We regularly see some manufacturers engage in a little crazy attempts to install a desktop processor in a laptop. Of course, this approach has its limits, not because the invariant relationship between frequency and consumption: when you put a Core i7 Bloomfield to 130 W TDP in a notebook, do not expect much in terms of autonomy. It's a bit like trying to put a V8 in a Prius: it has no interest, if not for a handful of overclockers with both the need for this type of power and mobility.In any event, the Bloomfield was never intended for laptops (Lynnfield, indeed). The first generation of processors based on the Nehalem architecture and for the laptop market is called Clarksfield.The reason for which we are talking about "first generation" is that the second is already underway, Intel had planned to begin to market the first Arrandale next January. These processors at 2 physical cores, engraved in 32 nm, should attack the entry and mid-tier. We will speak briefly on the following page.
However, the purpose of this article is the Clarksfield, a set of processors targeting the market for high-end and intended to replace the current Core 2 Extreme QX9300 and Core 2 Quad Q9100/Q9000 mobile. The Clarksfield currently has two different thermal envelopes: 45 W for the standard models (either exactly the same as the above 2 Core) and 55 W for mobile Extreme Edition models.
Clarksfield: a Core i7 to 45 W, 55 W
Since this year, Intel only means more its mobile platforms under the name of Centrino, preferring to reserve this designation for its circuits wireless. As for desktop processors, the skier intends to use the Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 marks to represent its products entry, mid and high-end (respectively). We are not exactly fans of this approach: after all, we had sharply criticized Nvidia for having used a similar technique with its famous graphics cards.
By and large, the Clarksfield will be marketed under the name Core i7 (high-end therefore), even if the performance of these new processors for laptops have absolutely nothing to do with their desktop counterparts. Worse yet, just as Nvidia and ATI recycle the names of some models of the bureau to assign mobile products (remember the GeForce GTX 280 M or the Mobility Radeon HD 4870), Intel takes the name of the popular Core i7 920 to Core i7 920XM.
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As you can see, the new Clarksfield 920XM has virtually nothing to do with the Bloomfield 920. In reality, these processors for laptops have much more in common with the Core i7 Lynnfield launched a few weeks ago. The Core i7 Mobile are all three of the quad-core models equipped with 6 or 8 MB of L3 cache and Hyper-Threading function; they integrate a memory controller dual channel agreeing the DDR3 1333 MT/s maximum and a PCI Express 2.0 controller managing 16 lines; their Turbo Boost is far more effective than that of which are equipped with the Bloomfield; and finally, they are planned to run on Intel's PM55 Express chipset.
The biggest difference with the Lynnfield lies perhaps in the new interface (Hey Yes, yet one more): the Core i7 Mobile fit into a socket mPGA 989, which has two times more pins than the mPGA 478 core 2 Quad. And unlike the Bloomfield and the Lynnfield, we speak well of true pins and non-flat contacts.
The consumption of the new models is relatively homogeneous: the Core i7 Mobile midrange (720QM and 820QM) have a TDP of 45 W, like the Core 2 Quad mobile which they take place, while the Core i7 920XM appears to 55 W. It is therefore far 130 W required by the Core i7 920 we saw in some portable workstations.
We expect Core i7 Mobile they appear similar to that of the Lynnfield performance in tests of threading. In fact, they should be even higher than those of the latter under iTunes and WinZip, two applications optimized for a single thread, the function Turbo Boost of Core i7 920XM offers 9 levels of acceleration and can raise the frequency of the processor up to 3.2 GHz with a single active core. With two cores enabled, frequency returns to 3.06 GHz or 2.26 GHz where 4 hearts function.
Core i7 820QM processor at 1.73 GHz base, goes up to 3.06 GHz in applications using only a single thread; Core i7 720QM may pass from 1.6 GHz to 2.8 GHz. Three processors with Hyper-Threading, but only the two largest have 8 MB of L3 cache: Core i7 720QM has only 6 MB.
