14 DAY TRIAL // If you happen to find yourself somewhere near "the land down under" and you are looking to acquire a new high-end notebook, then you should check out the offer of PC maker Pioneer Computers. The Australian manufacturer is now taking preorders for laptops equipped with the yet unreleased Intel quad-core mobile processors. According to Pioneer Computers, the new CPUs will soon be made available.
The exact date for when that might happen is not certain yet, but the announcement does shed some light as far as the upcoming high-end notebooks are concerned, since it becomes clear now that they will finally receive some quad-core love. According to the Australian PC maker's website, Intel's 2.54GHz quad-core Core 2 Extreme QX9300 processors are said to be an A$1,449 (US$1,390) upgrade to the manufacturer's DreamBook Style 9008 laptop. The DreamBook Power D90, which has a starting price tag of A$2,999, is another example of the company's quad-core supporting laptops.
The new quad-core chip isn't listed on Intel's most recent price list - even more, the company's policies regarding "unannounced products" is to abstain from all comments about them. But, according to Pioneer, the new mobile chip will be made available very soon and will pack 12M bytes of on-chip cache. One of the sales representatives for the Australian PC maker has also said that the new laptops aren't currently available, but can be shipped to customers within one to two weeks.
The QX9300 is the single quad-core chip listed on a product roadmap prepared by Intel India. This roadmap also includes other unannounced chips, such as the 3.06GHz dual-core Core 2 Extreme X9100 mobile chip and 3GHz quad-core Q9650 desktop chip. There is no date listed for when these chips will become available, but it seems that we are getting pretty close to experiencing the power of the new Intel CPUs.
According to Computerworld, Pioneer Computers has quite a record of giving away details on Intel's upcoming products. Just back in April, the company was responsible for leaking info regarding some chips from Intel's Centrino 2 series.