Intel Mobile Core i7 Gets Official — Quad Core Madness Ensues
Intel surprised no one with the expected announcement of the Mobile Core i7 processor line. The Core i7 is the next generation of processor that should be available soon to OEMs wishing to up their game with PCs so equipped. The Core i7 brings quad core goodness to notebooks, and there will be two versions, a Mobile Processor and a Mobile Processor Extreme. The Extreme version supports over-clocking of the processor.
Laptop Magazine has benchmarked a notebook running the Core i7 and they were impressed.
Like its predecessor, our Core i7 notebook (provided by Intel, made by Clevo) shredded through every benchmark record any notebook in our labs has ever held. The system chewed through PCMark Vantage, burned up 3DMark06, and then showed NVIDIA’s CUDA that it knew a thing or two about encoding video. But before we get ahead of ourselves, here’s a quick background on Core i7.
I had the opportunity to play with a prototype notebook running a Core i7 a few weeks ago and it blew me away how fast it was. Everything happened quickly and the engineers who showed it to me (who can’t be named) said their testing proves how well the Core i7 can step the performance up or down based on whether it’s powered by battery or A/C at any given time.
Core i7 CPUs have been available for quite a while. The *mobile* version is new.
Not a worthwhile investment at this point. The 920XM is priced at the same $1000 level as a QX9300 and only offers maximum 10-15% better performance, depending heavily on your application. I’m glad I bought my X305-Q708 for under $3000.
BTW James, you really need to fix your title and add the word “mobile” – you’re sending folks into a time warp!
Done.
did anybody notice how awful the battery life is? these chips are desktop replacement parts, not real mobile chips IMHO.
The i7-720QM is definitely worth the money (best bang for the buck). All along, I have been waiting for Windows 7 to officially come out in order to purchase a new laptop. Now, however, I will definitely get a laptop with the i7-720QM chip.