Montevina's official launch is on the way, but meantime components are appearing in the wild - including the new 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo T9600.
Last month Intel hung its head and admitted having to push back its release date for the firm’s "Montevina" Centrino 2 mobile platform. However, Intel insisted that processors and "some of the chipsets" would still be coming out on target July 14th.
The delay was put down to an embarrassing bungle by the company, in which Intel failed to get the Wireless portion of its new chip certified by the FCC. There were also whispers that because Montevina uses a PCIe half-card format for 802.11x cards, the company then couldn’t return to the older, full sized a/b/g card because they wouldn’t fit.
Some also believe the 802.11n portion of the initial Montevinas will now be scrapped altogether, meaning it would be a/b/g only when eventually released at some unknown point in the future.
Meanwhile, however, processor bits and bobs have been tipping up at resellers. The 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo T9600, for example, is seen listed on Provantage, which lists it as a 45-nanometer processor with 6MB of cache memory and a 1066MHz front-side-bus (FSB). Priced loosely by resellers at between US$570 and US$615, this will purportedly grow to be Intel's fastest mainstream Core 2 Duo mobile chip of the non extreme kind.
The Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme X9100 "Extreme" mobile processor can be found, however, only at a couple of resellers.
Another processor rearing its head at resellers is Intel's new P series, including the P9500 appearing amongst other places in Tech Depo for US$400. The P9500 also has 6MB of cache memory and 1066MHz FSB, but the 2.53MHz chip has a low thermal envelope (TDP) of only 25 watts, which makes it Intel’s most energy efficient mobile processor to date.
Provantage is also listing the 2.4GHz P8600 as "backordered" and the 2.26GHz P8400.
As for the delayed goods, Intel’s silicon "GM" chipset (with integrated graphics), will only come out sometime in August, which means that those who simply can’t wait, will just have to go with AMD’s Puma instead.