ULV specs, the new netbook?

Obviously ULV-based laptops are destined to replace netbooks as they offer better features without too much of a pay-off in terms of size, weight or cost and, indeed, the battery life that most ULV laptops offer is superior to a lot of Atom-based netbooks.
So I'm not here to debate whether or not these new processors will become the main-stay of netbooks/ultra-portable laptops in the future, I think that's rather self-evident.

The question I'm posing in this thread is as follows: are these new ULVs already starting to look as 'stale' as Atom-based netbooks were before?
There seems to be very little variation in terms of features, very few notebooks that offer anything unique or interesting.

Now I understand that with netbooks, the lack of variation was a direct result of the limitations MS placed on Win XP licences and there are, to the best of my knowledge, no such issues surrounding Win7 but, in many ways, that makes it all the more disappointing that none of the manufacturers seem to be trying to offer up anything different - well, with the exception IMO of Viewsonic, whose 'Viewbook Pro' has a neat exchangeable battery/optical drive which I fully realise is not a new idea but seems to be one-of-a-kind for a ULV Win7 laptop at the moment.

I don't want to seem overly negative, I understand that both Win7 and ULV processors are new but they have been made available to laptop manufacturers for a while now, so it does seem to me to be at least a little poor that so many models are so similar.



So, do I have a point or am I alone in wondering where the excitement is?

 

To me, there's only so much you can really work with, given the hardware and size constraints of the 11.6" models. Somewhat limited to a certain chipset so features will be pretty close across the board.
I think this is pretty intentional by Intel.
The other thing being, that the ULV netbooks/laptops are not that much lower in price compared to the larger laptops, and I don't think that the companies believe their primary market for these are as the only laptop/machine a user will own. Not to say that they are right but I definitely did not feel that a netbook would be enough as my only machine in the house.

 

It's not just the 11" models though, the same seems to go for the 13" ones as well.

I understand what you're saying about limitations of the chipsets and how that plays into the hands of both Intel and the laptop makers as they need something to differentiate netbooks from ultra-portable laptops from full-sized ones but someone with some sort of decision-making powers for one of the manufacturers must realise that there is a market for small, powerful laptops?
And even within those limitations, it still seems like none of the manufacturers are trying all that hard.

 

1. Netbooks are not dead, and won't be soon. Come January at CES there will be a ton of Pinetrail based systems, plus there are the Linux/Windows CE "smartbooks" coming.

2. CULV notebooks are not stale to me. They differ in screen size, looks, color, battery life, version of culv, weight, and more. Plus once the Core i7-620UM/640UM, Core i5-540UM and other low voltage Arrandale processors launch, the culv game will get even better.

Plus Asus has the switchable graphics with Nvidia/Intel and AMD/ATI.

 

I'm not sure I see the point of a lower performing ULV chip, in a big/thick laptop. Physical size is still a limitation here. For me, the purpose of a ULV chip is to be able to have a portable system that doesn't weigh much, has good battery life, and is thin form factor. If I wanted a more powerful system, I understand I have to get better cooling because the processor would require a bigger cooling unit, and the vid card also, etc.

Again, I still think that you give up power for portability. Look at Toshiba's Portege lineup, for example. Look at how much you're paying for the portability/weight/thin factor. I'm somewhat glad that the ULV platform doesn't cost that much.

I'm guessing that they aren't trying hard because of the competition in the field. Pricing really can make a difference in sales when you're talking about these units. You do have to realize that technically smart people that understand the difference between an i7 and a ULV chip in a laptop are much smaller in population to the masses that make up the majority of laptop sales.

I can't explain to you how many times i've had to explain how a user does not need a super fast laptop, and how little they really would use an optical drive in a laptop. Some people are really stuck on the lack of optical drive.

You do have to give them a bit of time to develop this platform also.

 

But Pinetrail doesn't bring anything new to the table does it?

 

Main thing would probably be increased power efficiency. Concurrently the GMA500 should get better software support for HD video playback.

 

Pinetrail will use GMA 3150 which will be based off GMA 950 and will need a seperate Broadcom HD chip(but I think that should be fairly common addition). Upside is far better performance than GMA 500.

The integrated memory controller if implemented well, should bring decent performance on the CPU side as well. 20-30% or so performance gain in most real world applications should bring it nearly on par with Celeron based first gen Pentium M's per clock.

Power usage should go down as well, it should be near the range of Z-series Atom.

 

All of this plus 64-bit support and all netbooks will be fanless (like the Dell Mini and others currently are).

See post for more on Pinetrail: Link

 

What are the key difference between the i7 and i5 models beside clock speed? I also take it both offer the turbo mode where if it needs more power in single core mode.

 

i7s offer hyperthreading, i5s do not.

 

Only in the Lynnfield desktop processors. Upcoming mobile i5 Arrandale has hyperthreading, and the apparent difference between Arrandale i5 and i7 is 3 MB L2 cache in the i5s. Upcoming desktop i5 Clarkdale is also supposed to come with hyperthreading.

 

Yeah, this is almost right. So far the main differences between Core i5 and i7 is the amount of L3 cache, not L2, and also the Core i5 540UM will have a Turbo Boost that only goes up to 1.86GHz while the Core i7 UM's cross 2GHz and also have higher clocked gpu speeds.

 

Er... yeah. I meant L3 cache. >.> Turbo boost limits tend to vary by processor model even within a family, so I didn't think it was worth mentioning as such.

 

CULV notebooks aren't replacing netbooks. Netbooks will stay the low end, cheap machines. Atom will keep developing.

CULV closes the gap between netbooks and notebooks.

 

netbooks with atom have always been useless.. with the new pinetrail its still gonna be the same although it looks better... CULV is the way.. but you can't deny the fact that atom is going to be more power efficient and cheaper.

 

sean473, netbooks are far from useless. They sell like hot cakes and I doubt that people buy them because their wallet feels too heavy.

 

Yes, I agree. Atom is inherently a lot cheaper for Intel to make than a low voltage down-clocked version of a top end processor. CULV is if you want a little more power in your ultra-portable trading off some battery life, weight, and / or cost.

 

Does anyone have the specs of the next gen LV cpu that will replace the SL line?

 

It's on Wikipedia and posted on several threads in NBR. I believe a model is the 640LM at 2.13GHz.

 

Core i7 620LM and 640LM. So this means the UM series replaces current CULV SU series, the LM replace the current SL, and the M replace the SP's, P's and T's (except for some P series Celeron's like the P4500).

 

Any more info on the LM?

 

The cpu uses only 15W, the gpu is 10W for a total of 25W, and it will be released in January 2010 CES.

 

Is that for the intel gpu? Either way sounds better than the current SL, which is like 18w for cpu. I may have to go with the LM next time as its close to the power usage of my current SU based machine.

 

Yes it is for the Intel gpu. On all the Arrandales, the gpu uses around 10W and the whole processors rating now combines the cpu and gpu totals.

 

So, these gpu are suppose to better than the 4500HD right? What is the power usage on that model for comparison sake?

 

The 4500MHD consumes around 5W. The PM45 chipset takes 9.5W (7W for MCH and 2.5W for ICH9M), while the GM45 chipset takes 14.5W. For completion sake, the PM55 chipset consumes 3.5W. You can find more info from Intel's ARK.