core family, the Q9000. This 2.0GHz offering halves the amount of L2 Cache of its bigger siblings, to 6MB, but the front-side bus remains the same, at 1066MHz. The Q9000 is to be sold at a cost of $348/1,000.

It’s a little difficult to sound enthused with a 2.0GHz chip, but if you are a mobile warrior and need multi-threadedness more than raw single-threaded performance, then the CPU will prove to be a worthy choice for the money. Consider the fact that the next step up, the 2.26GHz Q9100, sells for $851/1,000… a rather significant difference.

On the Dual-Core side of things, the new models include the new highest-end T9800, a 6MB L2 Cache / 2.93GHz offering that simply screams. That’s a lot of power for a Dual-Core, but at $530, it’s definitely not cheap. The other models include the 2.66GHz P9600, the 2.66GHz T9550 (slightly higher power than the P9600), and also the 2.53GHz P8700, which becomes the lowest-end model to include 6MB of L2 Cache.

Since Intel doesn’t generally know themselves, we’re unsure of when you could expect to find these processors pop up in notebooks from various system builders, but it shouldn’t be too long. It is important, however, to make sure you get a good deal on that new notebook, and compare the prices with a given CPU installed. In a brief look, I found some builders who still charge a huge premium for older mobile Dual-Cores, when the newer ones cost less and are more powerful. It pays to shop around and do some research, that’s for sure.