Better Overclocking P4 chips in the portability procs?

[bgeh]

Intel to launch "portability" processors next week

Road Maps Desktops, notebooks, what? Prepare to get even more confused...


By Mike Magee: Tuesday 03 June 2003, 10:21

CHIP GIANT INTEL is now expected to launch its range of "portability processors" on the 8th of June.
As we're said before, these are really desktop CPUs, but are aimed at the "full size" and also "thin and light" notebook market.

They are not Pentium 4Ms, they are not Pentium Ms, they are not Pentium III-Ms, they are not Mobile Celerons, they are desktop processors with a nice range of thermal characteristics.

But to muddy the waters, if they weren't muddy enough already, Intel will describe them as the Pentium 4 Processor M. At least, that's what we think, at press time.

Further, there will also be a Mobile Intel Celeron processor based on these designs. These are not your usual Mobile Celerons, as far as we can make out, they are desktop Celerons with better thermal characteristics.

Intel will have to do some intensive briefing to journalists, integrators and shops to position all this stuff, we'd venture to suggest.

As far as we are aware, and we might be wrong on this one, none of these "portability" CPUs include SpeedStep, vital software to prevent your knees from burning if the thermals go sky high.

The "portability processors" use a 400Mhz front side bus, are produced on a 130 nano factory process, and have 512K cache. The Celeron variety includes a 400MHz front side bus.

After Intel has successfully launched another range of processors to further confuse buyers of notebooks, it will in the third quarter introduce "Portability Processors" for "transportable" notebooks. These will gradually metamorphose into chips from the planet Prescott.

Let's deal with next week's announcement first, however.

The first P4 speed grades are 2.50GHz, 2.40GHz, 2.20GHz, and 2GHz. In Q3 Intel will launch a 2.60GHz chip.

The "Celerons" start at 2.20GHz and 2GHz, 1.80GHz and 1.70GHz, followed in Q3 by a 2.40GHz and in Q4 by a 2.40GHz+ chip.

And there's more
The third quarter "portability" P4s for "transportable" notebooks are introducedf in Q3 at 3.06GHz, with a 533MHz bus plus a 2.80Ghz, a 2.66GHz and a 2.40GHz, followed by a 3.20GHz in Q4 (with hypethreading), a Prescott at 3.46GHz and 3.20GHz in Q1 2004, and a 3.46GHz+ Prescott in Q2 next year.

The Celerons will include the obligatory 128K cache, start at 2.60GHz, 2.50GHz, 2.40GHz, 2.30GHz and 2.20GHz, moving to 2.70GHz in Q4, 2.80GHz in Q1 2004, and 2.80GHz+ in Q2 next year.

Prices for the "mobile" P4P will be $420 for the 3.06GHz, $275 for the 2.80GHz, $220 for the 2.66GHz and $185 for the 2.40GHz.

And there's more
Intel will introduce a 2.60GHz Pentium 4M on the 8th of June at a price of $560, at which time the 2.50GHz chip will drop to $345, the 2.40GHz to $241 and the 2.20GHz to $195.

We'll deal with Intel's "other" notebook chips later. You can see the general trend here is for Intel to cut the notebook chip market into lots of little slices, to take advantage of market projections that suggest people are buying more notebooks than ever. µ

Maybe they're able to run at lower voltages=better overclockability