| Sunday, August 13, 2006 |
18:56 - All in the family
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So I just have to wonder: how long before the MacBook Pro line goes to a mobile Core 2 Duo processor?
It seems like a slam-dunk, doesn't it? Lower power, higher speed, more differentiation from the MacBooks? It's not like people wouldn't appreciate a little relief from the nad-baking heat of the current Core Duo-based MacBook Pros.
Anand says:
There hasn't been much interest in Core 2 Duo on the mobile side for two major reasons; for starters, unlike on the desktop, Intel already had a very competent mobile CPU - the Yonah based Core Duo processor. Seeing as how Core Duo is the predecessor to Core 2 Duo, you can already expect that Intel's current mobile performance is quite good.
The other major reason there's not much hype surrounding Core 2 Duo in notebooks is because there's simply not the level of competition from AMD that we had on the desktop. While AMD's Turion 64 and Turion 64 X2 are good processors, you simply can't find them in nearly enough notebooks, and definitely not in as unique packages as you can find Intel's Core Solo and Core Duo processors. AMD is hoping to rectify this situation by both working on a lower power mobile CPU architecture and acquiring ATI to help complete its platform offering on the mobile side.
Without tough competition from AMD, and with an already excellent platform, there's simply no reason to get excited about Core 2 Duo on the mobile side; we're quite content as is. But with mobile Core 2 Duo processors priced identically to Core Duo processors, there's no reason to complain. Intel isn't asking for any more money, leaving us with two questions: how much more performance are we getting, and what happens to battery life?
"Quite content as is" isn't exactly a phrase you hear too often in the performance-wringing CPU tuner world, is it?
But he seems to have a point. Looking at the performance and power consumption specs in the rest of this article, it seems that the Core 2 Duo (Merom) will only get you a 5-15% speed increase over the Core Duo (Yonah), while power consumption and battery life seem to be all but identical. And apparently Intel won't even be charging any more for the Meroms, and will be selling them alongside the Yonahs for the foreseeable future. If the specs of the two chips are so indistinguishable that we can be "quite content as is" with Yonah, and Intel isn't even going to try to push Merom as a higher-priced upgrade, it does all have the feeling of a collective "Meh".
But it does mean that I ought to be quite content as is with a new MacBook Pro, if I should happen to be in the market for one in the near future. Still, as Anand says in his conclusion: "Of course Apple has this way of making incremental changes irresistible..."
UPDATE: Remember, remember the 5th of September...
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Brian Tiemann
