how much better will calpella be than montevina

will it consume less power than the montevina chips and perform like 2x better or will it just be another slight upgrade. also when it first comes out will it be made inexpensive or will they cost a lot. and how big of a deal is Intel QuickPath Interconnect ?

 

Hopefully much better. Montevina sucked i think and i will never buy another intel again after it.

 

Really depends on what you're doing. For everyday tasks like Office and Internet, you'll probably not notice a difference. For CPU intensive tasks like Handbrake or crunching Access databases, I'd expect a nice bump in performance, though twice as fast seems unlikely.

 

why would you say montevina sucks? i thought it was a significant upgrade from santa rosa. and it consumes less power

 

Significant?? The CPUs are somewhat more efficent than Santa Rosa refresh, the intel 5100 card is worse than the 4965. All in all not that much of an upgrade.

Real upgrades were between the 2nd and 3rd gen and the 3rd and 4th gen Centrino.

 

would the montevina to capella upgrade be "significant"? or not that big ofa bump

 

It will be far more significant than from Santa Rosa to Montevina, but it remains to be seen just how much. In terms of architecture, Santa Rosa and Montevina are practically the same -- both are Core 2, Montevina just has the capability to use faster RAM and CPUs with a higher FSB. Calpella is an entirely different animal: it uses the Nehalem CPUs which don't even have an FSB anymore. Also, whereas Montevina quad cores were fairly exotic (they exist, but you have to go out of the mainstream to find one), the initial Calpella notebooks will be quad core and the dual core ones will only come out later.

If you want an approximate comparison of how different Calpella will be, look at the Core i7 desktop chips.

 

I'm just curious. Cause i know some can't spell correct and i don't know what it's really named.

But guys, is it named Capella or Calpella!?

You think? And then you mention that you will never buy it again? Are you for real?

 

will the initial quad core calpella chips be efficient in terms of battery life. i heard that quad core chips on notebooks arent worth it at all ifyouwant any portability.
also at this point in time, feb2009, will it be worth the wait for calpella notebooks in the fall.
my current notebook is missing a cd drive, uses a turion 64 1.6ghz single core and has 600something mb of ram. the battery life is less than an hour and the power supply ac adapter is busted. its really really slow and generates a LOT of heat and a LOT of noise. bought in early 2005.

just to outline the neccessity of a new notebook, what would you fellows do in my situation? spend $1000 on a montevina notebook, or buy an ac adapter and wait it out with a painfully bad notebook

 

Ouch!
Your notebook doesn't sound healthy


Btw, i don't think the new i7-notebooks will have quad-cores when released, more like dual cores because of portabillity, mobillity and so on



If i where you and i had the money for a new i7-notebook when it comes out, i'd stick with the notebook that you have now and just get a AC-adapter meanwhile waiting for the new ones to come out. You'll see a huge improvement then.

 

I believe it is Calpella. That's what Wikipedia says and there is a eponymous city in California (as tends to be the case with Intel's mobile platforms).

The best known current release date for Clarksfield (the quad core mobile Nehalems) is Q3-Q4 2009. The best known current release date for Auburndale (dual core mobile Nehalems) is Q1 2010. These could be wrong now or correct now but altered by Intel's delays, but as far as anyone can tell, Intel's plan is currently to release the quad core varieties first. Remember, unlike the Core 2 architecture which started off as dual core and more or less put a pair of them together to make a quad, the Nehalems are natively quad core.

No. Initially, they will not be as efficient as the current Core2Duos. The projected TDP for Clarksfield is 45-55W which is roughly double the power of the 25W P-series Penryns and roughly 1.5 times that of the 35W T-series Penryns. They will be about as bad as the current quad core and extreme processors. If you want quad cores with low power usage, you'll have to wait for Westmere (the 32nm architecture Nehalems). Intel initially promised Westmere by the end of 2009, but it's no longer certain that this will happen.

 

Thanks And yeah, that makes sense!


Ohw i see!
Strange tactics by intel though, you think they should release something that is more portable and has good mobility, but not now hehe. But yeah, they could always alter it.

