Tired of desperately searching for a powerful yet svelte laptop to carry with you on life’s journeys while still getting 5+ hours of battery life? Currently the two words “powerful” and “runtime” don’t go together. To have one you must sacrifice the other. But Intel has something up their sleeve…
For gamers on the go, nothing is perhaps more exciting and useful as the Alienware M11X — an 11″ mini gaming rig of surprising power. The current proc beating at the heart of Dell’s mini-LAN decimating beast is homely Core 2 Duo. Even with that, it’s still the fastest 11″ laptop on the market.
But a new video floating around YouTube has Dell’s head of consumer operations (Pearce Clune) for the Middle East and Africa letting slip a juicy tidbit concerning a processor upgrade for Alienware’s baby.
Core i3, i5, and i7′s all around! Yeah! An already fast laptop is getting a swift kick in drive bay. Now all that needs to happen is that mobile GPU getting some more attention.
I for one can’t wait to get my hands on an M11X with a quad-core i7. That would be the be all end all of mobile computing. IPad what…
Video of the slip after the jump…
School — it’s a time for fall, school supplies, falling leaves, and…processors? Yes, says Intel. In Q4 of this year, a new Core i5 580m processor will debut bringing with it more speed and power. Specifically, the 580m will be clocked at 2.66GHz, up from the old predecessors 2.53GHz. Even better, the super speedy TurboBoost feature that overclocks a single core when multiple aren’t needed will apparently push the 580m up to a rather brisk 3.33GHz compared to the outgoing 540m’s 3.06GHz.
We all joke/complain about Nvidia’s new Fermi-based cards for their power thirst and insane heat envelope, yet when you hear of the Macbook Pro hitting 100 degrees Celsius (average under load is 65-80 degrees Celsius), somehow it’s not quite as alarming to the mainstream media…
Is your drool cup full after weeks of waiting for any new news regarding Core i5/i7 updated Macbook Air/Pros and Mac Pros? I just as much as anyone love a well put together computer with beastly internals to match. But a $400 premium for Intel’s “latest” Core i5/i7 chips? Ya, no thank you. The image above was captured from Austrailian site, PC Authority. Whether the prices listed are USD or not I’m not sure, which could explain the price discrepancy. If these are an early look at the new pricing however, it’s pretty disappointing.
The current Macbook Pro for instance jumped from a starting price of $1,499 to $1,899. If the only real changes are the Core i5/i7 chips, “rip-off” would be a good place to start with the descriptions. I mean, it’s not like a Core i7 980x is going in this thing. The Mac Pro could see the 980x and is of course an option with a heavy pricetag, but that shouldn’t effect the starting price much if any.
I’m still eager for the official new systems none the less. I’m just hoping (along with millions of other people) that Apple didn’t jack up the prices by $400 or more just for the new processors. If they do, will it change your purchasing decision one way or the other?
Update: After taking a quick job through the inter webs, it’s not Australia alone that’s displaying weird pricing. New Zealand is also getting in on the pricing inconstancies. At this point, I’m going to say it’s nothing more than a few people (myself included) forgetting about the whole price difference from land mass to land mass for a few seconds, getting all riled up. Though we should know the truth soon enough.
Are new Macbook Pros right around the corner? You could say the leaked images a couple of days back showing a Core i7 Macbook Pro being put through the paces as nothing more than some clever Photoshop mastery. I’m more of an optimist however. I’m choosing to take the higher road. A road which eventually leads to new, more powerful Macbook Pros. You could say my head is stuck up in the clouds and that I’m a too much of a dreamer. That may be true, but the images above combined with new evidence of disappearing SKU’s in store inventory points to the inevitable — that’s right, new Macbook Pros.
What of these disappearing SKU’s? The image above comes courtesy of some random Best Buy employee. What you’re looking at is the internal system page for the Macbook Pro 13″ — no longer available for order. I haven’t heard of any bizarre display, aluminum, silicon, ram, etc. shortages within the last month so why would they disappear if something newer and better wasn’t about to replace it?
If Apple were still attending Macworld, I’m sure we’d hear of the new hardware then. But, seeing as how they up and left that party, it appears we’ll have to wait until Apple announces their own little shindig or simply uploads the new goods to the store on a Tuesday some not too distant Tuesday morning.
I really don’t care how they do it. I just want my Core i7 17″ Macbook Pro. Anyone else getting antsy?
It wasn’t too long ago that Core i5 Macbook Pros were “accidentally” included in an Intel sponsored contest as one of the prizes. After the entire tech world jumped on it, Intel quickly removed the offending units and offered up the typical “Oops, our bad. Nothing to see here. Move along.” statement. Whether that incident included an actual real Macbook Pro (as we all know quad-core Macbook Pros are coming at some point) or a legitimate typo is beside the point because a new development today has something even better — Core i7 Macbook Pros getting run through their paces on GeekBench.
What could be better than catching Macbook Pro’s huffin’ and puffin’ on GeekBench and then splayed on the interwebs for all of us to see? Not much actually. A MacRumors forum member caught the goods on GeekBench’s website:
The icing on the cake is of course the results the GeekBench team were able to achieve: 5260. That’s awesome! As 9to5 Mac notes, current Macbook Pros only achieve between 3700 and 4000. Obviously Core i7 Macbook Pros are beasts!
It could all be fake of course. If so, consider myself epicly saddened. Still, I’m holding out hope that an official announcement by Apple comes in the following weeks.
Shocker! 6 cores are better than 4 with the up and coming top dog Core i7 chips performing roughly 50% faster on complex, optimized programs. I can already see you drooling, thinking out loud: “The Core i7 is just becoming mainstream and we’re already talking about it’s replacement?” Such is the world we live in folks, it never stops. But apart from constantly evolving “top dogs”, I have to say that the Core i9 power advantage is compelling to shell out extra for it. It won’t come cheap, though prices haven’t been officially loosed just yet. Another strike against the newcomer is it’s insatiable thirst for those cute little electrons — 130W continuous to be exact. It may not sound like much, but compared to the Core i7′s 95W power draw, 130 seems veracious. Even still, 6 cores of fury all packed into one small sliver of silicon is uber cool…
Results above are in 64-bit mode
When the new iMac’s were announced a couple months back, I like many of you were awestruck. The form was somehow even more delicious than previous generations with upgraded hardware that left me wanting two. Unfortunately for those who were ready to throw down cash on the spot for a new Core i7 beast, a November shipping date put a temporary block on the speed party. Well, it’s November and said units are now shipping with benchmarks starting to trickle in. What’s the initial consensus? The 27″ Core i7 iMac is the best $200 (for an upgrade — $2199 overall) ever spent.
Benchmarks for the Core 2 Duo iMac’s have been around since the announcement of the new machines, but the Core 2′s while fast, are old news. I already assumed performance upgrades via the Core 2 would be barely noticeable. After seeing early reviews of those units, I can honestly say I was right. The main reason to get a 27″ iMac with the stock Core 2 was simply for the price. But then the Core i5 came along brining quad-core goodness. And boy was it fast, much faster than the Core 2 models — but the Core i7 is faster.
How much faster? Chances are I probably lost you waaaay back at the beginning with the graph image above. But just in case you managed to make it past, the Core i7 iMac’s are a full 35% faster than even the Core i5 models. The sweetest part of all is that the speed increase can be had for a paltry $200! That’s a steal. Seriously. Looking at the benchmarks above and comparing them to Geekbench results of the latest Mac Pros shows that the new i7 iMac’s are extremely close in comparison. Justifying a Mac Pro just become a tad harder…didn’t it?
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