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When can we realistically expect quad core laptops?
- Thread starter WillMak
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I see dual core still in the pipe for 2009 on my Intel roadmaps.
The X3000 should be an improvement but hopefully a BTO option will pop up at least.
I wish they did, put a BTO on a dedicated graphics card for the macbook, i'd buy one if it wasn't for that, but instead the next laptop i will get will be a MBP, people say adding a dedicated graphics card would steal sales form the MBP, but why not just put a less powerful card in there like the x1400, it will ad what £60 to the final price, a price worth paying i would say
Well, I'm not so so sure... it's not on their road map, but when Penryn comes out, it will mean a smaller, lower consumption, dual core processor with more-or-less similar performance per clockspeed to C2D. So a four-core design based on Penryn (four cores on one chip, not two) using the Penryn technology might end up being faster than anything the Merom stream produces at the time while still being in the power parameters of the bigger notebooks like the MBP 17".... But that would still be 2009 or 2010....
remind me again why an average joe would want a quad core laptop?
...
The same reason they'd want a quad core desktop. I'll never understand why people have this bizarre assumption that we have enough processing power, just because it happens to run the apps they use fine. With more processing power comes the ability to make new types of applications, as well as make the existing ones go faster (I code on a laptop, and it's painfully slow for large compiles. Upgrading to a MacBook next week will be a nice improvement, but I'd still love it to be faster).
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I expect to see quad core laptops in '08, with the 45nm introduction.
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Wait for software.
As of right now software isn't designed to be very parallel So right now Quad Core is overkill because you won't be normally utilizing the full power of the Quad Core any time soon. Duel Core in general has the OS Load on one core and you primary application on the second core. Laptop Usage rarely (even for power users) has more 2 Apps that need the Intensive CPU at any one time. A Photoshop filter and a program compile. The the rest has so much IO (Network, printing, typing...) that the CPU is rarely used in these apps. The performance gain for a Quad Core Processor will be minor vs. extra heat, power usage that the quad core chip will use. Now in a couple of years where PCs and the majority of Mac Users are using Multi-Core systems. Then Software Makers will take advantage of this and design their software to handle the multi-cores better. Then Quad Core for a laptop will be useful. Right now you will need to be doing a heck of a lot to completely utilize a Quad Core CPU.
As of right now software isn't designed to be very parallel So right now Quad Core is overkill because you won't be normally utilizing the full power of the Quad Core any time soon. Duel Core in general has the OS Load on one core and you primary application on the second core. Laptop Usage rarely (even for power users) has more 2 Apps that need the Intensive CPU at any one time. A Photoshop filter and a program compile. The the rest has so much IO (Network, printing, typing...) that the CPU is rarely used in these apps. The performance gain for a Quad Core Processor will be minor vs. extra heat, power usage that the quad core chip will use. Now in a couple of years where PCs and the majority of Mac Users are using Multi-Core systems. Then Software Makers will take advantage of this and design their software to handle the multi-cores better. Then Quad Core for a laptop will be useful. Right now you will need to be doing a heck of a lot to completely utilize a Quad Core CPU.
Software developers are still trying to catch up to multi-core processing in general, but all these new desktops will be the driving force to make it happen.
I do think we'll see Quad Core laptops once the 45nm Penryn processors
are released.
Audio Video is the prime candidate for this kind of performance.
Reducing the size of processors also means that ATI and NVidia should soon be able to reduce the power demand and heat created by todays GPU's
So yes, I think it's going to happen by late 2007 into 2008.
Along with ProTools 8, Logic 8 FinalCut Extreme and so forth.
I do think we'll see Quad Core laptops once the 45nm Penryn processors
are released.
Audio Video is the prime candidate for this kind of performance.
Reducing the size of processors also means that ATI and NVidia should soon be able to reduce the power demand and heat created by todays GPU's
So yes, I think it's going to happen by late 2007 into 2008.
Along with ProTools 8, Logic 8 FinalCut Extreme and so forth.