 

can you wait a whole year? maybe buy something around 500$ now that will kick your system to the curb and then upgrade in another year or more.

at least thats what i would do especially in your situation. heck a system with a t7xxx series and 8600gt gpu would be a HUGE step up from what you have now

 

If I were you I would by something for $500 to hold me over until next year and then upgrade again. Realistically you'll be wanting Auburndale and that won't be out for another year. There are some great deals on the Dell Outlet. I would recommend looking into the Dell Studio 15, prices start at around $500 on the Dell Outlet and there are coupon codes floating around sometimes that you can apply on top of that price. That's a lot of notebook for the price (and I imagine you could sell it for at least half that amount in a year when you upgrade).

Calpella will definitely be a big step up from Montevina. The FSB has always been a bottleneck and eliminating it is a great step forward (credit to AMD for leading the way...). I'm also looking forward to low voltage processors being powerful enough for vast majority of users which will spur, I hope, manufacturers to design more thinner and lighter notebooks with them (in effect bringing the Lenovo X300 form factor to the masses) and hopefully some fanless ones (when combined with SSDs...which seem to be dropping in price by 50% every 6 months, woot!).

As far as Montevina goes I am pretty happy with it. The new 25Watt processors are great for battery life and the X4500HD graphics are a big step up from the X3100 of Santa Rosa. Obviously it doesn't suffice for gaming but it can handle HD decoding and is just at the cusp of being powerful enough for the majority of users. I think the next integrated GPU from Intel will be powerful enough for 90% of users, relegating dedicated graphics to gamers and users of GPU intensive programs. Not being a hater, I just want to cut any unnecessary power drain and heat from my notebook.

 

Can I quote you for the stupidest comment of the month?

 

or look around here on the forums. plenty of stuff for sale. heck i have a compal fl92 with 8600gt i can sell pretty cheap that will more than hold you over etc...im sure a lot of others do as well. take a look around

 

One thing people need to consider beyond the fact that the CPUs Calpella will use are awesome, is that the chipsets will be much more efficient, and cut down greatly on the number of IOPS during regular use, resulting in better battery life.

 

True. Calpella will be better than Montevina, especially when it moves on to Westmere and is shrunk to 32nm.

And as for wikipedia, I keep a watch on the Nehalem page, and it hasn't been updated in a while. Calpella launch is at least 9 months away, so by then the quad core TDP could be down to 25 watts, maybe.

 

It's very possible that Calpella is Westmere based as the timeframe is close.

 

I hope so.

 

Actually I think this is what might happen.

Napa Refresh with Menlow chip: Sept 2006

Santa Rosa: May 2007
Santa Rosa Refresh with Penryn: Jan 2008

Montevina: June-July 2008
Montevina Refresh??: It should have been Jan 2009 but Montevina refresh is not possible with Nehalem cores as they use fundamentally different platforms to work

Calpella: Originally July-August 2009, rumor is its delayed to November-December 2009
Calpella Refresh with Westmere variant: July-August 2010

EDIT: It looks like we might never see Calpella Refresh with Westmere. Calpella is likely to last till end of 2010 when Sandy Bridge arrives.

 

lol there's too many weird names.

I can't wait till Calpella - I'll be getting a new laptop with the next CPU/GPU revisions.

 

Calpella+chipset should be as efficient as T series core 2 duo + chipset. I am sure they will also release low power chips.

I am also hoping that intel would release both clarksfield and auburndale on 32nm. Paul Otellini did mention that 32nm will role out with high end desktop and mobile by the end of the year.

 

No because your wrong. Ohhhhh wow a 266mhz FSB improvment and a wifi card that isnt better then its
predecessor. I honestly think a 2.0ghz pentium M laptop with 2gb ram was quicker in windows vista 32 bit then my dv7 is. It just lacks raw processing power. I hate my computer taking 1-2 minutes to fall asleep and lagging up at random reasons.

 

So you hate it because of completely objective reasons?? And you'll never buy from Intel because of that experience. So if that doesn't show ignorance what does?

 

pardon me but i think that's how normal consumers behave.

 

If Calpella is initially released in a quad-only config. it will be suicide for Intel assuming they use the same core as i7. Nehalem is very fast but also very power hungry, a quad(even a mobile quad) Nehalem will use more than twice the power of a C2D, destroying your battery life.

Though I suppose with Intel's power-gating transistors they may be able to find a clever way around this through aggressively minimizing the number of active cores.

