Intel takes Pentium 4 on the road
Intel said the new chip offers clock speeds of 1.6GHz to 1.7GHz, increases the speed of the front side bus from 133MHz to 400MHz and adds faster Double Data Rate SDRAM memory technology for an overall performance increase of as much as 49 percent compared with its top-of-the-line 1.2GHz Pentium III-M chip.
With the extra performance on tap from the Pentium 4-M, many analysts expect consumers to adopt notebooks in greater numbers. At the same time, PC makers are counting on corporations to begin buying PCs and notebooks again after the shrinking economy of 2001 caused them to put hardware upgrades on hold.
PC makers, including Compaq Computer, Dell Computer, Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba, rallied behind Intel on Monday by announcing new, high-end notebooks based on the Pentium 4-M chip.
The average price of these new notebooks is about $2,500, although Intel said it would work as quickly as possible to drive down the price using the Pentium 4-M.
PC makers began taking orders on the new notebooks Monday, but most won't ship them until later in the month, Intel said. Sources familiar with the Pentium 4-M launch suggested its final date was moved up about three weeks to match buying cycles in places like Japan, the second-largest market for notebooks.
Intel intends to help things along by proliferating the Pentium 4-M even more quickly than it did its desktop Pentium 4, which debuted November 2000, said Don MacDonald, director of mobile platforms for Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel.