Penryn vs Merom

Just curious, I am buying a MBP and there is talk about the upgrade to Penryn in the future, what kind of difference will that make and will it be noticable? After reading about the T7700 vs T7500 and such I feel this would be good info to get out there.

 

Well, since Penryn for desktops is about 7% than Conroe, is cooler and draws less power, the effect should be noticable.

 

Performance wise it will be like up to 10% or so clock for clock, so nothing big in terms of performance.

But like fabarati mentioned, the biggest thing will be it's ability to run cooler and draw less power.

 

for notebooks power is quite important but there are point performance increases ie while running virtual machine software (vmware etc.) which uses the intel extensions, multiple vm configurations could be quite a bit faster in penryn.

 

Also, from what I believe the Penryn supports 800Mhz Ram also.

 

Depends on what you are doing. For things like Office and Internet, the differnece will be negligible. For CPU intensive tasks like coding video, Penryn will offer a modest performance boost.

 

Half of meroms do that too but it is the chipset which does not alloe 800mhz ram so no since penryn will be using SR platform than there is no way that notebooks with SR chiipset will run 800mhz ram...

 

If you buy a MBP, you won't be able to upgrade to Penryn according to Intel due to difference in voltage regulation. If Penryn is to be used on the SR chipset, the manufacturers will have to modify the motherboard.

 

yeah, i was wondering that...i have a dv9500t and would love to find out if an upgrade to penryn would be possible with the dv9500t mobo....anybody got any info on that?

 

I've asked this again at an Intel blog site. They pointed me to IDF slides which said Santa Rosa refresh would work with existing chipsets but there is no hard evidence one way or the other about the VRM changes. We'll just have to wait & see. I'm keeping my vostro 1700, especially after getting the $300 discount when I wanted to return.

 

Yeah, i wouldn't get another notebook just to upgrade to penryn, as the benefits don't quite amount to a complete notebook replacement....however, the enthusiast in me is just waiting for an excuse to crack my lappie open and swap the cpu....

 

From a performance perspective, you should upgrade when the chip's architecture changes like from Pentium 4M to Pentium M, Pentium M to Core Duo, etc.

 

Agree that it's only viable to upgrade on architecture changes, but from a laptop owner's perspective, architecture upgrades aren't usually possible without getting a new laptop, so i'd like to now how far i can upgrade with my current lappie...

 

MBP is abbreviation of? As per the following link - upgrading will be possible for those who are having Santa Rosa GM965 chipset/motherboard currently running a Merom 65nm processor.

Following our previous article about Penryn processor and future Mobile platform, Digitimes announced that Intel is planning to release not less than 11 45-nm Penryn mobile processor for both Santa Rosa and upcoming Montevina:

- The first 5 Penryn processors will arrive in Q1 2008, designed to run on Santa Rosa with a 800MHz FSB (most recent MacBook Pro and iMac), and will be clocked at 2.1, 2.4, 2.5, 2,6 and 2.8GHz. Both high-end models will feature 6MB L2 cache, while the other ones will only have 3MN L2 cache.

- When Montevina will be introduced to replacecurrent Satan Rosa (Q2-Q3 2008), Intel will release 6 dedicated Penryn processors supporting 1066MHz FSB. Clockspeed will top at 2.53, 2.8 and 3.06GHz for high end models featuring 6MB L2 cache and 35W TBD. The tree other processors targeting mainstream market will be clocked at 2.13, 2.4 and 2.53GHz and only 3MB L2 cache.

SOURCE