 

A quad core Nehalem notebook processor will be more efficient than a current quad core Core 2 Duo processor due to better power saving features and a refined architecture. Even though Calpella is launching first with quads, dual cores will be only 2-4 months away. There was an issue with Intel getting the cpu+gpu onboard to work right, which is why dual cores are delayed until early 2010. Since quads do not have the integrated gpu, they can be launched first.

 

As a gamer I'm not particularly impressed by what the Nehalem architecture has produced with the Core i7 and I'm planning on skipping the upgrade to the Calpellla and waiting for one of the later generations.

 

Core i7 is only power hungry when you're using it fully and by the time they release it, they will have had 9 months to a year to optimize the power usage. Also, the people who will buy the quad core versions will probably not be that interested in battery life; there has always been a tradeoff between power usage and performance.

 

Sadly, yes. Blame their problems on something by using some completely illogical reasoning that conveniently fits their agenda, because admitting PEBKAC requires too much humility.

 

Since the entire sector of Notebook manufacturers want Intel to delay Calpella, I doubt it'll be only dual core versions that will be delayed.

Actually Core i7 looks more power hungry than it is because of the high performance QPI(which doesn't benefit consumer sectors at all) and the 38 PCI-Express lanes on the X58 chipset.

The mobile versions and the mainstream desktop versions will forgo QPI and use the conventional DMI to connect the CPU and the PCH. Of course, the dual core versions featuring integrated graphics will use QPI to connect GPU/IMC+CPU, but outside of the CPU package, the connection is still DMI.

The improved integrated graphics along with smaller form factor and next generation Turbo Memory will make Calpella much more appealing than current notebook platform to a vast majority of users. Quad cores also means lower clock speed. Current Penryn based CPUs 20% clock speed advantage for dual cores.

 

I'm looking forward for Capella. Battery life isn't an issue for me, but performance is. Quad-core mobile processors would be sweet.

 

You have never thought that it could be vista being the problem?
Because i don't think you have the exact same setup as you had on the previous system. A slight change could change the behaviour of the operating system.

It's already proven that the predecessor is slower on all term, so because you have strange behaviour with your system can't be because it's slower in general, when it's already proven it's the other way around.

Maybe you have alot of bloatware and such, cause it sure seems so.

Try to do some serious benchmarks to see the difference if you don't believe it's as fast as it should be, otherwise it's something wrong with your notebook, enough said.

That's true, wisdom doesn't come hand in hand when it comes to normal consumers. As they lack knowledge of what is what, so they never see what the real problem is.

 

The BIGGEST news about Calpella is Braidwood, and the mobile version of Turbo Boost.

What is Braidwood?

Braidwood is the next generation of Turbo Memory technology. The first generation of Turbo Memory was disappointing to majority of the people. The second generation improved this a lot(through improved software and greater capacity), but still there left room to be desired.

The third generation of Turbo Memory should be the version to bring real benefits. The initial versions were plagued with bad driver/application support. The idea was good, but the software part didn't do well. Braidwood will feature integrated NAND controller on the Ibexpeak-M PCH to improve throughput to SSD levels. The capacity will also increase to 16GB.

Turbo Boost, why better on mobile?

The Turbo Boost on desktop Core i7's bring less benefit because more often than not the desktops are more utilized and therefore have less thermal headroom. The desktops are also more often overclocked than laptops.

It looks like the Turbo Boost on Calpella might actually be able to raise clock speed by 3 speed grades(400MHz), rather than 2 speed grades as in desktop. This will bring real advantages in single thread apps that otherwise doesn't benefit much from Nehalem.

(In fact, Sandy Bridge is supposed to bring single-thread performance increases solely by more advanced version of Turbo Boost, but that's another story)

 

Hmm interesting news: http://forums.vr-zone.com/showthread.php?t=386663

"It looks like Intel cancels Auburndale and Havendale. Instead of these two processors, who shall be the first with IGP, Arandale gets to the market.
The processor has got a IGP, too, but he will be produce in 32 instead of 45nm. Although a new manufacturing process the CPU will be launched in end of Q1/2010."

That means we won't see Calpella until Arandale until Q1 2010.

