Intel Mobile Penryn Benchmarked: Battery Life Improves Again
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 7, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
Another day, another dollar, another year, another Centrino. This processor-only update to Santa Rosa actually interests us more than what we saw last year with the introduction of the Santa Rosa platform.
This year's Centrino update is much more back to the basics: performance goes up, as does battery life, and Intel does it all at no additional cost to the end user.
Possibly because it was a ultra-high-end only launch, but Penryn on the desktop just didn't seem nearly as exciting as mobile Penryn. Here the benefits are even more tangible; by keeping clock speeds the same and using the improvements of Intel's 45nm transistors to lower the voltage, Intel is able to reduce power consumption to a measurable degree in a notebook using mobile Penryn.
Current Santa Rosa owners don't really have any burning need to go out and upgrade their systems, but if you were thinking about buying a new laptop you might as well hold off for another month so that these Penryn based systems can hit the streets.
If you have an aging Centrino notebook, now would be a good time to upgrade. We suspect that the timing of Intel's mobile Penryn announcement may have something to do with the fact that Apple will be holding its MacWorld conference next week.
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sprockkets - Monday, January 7, 2008 - link
Looking for cheap 45nm desktop CPUs.I was going to build Intel for my latest customer, but at current prices of the 2.1ghz X2 vs. 1.6ghz Pentiums, AMD won again for being at least $35 cheaper.
eye smite - Monday, January 7, 2008 - link
It's interesting to see what intel does, but I'll stick with my turion laptop from 2k5.deeman - Monday, January 7, 2008 - link
I think Intel has moved Cantiga forward a bit from Feb/March to 2nd quarter, but not too far for me to think now is the time to upgrade only the CPU and retain the current Santa Rosa chipset.I am happy with my current battery life, but think a huge improvement will come in another quarter when Cantiga / Penryn / and a few other improvements like LED backlit screens, become more available and rolled together. With the chipset change, I am hoping for a much more significant change when largely idle (such as editing) along with the other benefits Cantiga should bring.
My thoughts would be to hold off, but am interested in other opinions on what Cantiga will bring to overall battery life.
somedude1234 - Monday, January 7, 2008 - link
These new mobile penryn's seem like the ideal candidates for an ultra-low power HTPC that still has enough power to handle the tough encoding jobs.Does anyone know if any of the motherboard vendors are planning on releasing desktop boards for these new chips?
bugs1109 - Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - link
I think AOpen will release a motherboard that will use this penryn mobile processor. They currently have desktop motherboards that takes mobile cpu.Chris Peredun - Monday, January 7, 2008 - link
I hate to be "That Guy" but I'm pretty sure you mean "Battery Life" not "Battery Live."Unless it's a description of the PR walloping that Microsoft is taking over the Xbox Live outage. ;)
Wesley Fink - Monday, January 7, 2008 - link
Thanks for the catch. The Title is corrected, but it wil not update until the next refresh, so please be patient for a few minutes.Cygni - Monday, January 7, 2008 - link
Just a heads-up, charts on page 4 are borked. ;)