The Centrino 2s have landed
The big news today is the official release by Intel of the Centrino 2 platform. That’s why Lenovo, HP and many others are all announcing bunches of new laptops today as they all are sporting the new Centrino 2. So what exactly is the Centrino 2 and why should you care? Laptop Magazine has detailed the 7 facts you should know about the Centrino 2 which is a great place to start. The first improvement the Centrino 2 brings over the older Centrino platform is the front side bus speed which is bumped up to 1066 Mhz. This is a doubling in bus speed which should impact performance across the board over the older platform. The Centrino 2 also brings better integrated graphics performance which means good battery life without compromising video playback performance. One of the coolest changes in the graphics area is the ability to perform on-the-fly switching between those integraged graphics and discrete graphics. This means that for notebooks that support it, and many of the new Lenovo notebooks announced today do so, that you can use integrated graphics on battery power yet switch to dedicated graphics for games and the like. It’s a best of both worlds scenario and this is big. For other detailed information about the Centrino 2 and in-depth reviews of many notebooks announced today check out the Laptop Magazine’s hefty Centrino 2 section.
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This story reads like an Intel advertisement. Basically take the Intel powerpoint presentation, roll it onto a story and presto… journalism. Facts are that 80% of the notebooks out there use integrated graphics and those arent shipping or available to buy. Fact is, no one has reviewed the integrated graphics version and trusting Intel on their graphics and video claims. Why is that a potential issue? Well…. where do I start?
Intel graphics and Vista class action lawsuit: http://tinyurl.com/5fx35m
Intel graphics inability to run Sims 2 properly: http://tinyurl.com/5rur9g
Intel graphics and broken 18 month promise on G965 and DX10: http://tinyurl.com/5uqllb
Journalism…..hmmmmm.
The newly released Centrino 2 is the high speed version of the chip that will be used in larger, heavier notebooks. The low-watt version will be released in September along with a number of lighter, more portable computers.