Montevina - At Last!

The debut of the long awaited Montevina platform finally made its way down to our local region after having been launched at San Francisco on 14 July. While we would love to have been there for the initial launch, Intel hasn't let the speed of the Internet slow them down one bit with an exciting launch event held at the One Degree 15 Marina Club over at Sentosa Cove. Before we go into details on the event itself however, let's take a quick review of what the Montevina platform actually is and how it will affect you, the consumer.


Intel has decided to brand the new Montevina notebook platform under the same Intel Centrino branding that most people are familiar with, but positioning the Montevina platform as the second generation, i.e. the Centrino 2. It isn't really accurate, as the Montevina platform is actually the fifth generation of the Centrino platform, but Intel's deliberate branding by using Centrino 2 to differentiate the current generation from the older platforms may be the right kind of touch it needs to compete against AMD's equivalent new Puma notebook platform.

Let's start with the basics first. The Intel Centrino 2 platform's favorite number is 45, as the new platform will support the latest 45nm Penryn/Wolfdale based processors (similar to the Santa Rosa refresh) but offers up to 1066MHz FSB support compared to the 800MHz FSB support of the Santa Rosa platform. 45 also used for their Mobile Intel G45 Express Chipset, which promises to deliver a whole load of performance boosts in 3D graphics and decompression/acceleration of HD videos, thanks to the newer integrated Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics engine. The graphics engine also boasts of DirectX 10 capabilities for quality integrated graphics gaming performance, but well, let's be fair here, we don't expect Crysis to run on "Very High" settings.

Apart from these newer features though, the Montevina platform seems more like a gradual increment that we've all have been used to since the days of the Napa, with minor enhancements that continue to build on the previous platform. While 45nm may seem like a big deal in Intel's marketing scheme, the availability of Penryn/Wolfdale based processors have been on notebooks since the beginning of this year for the Santa Rosa Refresh platform. As such, we aren't really too excited (yet) about the newer platform and while we do want to test out the newer laptops featuring the Centrino 2 platform, we aren't really expecting much of a performance boost (but we're still keen on being surprised).



Seen at the launch too were the various notebook models from the vendors that have already started embracing the Centrino 2 platform. Some of these models were also sporting WiMax dongles that are an optional feature for Intel Centrino 2 laptops

Lenovo's 15-inch ThinkPad T500 allows the user to switch between using the onboard integrated graphics and the discrete ATI Mobility Radeon graphics.

Toshiba's Qosmio G50 which is using an Intel P8600 mobile processor which features an 18.4-inch Full HD panel and a NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT. Note the WiMAX dongle at the side.

HP's addition to the Centrino 2 platform was the 14.1-inch HP Pavilion dv4 which features a Blu-ray combo drive.
The ASUS G50V featuring the Montevina platform with a NVIDIA GeForce 9700M GT and up to 8GB of DDR3 1066 RAM.

WiMax on the High Seas
As mentioned earlier, the Intel Centrino 2 platform comes with support for WiMax, the latest 4G broadband wireless technology that brings even more addictive Internet surfing experience to users on the go, being capable of easily covering entire cities and providing seamless surfing on-the-go. In Singapore, QMax is currently the sole WiMax provider and mainly caters to the marine industry but hopefully we should soon see more commercial usage soon. To fully experience WiMax, QMax took us out to sea while we surfed the World Wide Web on the newest Intel Centrino 2 laptops. Check it out.

Currently, QMax's WiMax coverage is currently only available for the southern parts of Singapore. This is due to the fact that QMax's WiMax currently caters to mostly the marine industry. Some parts of Singapore like the CBD areas are also covered.

In theory, you could probably drive around the entire island while still remaining connected with WiMax once the network infrastructure is fully deployed and the algorithms for base station transitions are up and running. QMax has said that they will soon be done with the migration of their older WiMax network to the newer version and will be able to provide their customers with a seamless Internet surfing experience. With that, we look forward to an even more seamlessly connected world without the interruptions and reconnections required on the current Wi-Fi networks.