Montevina or Santa Rosa Studio 1737

I have been reading on the boards here and from what I understand
(or maybe I misunderstood) one of the differences between the
1735 and 1737 was the chipset....Montevina instead of the Santa Rosa.

I was reading Intel's website to see what the differences are in the
chipsets. One of the items that struck me was that the Montevina
supports DDR3 and it should be labeled "Cetrino 2".

My 1737 has just "Centrino" on it.

Belarc doesn't seem to want to list the name of the chipset I have.

It does list Board: Dell Inc. 0P786H A04 as the motherboard.

I'll have to research to find out how I can tell precisely which chipset
I have.

Anyone know of a quick way?

 

I downloaded the "Intel Chipset Utility" and ran it and it came up
with - Failed to identify your chipset

Not surprising, I guess, since an OEM motherboard..but Intel is Intel..
you would think they could identify their own chipsets.

 

The 1737 uses the Montevina chipset.

 

I have the same situation as Orlandotek. My 1737 was oddly labled Centrino 1 basically just says Centrino. Not a huge deal but it does bother me for 2 reasons.

#1. It could be a problem when re-selling the unit years from now,, I will have to convince the buyer it is Centrino 2.

#2. Aesthetics wise its like having a V8 mustang, but a V6 decal.


As far as the chipset motherboard, I have run the Intel CPU ID and CPUZ,

They Identified it as Penryn, not Montevina, which is not a big deal because CPUZ did show teh correct Chipset PM45, which I know is Montevina, and all show the 1066FSB. And the A04 Bios.

I was wondering if DELL was trying to Pull an Apple and not use Real Montevina Centrino 2's but overclocked Penryn's


I would still preffer a Core 2 Duo decal or a Centrino 2 decal

 

Which CPU do you have? The CPUs are still Penryn, Montevina is the chipset.

 

T9400 thats the cpu I have

wish I could have waited for the T9900 In April 09, when Dell does its Montevina refresh. But I decided to jump in now for the RGB LED screen.

Which after some tweaking looks amazing.


I decided to go with the T9400, because Apple ditched the P series due to poor performance T stands for Performance P is for power savings, and are 25Watts, the difference to 35watts T series, amounts to maybe 30 minutes in battery life.

I've seen the benchmarks and I can see whey Apple ditched the P series Montevina CPU's.



Bye this time next year Dell will be switching to Capella which is Nehalems mobile code name for the Core i7 hopefully they will be 32nm but I doubt it. Won't be so huge still 35watts and 45nm from the looks of it now.

 

The T9400 is a Montevina Penryn, so you have Centrino 2. Not sure why Dell mislabeled your notebook, but if it bothers you just take it off.

 

I'm not saying it bothers me per say...but its like you buying a Pentium 4 and
it has a Pentium III sticker...the sticker doesn't make you proud...like
the other example of a V6 on a V8.

My guess is that since Dell sold the "Studio 17" originally with the
Centrino sticker, for continuity they left the same sticker on the
newer 1737 because it's a "Studio 17" as well.

 

Except there is not a big change in performance between Centrino and Centrino 2. I don't even take notice of my case badges. Here you can buy the stickers.

 

Also interesting that I ran the CPU-Z software and it regonized my
processor as the T7250 (codename - Merom) although it did state
the specifications as a T5800.

I remember looking up the T5800 when we were about to order the
laptop and other than finding other laptops that incorporated the
processor...I couldn't find anything, specs wise, on Intel's website
or anyone else's for that matter for the T5800.

Looks like the T5800 is just a T7250 renamed for whatever marketing
reason? I did note one post on the web saying the voltages were
slightly different on the two processors..other than that they
could not find any differences, either.

Hey...the T7250 is a 64-bit processor...so the T5800 probably is as well

I wasn't sure...but I was thinking it was.

 

If you have a T5800 or T7250 pretty sure thats not Monteviniea

 

Santa Rosa.

 

So it was incorrect what I read here...that one of the differences
between the 1735 and the 1737 was the Monteviniea chipset.

I definately have the T5800 on my 1737.

 

That is the difference between the two. You can use the older chips with Montevina. It appears that all Studio 17s sold now use the newer motherboards anyhow.

 

So is it worth it to upgrade to DDR3 memory from DDR2? My 1737 is being built right now with a P8400, 1066FSB.

 

I am in sorta the same dilema, only main advantage to DDR3 is that it uses less power than DDR2.

DDR2 uses 1.8 volts

DDR3 uses 1.5 volts

 

You can't anyhow, so no need to worry.

 

Heh. I downloaded the Intel Chipset Utility, picked Vista as my OS... and get "Intel Chipset Utility does not support Windows Vista".

Nice!

 

Should I not be holding my breath waiting for DDR3 to come to the Studio 17? Is this something Dell is unlikely to add before a major overhaul or replacement of the model?