14 DAY TRIAL // It has only been a week since the Dell and AMD "online breakup", but Dell is determined to move along, or at least this is the general impression. However, what's bad for AMD seems to be extremely profitable for the computer enthusiast.
Dell's 17-inch gaming laptop is the perfect example to illustrate the above affirmations. If you are one of the users that say nothing is better that an XPS M1730, you're wrong, because the ultra-popular notebook now comes with a Penryn update. The latest technology from Intel has arrived at a slow pace on the market. And it took it more than one month since it was first announced during the Consumer Electronics Show.
The Penryn CPU has replaced the old Core 2 Duo T7700 and T7800 Merom chips. The new offering from Dell now includes the T9300 and the T9500 Penryn chips, which should bring the user all the advantages of the 45-nanometer technology. The real good part is the fact that the processor upgrade won't add any price difference; they just come for free. That's no wonder, given the fact that the XPS M1730 is some sort of a premium notebook, that already comes with a pretty bulky price tag.
The XPS M1730 notebooks will list the two Penryn CPUs, namely the 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo T9300 and the 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo T8300. The latter comes with half the cache of the T9300 chip (3MB only). Moreover, the Penryn processors cost even less than the Core 2 Extreme X7900 and Core 2 Duo T7800 options.
The XPS M1330 notebook model was rigged with Intel's Penryn processors earlier last week. It comes with three processor options, the T8300, the T9300 as well as the 2.6GHz T9500. According to Dell, the next notebooks to get the Penryn update will be those in the Latitude family.