 

Quad Core Nehalem is currently projected as having a TDP of 45-55W

No, Westmere will be pushed back. When there is a delay in the roadmap it ripples forward through the timeline. Mobile Nehalem has been delayed to December 2009 for the Quad core chips which will replace "Core 2 Extreme" and Q1 2010 for the dual core chips which will replace mainstream Core 2 Duo penryn chips. Calpella will launch with mobile Nehalem.

Montevina Refresh is coming in April 2009, see links for details:
http://www.dvhardware.net/article30754.html
http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=596

Calpella will initially be released solely with Quad Core nehalems (Clarksfield), according to current rumors, and it will not be suicide.

These Quad core chips will replace current "Core 2 Extreme" branded chips which have a 45W TDP. Quad core nehalems are projected to have a TDP of 45-55W so that is in line. Quad core nehalems will not be available in mainstream notebooks, only in ultra performance desktop replacement gaming and graphics systems (basically it is likely that whatever notebooks that currently offer configurations with Core 2 Extreme will be updated to use Calpella + Clarksfield Quad core nehalem). Battery life is not the selling point in these systems.

Then in Q1 2010 dual core nehalem (Auburndale) will be released (with a projected TDP of 35-45W) and mainstream notebooks (everything that currently comes with regular Core 2 Duo chips) will then be updated to use Calpella + Auburndale.

Clarksfield will benchmark higher/faster than Auburndale so it makes sense to release it first from a marketing perspective.

Edit: Just saw the post on Arandale, looks like the Q1 2010 Auburndale launch could be nixed...

 

this is a load of info dudes. since im looking for a balance of performance and battery montevina is really appealing to me since the benchmarks i see from are pretty solid and they run at 25W.
if i wanted to wait for dual core nehelems running at 35-45W i might as well wait for the die shrink 32nm westmeres, and that might not come at the projected date since it seems everything is being pushed back anyways. then i hear about sandy bridge and the ivy bridge 22nm shrink coming in 2011.

i figure i cant wait for another year with my horrible notebook right now, and i would end up waiting for 1 and a half years anyways for westmere. since im not doing hardcore gaming, im just going to be using normal everyday programs and warcraftIII, the montevina processors will run fast enough for me. pretty much anything right now will be godly compared to my laptop anyways and the P8400 processor comes cheap nowadays so im probably going to end up buying something now for $1000 then wait for like some crazy 2013 processor.
also ive been keeping up a pattern of upgrading things every four years. i got my laptop Q2 of 2005 and my ipod mini november2004, and i got the new nano september2008 so might as well grab a laptop within the next month

 

How the hell am i ignorant? I know exactly what im talking about. Both systems are running a Fresh install of windows vista home premium. The dv7 is running 64 bit so it should be faster thats it. When i use the dv1000 with the pentium M everything loads quicker. When i close the lid it goes to sleep within 5 seconds. My new montievina laptop feels sluggish and its not that i have bloatware or anti virus slowing it down because they both had a fresh install of vista. And i wont buy another intel not because of this but all of my experience with them. Before this system i had a santa rosa laptop and it felt sluggish too not as much but it did. I dont feel like taking chances spending my little ammount of money on a system that will not live up to what i expect. I would rather buy an AMD i think their chipset is much better then intels. And yes i understand the new Montevina laptops are faster in terms of they have more raw power they can calculate things faster but i dont need to do that i use my computer for light gaming ( light as in i dont need the best out there ) and basic use. I might buy an intel if it didnt use an Intel chipset because i belive thats where the problem lies.

 

also i totally forgot to ask, will the P8800 and P8700 processors for the Montevina Refresh be different from the P8400 and P8600 in any way besides a processor speed upgrade. the 8400 is 2.26 and P8600 is 2.4ghz i think

 

Sure it might be " Slower " In benchmarks but not in real world. I see my older system's or AMD systems beating mine. No i dont have any bloatware or anti virus i have a fresh install of windows vista home premium 64 bit. The reason i blame the platform is my older system felt quicker then my newer one when they are on the same playing field exept the new system is theortically faster.

 

That Montevina Refresh is not the "normal" Refresh if you look at the short roadmap I have posted. They are just introducing more Penryn core CPUs and different chipsets. That Refresh isn't next gen chip-on-current gen platform Refresh.

Remember, roadmaps are DYNAMIC. It can change at Intel's will.

