Mobile CPU Chart Update and Forecast

Benchmarks & Summary

As this article documents our latest update of our Mobile Processor Charts, you will find all benchmark results on the Mobile CPU Charts page. You will find all Turion 64 X2 mobile processors and the majority of Intel’s Core 2 Duo E7000 lineup. Remember that the results can directly be compared to our Desktop CPU Charts as well.

Summary

Although AMD’s Turion 64 X2 performance cannot match the performance level of the current 45-nm Core 2 Duo T8000 family, the AMD mobile processors’ performance is more than sufficient for business or multimedia notebooks. Both AMD and Intel are about to launch their next-generation platforms – Puma on the AMD side and Montevina for Intel. Although Puma most likely will not be able to play in the performance champion’s league, it will be the first mobile chipset to support hybrid graphics. This means that Puma platforms will be able to run on integrated graphics for maximum power saving when you are one the road, and on a discrete graphics processor once you plug the notebook into a power port. If AMD were to add support for external PCI Express graphics (see external cabling specification) it would be possible to purchase a high-end graphics box that you could use either on a desktop PC or a notebook.

Intel will once again offer the most advanced mobile platforms from a feature standpoint. Montevina will increase processor and Front Side Bus clock speeds while maintaining or slightly reducing power consumption. It will introduce the first mobile quad-core processor while increasing processing performance across the entire portfolio, and offer the first combined WLAN/WiMAX networking solution for the mainstream market And Intel will also take DDR3 memory into the mobile space.

It will be interesting to see how well AMD can position its Puma platform against the Centrino 2 offering from Intel. A lot will depend on Intel’s pricing policy, which might or might not allow AMD to conquer a good part of the mainstream. The high end clearly is reserved for Intel while we see AMD dominating the $500-$750 notebook sector. Eventually, you might also get excellent deals on the current generation of AMD hardware, which will soon be considered outdated, though not obsolete.