Computers-Plus

We heard recently Intel was planning to spruce up the Ultraportable market at the top end with an ultra-low voltage processor that will fall into its premium Core i7 family with a clock speed of 1.33GHz. This scheduled for release some time during the summer period.

An update has just surfaced which lets us know there’s another higher performing ULV Core i7 chip coming soon; this will be clocked at 1.46GHz chip branded as the 680UM. This will have the same 18W thermal peak power as the lower clocked 1.33GHz model but will have the ability to clock right up to 2.53GHz when Turbo Boost mode is active.

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Dell has refreshed several members of its gaming oriented Alienware notebooks with the latest dual and quad core CPUs from Intel.

The 15.6″ M15x and 17″ M17x will now both be available with the dual core i5-520M, i5-540M and i7-620M CPUs. For those seeking quad core options, the i7-720QM, i7-820QM and i7-920XM are now available on both models as well.

Both notebooks are designed for heavy gaming and come impressive graphics options. Read more…

I swear this is the longest it’s taken for an Intel architecture to penetrate the market. We first met Nehalem on November 3rd, 2008. It came to us as a high end quad-core processor and took a full year to make it to more affordable motherboards in the form of Lynnfield. Even with P55 motherboard prices down at the magical $99 marker, Intel relinquished control of the $100 – $200 CPU market without a Nehalem to compete down there. Instead we were left with a choice between Penryn, the update to Intel’s 2006 Conroe architecture, or Phenom II, AMD’s low-cost Nehalem competitor. The choice was simple.

From $100 to $200, your best bet has been AMD. Eithe

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Toshiba has announced its latest multimedia and gaming laptop, the Qosmio X500, which will make use of Intel’s new mobile Core i7 CPU. The 18.4″ X500 will feature a 1GB NVidia GeForce GTS 250M GPU to go along with the new CPU, assuring owners of plenty of overall operating power. The laptop will come with an integrated Blu-ray drive, premium surround sound with harman/kardon® speakers and Dolby® Home Theater audio, and an HDMI-CEC port. It will also feature multitouch trackpad and a “Fusion” finish in omega black with stylish red chrome accents.

The laptop will ship with Windows 7. F Read more…