That is completely objective. I'll tell you why. Now if you have a fast CPU with slow hard drive, your computer will actually run games fast, edit video fast, render fast, run AI better or whatever, but your program will respond slow. Make it opposite, use a super fast drive with a slow CPU and your programs will load fast whatever, but in actual calculation it'll be slow because of the CPU.

So you are assuming your so-called "real-world" usage is slow because it loads applications slow, it suspends slow etc. All you need to do is spend money on a good hard drive(even better a good SSD drive, which can be pricey), but everyone else knows Intel CPUs nowadays are faster than AMDs.

EDIT: Your Intel system is using crappier drive and crappier graphics which makes the system "slow". It has nothing to do with your chipset and CPU. But continue thinking that way.

 

Nope. The dv7t is running a WD3200BEVT while the dv7z is running a WD2500bevs the pentium M system was running an IDE samsung hm160hc. Everone knows BEVT is faster then the BEVS. Also im not talking about graphics cards here because thats nvidia and ati there but if we must Ati radeon hd3200 in dv7z vs 9600m gt yes the 9600m gt won but that has nothing to do with intel. And everone knows nowadays that intel benchmarks are faster then AMD but that dosent necessarily equate to real world preformance. So there you have it again my more powerfull intel system LOST to and amd?!?!?!?! How can this be??????I dont know but what i do know is i wish i didnt spend $1500 on this dv7t.

 

so as far as the montevina refresh concerns me, they are just making a 2.53 and 2.66ghz version of the P series, i wouldnt be missing out on anything if i plan on buying a 2.26 P8400 processor notebook would i?

 

Nope.
10 char

 

Let's see what you are trying to say here. So you think it's the chipset's fault that the SLEEP time is slow.

How can I say?? Oh hell its so the chipset and the CPUs fault your laptop is taking extra 55 seconds to sleep right?? Maybe the chipset has a internal delay timer that adds 55 seconds to sleep timer to annoy guys like you.

Sarcasm aside. It's the laptop manufacturer fault that your laptop sucks(sorry). You can give same chipset and cpu to two different manufacturers and the two laptops won't end up to be same.

If you plan to get the integrated graphics version it might matter. Intel will also ship the GM47 chipset with Montevina Refresh. Don't know why they took so long but at least they are getting it through.

 

No im saying the chipset is SLOW. And its not my laptop because the same exact laptop in AMD dosent do this at all. Your fighting a losing argument because i have proof by owning both an AMD and Intel of the same laptop and yet the intel has the problem anything you say dosent make my intel laptop any faster. Its slower thats final i cant explain why it sucks but when i own two dv7t's and a dv7z and both dv7t's are slower its not that individual laptop its somthing to do with the hardware inside all of them. So happens to be that laptop is running intel and its slower. Again i cant explain it but im not buying intel again. I pay a premium price for what? To calculate Pi faster? Screw that is a waste of money.

 

The reason people use benchmarks rather than going based on "feels sluggish" is that the latter can be caused by a nearly unlimited number of problems. Just because they both have a fresh install of Vista doesn't mean both have it configured optimally. Unless whatever it is failing to do is critical, Vista doesn't pop up a Window to tell you it has taken around 2 seconds trying to load something that isn't there, it dumps this in a log.

You have to make sure all drivers are up to date (even obscure ones that nobody usually thinks about), check the logs for processes it tries and fails to start at boot or end at sleep or shutdown and do a considerable amount of debugging before you can make any judgement about the hardware being slower based on what Vista is doing. Your dv7t feeling slower than your dv7z doesn't really tell us anything about Intel and AMD in general (my guess is that you're having subtle issues with the 64-bit Vista).

 

I think you should try to get calmer before you totally is doing a fool of yourself.

As said before, just because you're one in a million that thinks it's slower because of whatever reason, doesn't make it legit.


And i'm sure your dv7 runs slower because of something you're not aware of, or it's just a way for you to blame intel instead of microsoft

 

Well i find it hard to blame microsoft when the AMD system is doing just fine and so is the older intel system. Im not making a claim that AMD is better then Intel here everywhere but for my use's and experience i like amd better and i am telling the troubles i have had with Intel and why i am avoiding them from now on. I dont see why everyone thinks they need bleeding edge preformance. Sure intel is more powerfull overall but how about dollar for dollar? They are about equal dollar for dollar.