What is Centrino 2 ? ans – A Whole New Platform

So the long awaited Centrino 2 codenamed Montevina notebook platform is here.What Centrino basically means is performance and battery life,getting each one of them without compromising the other one.

intel centrino 2

Earlier the centrino platform(santa rosa ) took the notebook industry by storm by providing raw processing power coupled with unmatched battery life.But the santa rosa platform underperformed in one department and that is its IGP (GMA x3100). intel tried to solve this major problem with the Centrino 2 platform by integrating a  somewhat more powerfull IGP i.e GMA X4500.

The centrino platform binds 3 things

1. The CPU
2. Chipset
3. Wireless conectivity

The CPU

The new Centrino 2 processors are the same 45nm Penryn Core 2 Duos those are available since the beginning of this year, the only addition is a 1066MHz FSB (up from 800MHz in Santa Rosa Penryn).

Core 2 Extreme X9100 3.06GHz ,1066MHz ,6MB ,44W
Core 2 Duo       T9600 2.80GHz ,1066MHz ,6MB ,35W
Core 2 Duo       T9400 2.53GHz ,1066MHz ,6MB ,35W
Core 2 Duo       P9500 2.53GHz ,1066MHz ,6MB ,25W
Core 2 Duo       P8600 2.40GHz ,1066MHz ,3MB ,25W
Core 2 Duo       P8400 2.26GHz ,1066MHz ,3MB, 25W

According to intel these line of processors are going to provide 50% more performance but it doesn’t seem so.The only advantage i see is the low TDP resulting in low heat generation which will give way to slimmer yet powerfull laptops yet longer battery life.And of course the 1066MHz  FSB will help the processor communicate faster with the system.

The Chipset

The most important part os centrino 2 is the intel GM45 chipset.This brand new chipset houses the latest IGP (GMAx4500HD)  .Intel boasts about 50 % increase in performance from  x3100.

intel GMA X4500HD (GM45) Intel GMA X3100 (GM965)
Shader Processors-                      10                                               8
Core Clock-                             533MHz                                      500MHz
H.264 Decode Acceleration-       Yes                                              No
TDP-                                           12W                                            13.5W

Also there is on the fly swithing from descrete graphics  to onboard IGP and vice versa to manage  battery life efficiently.This feature will help save a large amount of battery  power depending upon the task at hand that is during less graphic intensive work it will automatically be switched to the integrated  graphics mode.Besides supporting DirectX 10, the X4500  also support  DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort with full harware support to Blueray.

Wireless conectivity

The centrino 2 has  wireless N standard with its new WiFi Link 5000 modules, which according to intel will provide more roaming range and upto 2 times faster communication than the privious wifi module.Intel also promised to add WiMax option to the Centrino 2 Platform later this year.

So the bottom line is this whole new platform is going to change the laptop dynamics for sure .I don’t have Centrino 2 based notebook yet so no you have to wait for some time for the benchmarks

Relevant Articles :

1. Download Mozilla Firefox 3.5.6 Now
2. Intel Mobile Celeron Dual Core™ T1400 And T1500
3. The future is here