Mind you we've had no confirmation from Dell that they will release the Bios required to pop the Merom in...
However that said, Intel just dropped a Merom into a current Core duo laptop and booted up. They did not in the article I read say what machine that was. Given they are sharing pants with Dell, I'd take bets it was a Dell.
What you will have to deal with are the 2gb ram limit (maybe unless the bios fixes this - since the 945M chipset can technically manage 4gb in the whitepaper) and the 667 memory speed limit. Santa Rosa the next gen Centrino chipset (mid 2007) will get an 800 FSB for Merom. I would suspect that 667 speed upgrades of Merom will probably dry up after late 2007. That should be more than fine for a notebook you purchase now, but that's my $.02.
Speed ranges were 1.86 to 2.33, so don't expect to throw a 2.67 (which was in the demo that everyone is showing benchmarks on) into your laptop. However 2.67 beat a 2.8 X2, so it's reasonable to think that a 2.33 isn't exactly going to be a slouch. And if you see one or two grades above that through 2007, and you wait that long (good luck on that patience level) then you'll have a might fast machine that you got to use now.
Intel and Dell benefit by not having you wait till the Fall. You benefit from great tech now. Santa Rosa will also bring Robson tech (speeding up the hardrive via flash) which is a mighty nice perk so don't spend ALL your pennies on this first machine
Remember also that 5-7mo should bring the G80 which is Nvidia's real solid DX10 chip (aww DX9 lived so long too...) You'll probably want DX10 for Vista, but you can live with DX9 for a couple years probably with not a lot of issues. DX10 is supposed to be noticeably faster under Vista because DX9 will be "interpreted" by the OS into DX10 commands where DX10 will be native. Nvidia AND ATI driver writers have promised to try and rectify this. Since Vista doesn't let vid drivers get away with as much as in XP, it is uncertain if they will be able to overcome the slower DX9 interpretation.
Remember the memory limit. The footprint of Vista is 4x (800mb) what the footprint of XP is in memory. Couple that with Microsoft saying that a 2gb machine under Vista will perform like a 1gb machine today and you can begin to see how easily even a laptop (at least for gamers) could really want to have 4gb in it (BF2 anyone?) So bear in mind the penalties and then realize Intel is providing a way to have a machine now and then step up 20-30% in performance and get 64 bit just by a plug in upgrade. That is a very, very nice perk.
Food for thought!
However that said, Intel just dropped a Merom into a current Core duo laptop and booted up. They did not in the article I read say what machine that was. Given they are sharing pants with Dell, I'd take bets it was a Dell.
What you will have to deal with are the 2gb ram limit (maybe unless the bios fixes this - since the 945M chipset can technically manage 4gb in the whitepaper) and the 667 memory speed limit. Santa Rosa the next gen Centrino chipset (mid 2007) will get an 800 FSB for Merom. I would suspect that 667 speed upgrades of Merom will probably dry up after late 2007. That should be more than fine for a notebook you purchase now, but that's my $.02.
Speed ranges were 1.86 to 2.33, so don't expect to throw a 2.67 (which was in the demo that everyone is showing benchmarks on) into your laptop. However 2.67 beat a 2.8 X2, so it's reasonable to think that a 2.33 isn't exactly going to be a slouch. And if you see one or two grades above that through 2007, and you wait that long (good luck on that patience level) then you'll have a might fast machine that you got to use now.
Intel and Dell benefit by not having you wait till the Fall. You benefit from great tech now. Santa Rosa will also bring Robson tech (speeding up the hardrive via flash) which is a mighty nice perk so don't spend ALL your pennies on this first machine
Remember also that 5-7mo should bring the G80 which is Nvidia's real solid DX10 chip (aww DX9 lived so long too...) You'll probably want DX10 for Vista, but you can live with DX9 for a couple years probably with not a lot of issues. DX10 is supposed to be noticeably faster under Vista because DX9 will be "interpreted" by the OS into DX10 commands where DX10 will be native. Nvidia AND ATI driver writers have promised to try and rectify this. Since Vista doesn't let vid drivers get away with as much as in XP, it is uncertain if they will be able to overcome the slower DX9 interpretation.
Remember the memory limit. The footprint of Vista is 4x (800mb) what the footprint of XP is in memory. Couple that with Microsoft saying that a 2gb machine under Vista will perform like a 1gb machine today and you can begin to see how easily even a laptop (at least for gamers) could really want to have 4gb in it (BF2 anyone?) So bear in mind the penalties and then realize Intel is providing a way to have a machine now and then step up 20-30% in performance and get 64 bit just by a plug in upgrade. That is a very, very nice perk.
Food for thought!
