Dual-core notebook CPUs point to MoD
by fledgling otakuTom’s Hardware has a detailed guide and overview on dual-core CPU technology for notebooks, comparing Intel’s Core/Core Duo (Yonah and Merom) to AMD’s Turion X2 series. If you are in the market for a new laptop anytime in the next year or two, this is an essential backgrounder. I’ll admit to being an Intel-fanboi partly because I am heavily biased towards mobile computing - any desktop PC I am likely to build in the future will be the silent-PC “mobile on desktop” type with heavy emphasis on notebook components to save power. True MoD will require desktop-PC motherboards that support the 945GM chipset, which are in development but I am not sure if have reached actual product yet. Soon.
I’m not a hardcore bleeding edge gamer, and my scientific applications will run fine on a multi-core chip. Even if games are your thing, going the MoD route is still tenable, given that external graphics cards are on the horizon. It’s a nascent niche but in two years the big honking desktop PC is going to go the way of the cold-blooded lumbering dinosaur, and the energy-efficient warm-blooded mammalian MoD systems shall inherit the earth.
