Quad-Core Nehalem Apple Notebooks Possible in Q3 2009?
Intel's next-generation Calpella notebook platform will launch as scheduled in the third quarter 2009 and targeting models in the 14.0-, 15.6-, 17.1- and 18.4-inch segments at retail prices of above US$1,200 initially for high-end market. Meanwhile, Intel will also reduce the price of the Montevina platform to clear out inventory.
Calpella will replace the Montevina platform that is used in current Intel notebooks. The new Calpella platform will support the long anticipated mobile Nehalem processors and architecture which are said to offer dramatic performance boosts over existing designs. Apple adopted the Nehalem processors for the Mac Pro in March.Intel, however, is said to be only launching three mobile Nehalem processors this year -- all Quad core but with slower processor speeds from 1.6GHz, 1.73GHz and 2.0GHz.
The Core 2 Extreme XE, Core 2 Quad P2 and Core 2 Quad P1, will be priced at US$1,054, US$546 and US$364 in thousand-unit tray quantities, the sources revealed.
It won't be until the 1st quarter of 2010 that we'll see mobile Arrandale processors which have been widely expected to be used in the MacBook and MacBook Pro.While it's possible Apple could use some of these Quad-core processors in a notebook, it would mean a drop in raw processor speed which, depending on your usage, may not be made up for with the additional cores. These sort of tradeoffs became apparent when Apple refreshed the Mac Pros with various multi-core options. While Apple has been positioning themselves to take better advantage of multi-core chips with their upcoming Snow Leopard, the real-word impact remains to be seen.
Note that while Apple has transitioned to an NVIDIA-based chipset for their current notebooks, they may be forced to switch back to Intel to be able to offer Nehalem processors. Intel and NVIDIA are in legal battle regarding the NVIDIA's right to produce Nehalem-based chipsets.
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Will be very interesting to see the benchmarks on 10.6 to see if it can utilise more cores at lower processor speeds.
Hopefully the Nvidia Intel spat will subside -Least we know there will be Clarksfield processors for Back to school.
Nvidia's 9600M GT successor, and 9400M successor might be more of interest- but Nvidia's keeping things closer to their chest than Intel it seems.
Nvidia's 9600M GT successor, and 9400M successor might be more of interest- but Nvidia's keeping things closer to their chest than Intel it seems.
I haven't heard anything about a 9400M successor (but it should be round the corner seeing as it's about a year old), but the 9600M GT successor is the GT 130M. But it's only an incremental upgrade as you'd expect with NVIDIA these days.
I'm thinking of buying a MacBook. Will it be out by September?
Does anyone know if this will take affect on the MacBook 2.4GHz option and an estimated date?
I'm thinking of buying a MacBook. Will it be out by September?
Seriously doubt it. The lowest end processor ($364) costs almost double what Apple pays now for the current processors. The next MB will probably be 2.13 GHz and 2.53 GHz Core 2 Duos (or similar) and I'm pretty sure it'd be out for Sept.
So..what's the difference between these Calpellas and the Arrandales, besides release dates? This isn't very clear either here or in the linked article. And why do the new models have such low clock speeds? I know it's not supposed to be about clock anymore, but really? A whole gigahertz dropped and they're supposed to be comparable to or better than what we have now?
Think of it as premature quad-ulation. This is designed to be high-end mobile stuff, the only problem is quad-core mobile processors = low clock speed. Now that's OK if your apps can handle 4 cores, but most consumers won't notice the difference unless doing heavy multitasking, even with the Nehalem bonuses like hyper-threading.
And a quick glossary:
Calpella - The platform.
Clarksfield - The processors in the article.
Arrandale - The processors most are expecting to be the successor to the current Core 2 Duos. It should have similar clock speeds to today's C2Ds.
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