The Centrino 2 platform, codenamed Montevina, an upgrade to Intel’s current Centrino platform, is due this June.
But Australian PC maker, Pioneer Computers, has an early preview with its DreamBook Style 9008 Centrino 2 laptop. The laptop features a 45-nanometer Penryn processor and combined Wi-Fi and WiMax capabilities.
Pioneer is offering both capabilities as options with the laptop. The laptop, priced starting at A$1,399 (US$1,303) supports up to 4G bytes of memory and weighs 2.8 kilograms (6.2 pounds).
The Thermal Design Power of the processor is listed as 25 watts with the front-side bus spec’d at 1066 MHz. The notebook is listed with an “Intel Cantiga PM45″ north bridge and “ICH9M” south bridge. These two components constitute the chipset.
Another intriguing aspect of the computer is the ATI graphics chip listed as “ATI Radeon M82 256M GDDR ll VGA Card PCI-E.” This is otherwise known as an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3400 series chip.
Centrino 2 will also have improved graphics in the form of a GMA X4500 (Graphics Media Accelerator) chip that will be part of the GM45 (”Cantiga”) chipset. Performance is expected to be up to three times greater than current X3100 graphics (GM965 chipset).
Other Centrino 2 processors listed on Pioneers’ Web site include the Core 2 Duo P8600 running at 2.4 GHz with 3M bytes of cache, the Core 2 Duo P9500 running at 2.53GHz with 6M bytes of cache and the Core 2 Duo T9600 processor running at 2.8Ghz with 6M bytes of cache.
At the Intel Developer Forum last year, Intel talked about shrinking the size of chips by up to 60 percent for the Centrino 2 platform. Rollout of Intel’s Centrino 2 laptops by most manufacturers isn’t expected until June.
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