A performance look into Intel Centrino 2, Montevina

I found a real test of a Toshiba Qosmio laptop armed with Montevina platform online, which could grand us a chance to know how really impressive it is to have a FSB 1066 CPU equipped with PM45 and an nVIDIA 9600M GT.

And here it comes.

Setup:

Intel Centrino 2 platform

[Intel P8600 CPU, Intel PM45 Chipset and Intel Wireless Shiloh Peak]

2GB DDR2 800 Memory

nVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT

2*Fujitsu MHZ2200BH 200GB, 5400RPM Raid 1

Below are the test results

Engineering Sample as this is, we cannot expect the peak performance from Montevina, but if you compare this against another mature 45nm Merom-refreshed platform’s performance, there are many improvements.

We do notice the Windows Vista Windows Experience Index for Memory has reached the highest possbile 5.9, owing total thanks to the 1066 FSB the brand new CPU brought about. Equipped with Intel’s SSE4.1 IA, it would be safe to expect some, if not a lot depending upon how greatly the program migrate the power of the brand new instrution set, outperformance from these tinies than any other prior ones in areas of video processing. PM45 will bring on full support for DDR3, which will definitely ensure much memory improvments and more battery life.

Intel had been boasting its new generation of integrated graphics core implanted in GM45 and GM43 chipsets, in name of GMA X4500, which will introduce a new function, Intel Clear Video technology, a long awaited feature that would allow hard acceleration providing much aid for decoding H.264/VC-1/MPEG-2 coded hi-definition video, freeing CPU more time to scale up the total performance.

Also, GMA X4500 will support DirectX 10 and Shader Model 4.0. Of course it will not make too much difference as its discreet counterpart could, but more is better than less. Nevertheless, some leaked test already shows triple gains from GMA X4500 in scores of 3DMark 06, which already slightly outperform AMD-ATI HD2400 PRO and nVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS.

That is significant advance. It will be very impressive to have one integrated graphics core to be adequate for daily common tasks involving casual entertainment. As to this, Intel is leaping on the right way.

Some extra new features includes ICH 9 and WiMax will be incorporated in Centrino 2. And rumor has it that a quad-core mobile processor, the ever first in history, will be slated in September this year, named Core 2 Extreme QX9300 at default speed of 2.53GHz, quoting a TDP of only 45watts. Its name being QX, we could safely expect big vendors like DELL would release factory over-clocked extreme mobile quad-core powered high-end XPS laptops, maybe at factory clock of 3.0GHz with TDP rising to 65watts. Only guess. I believe with technology evolving, Intel will have much healthier silicons to be a power saver while a power wonder.

All in all, Montevina will undoubtedly further enlarge Intel’s lion share in market, as to which I consistently favor as Intel is the company that will truly leap ahead in a real way where only technology matters.