Upcoming Mobile Intel Penryn Prototype Previewed

Taiwanese site Coolaler previewed an early version of Intel's upcoming Penryn X9000 CPU. A translation of some of the findings was provided by Fudzilla.

The CPU previewed was an engineering build of the unreleased mobile Penryn X9000 CPU clocked at 2.8GHz. Along with the 45-nm die shrink, the upcoming mobile CPUs increase the L2 cache, and boost processor speeds. The 3dmark06 benchmark for the production sample 2.8GHz processor gives a CPU score of 2569, which compares to scores of 2106-2339 for the current top-of-the-line 2.6GHz CPU available as a build-to-order option in MacBook Pros.

Future and current Intel mobile processors are compiled in this table:

Obviously, not too much weight should be given to benchmarks for early engineering sample CPUs, but the release of new mobile processors may trigger an upgrade cycle for Apple's MacBook Pro laptops, which have not seen substantial updates since June.

The new mobile Penryn processors are expected to be released in January 2008.