Intel X9100 Montevina Core 2 Extreme Processor

Well, I was looking at the options and for an outrageous +$715 USD you can get a Intel X9100 Montevina Core 2 Extreme Processor which starts at 3.06 Ghz and is overclockable to 3.53 Ghz.

Has anyone on this forum thought about getting this?

 

"think about" and "getting one" are two differrent things

 

You can buy another laptop with that money lol.

 

Stupid thought. Period.

 

I considered it but once I started to customize, I quickly realized I'd rather spend that kind of money on the NP9262 and get a quad.

 

Totally NOT worth it.

 

I have one in an NP5796 and consider it a nice upgrade, even given the price. It's rock solid at 3.53GHz. I had the $$$, so I splurged a bit. I am a computer engineer and have very good work-related uses for the insane clock speed - place&route on FPGAs, etc. These kind of things run over an *hour* on slower machines with big designs, and getting test-debug-recompile-test cycles down under 15 minutes is imperative, otherwise you tend to lose track of what you were doing. I considered the quad NP9262, but the battery life scared me away. My applications do not make great use of more than 2 cores anyway.

The lower P-states (clock/voltage pairs) on the x9100 equal the P-states of the lower speed P-series Core2s, so battery life should be just as good, unlike the desktop quads in the NP9262.

 

Why don't you use a desktop for all your engineering stuff? Surely must be cheaper... Not to mention probably faster.

 

My work desktop is an [email protected], at home I have a [email protected]. They are both fast enough for the job. The 3.53GHz x9100 is still the fastest of the three - the quad rarely gets fully loaded, except when running C compiles (Gentoo Linux user here). All 3 machines have 4GB RAM (and it gets used, too!). The "big iron" at work tops out at 8x3.16GHz Penryn-based Xeons with 16GB DDR2-667 FBDIMMs; they are slower than the E6600 with DDR2-1030 for multithreaded place&route. The Sager laptop toasts everything else by a decent margin, over 10%.

There is quite a lot of value for me in being able to work wherever I am, and to resume right where I left off with suspend-to-RAM. Having a really good portable machine with my current work already loaded is an ideal situation. Being able to game on the laptop is a secondary bonus that will save my back when I go to the local private LAN parties.

I agree that most people would be insane to buy this CPU, but in my case I think the freedom it gives me easily justifies the $1000 more I spent on this laptop than I would have otherwise.

 

sparcnut - I am buying a new M570TU (NP5796) - for an extra $365 i can get an X9100 over the T9400 - I'm really considering it.

 

I just bought one for my M570TU....

I'll run 3DMark06 when it is installed

 

i would prefer a QX9300 anyday

 

I don't know if the M570TU will support that CPU, also not many apps or games utilize all the cores (Crysis) although newer games are being developed for multiple cores...

 

I came into a little extra money, so I decided to go ahead and get the X9100 too. This laptop will be replacing my desktop and existing laptop, so the extra power will be appreciated.

 

I wouldn't call considering it a stupid thought. Depends on what you are looking for; if you feel that getting a top of the line processor is worth that extra cash, then go for it. Apparently, some people feel that way based on the signatures I've seen.

I have a gaming notebook on order, but I ordered it with the base processor to see where it stands on performance. I also got it in anticipation of the Quad core mobiles that should be arriving soon. I would like to see some performance numbers on them to determine whether I should pull the trigger and what I should pull it on.

 

That is if mobile quads will even be supported. From what I hear, they won't in the NP5796 due to a slightly difference socket P revision.

IF they will be supported... I'll be one of the first to buy.

Where are people picking up engineering samples? I've searched high and low for them.

 

Where is this upgrade available at such a price?

 

Who said it was an NP5796?

And I really don't think it's a socket change. This new Montevina platform was released too soon for that. If anything, an outdated BIOS might be a possible limitation. It's kinda like the Yonah/Merom issue back in 2006 when people thought that the Merom chips were incompatible with notebooks with Yonah processors.

 

I figured we were speaking of the only system sager offered that could possible support mobile quad, seeing how we are in a sager/clevo forum...

According to Sager, mobile quads won't be supported by the NP5796 due to hardware issues. Killer Notebooks tried extensively to get the QX to work via a BIOS mod, but could not and dropped the project.

I don't doubt mobile quad will eventually work. Perhaps when the 35-watt non extreme quads come out in Q1 2009 we will see some more support.

 

I'm thinking about dropping one of these into my M860TU in the next 18 months or so. Some PCMW customers got them, and their temps are maxing in the low 60°C. Even now, with my P8600, I can barely get it to hit 50C, so I'm confident that it will be a safe upgrade.

 

yeh, hes talking about the nagamaki

 

I actually just went to K N's forums to check out that info (thanks for the reference) and yeah, it does seem like it may require a BIOS update. However, his tests were done on the Santa Rosa platform and not on the Montevina Platform. Isn't the NP5796 based on the latter?

 

My X9100 has yet to break 43°C

 

If you check on the eurocom website under the M570TU in the processor choise... the QX9300 is there.. don't know if its for real but it's offered since almost a month with this model.

 

I didn't know he was testing on Santa Rosa. Well that makes full sense that it wouldn't work. A very different architecture. Perhaps then a BIOS update will do the trick. We'll have to wait for the actual launch of the core to find out what Clevo has up their sleeves.

I was under the understanding that mobile quads should have been released by now.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Intel-to-Announce-Quad-Core-CPUs-for-Notebooks-91804.shtml

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Newsentry.153+M5febefef47f.0.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...nryn_QC_XE.22_.28standard-voltage.2C_45_nm.29

Were they just delayed or did they get released with no announcment?