10 Things You Need to Know About Arrandale processors.

by Laarni Almendrala Ragaza

1. The "Arrandale" chips are Intel's new mainstream Core i7, Core i5, and Core i3 mobile processors.

2. The new CPUs have two physical cores instead of the four found in the high-end Core i7 mobile CPUs (codenamed "Clarksfield").

3. Arrandale marks the first time integrated graphics has moved into the processor package. This means every laptop with a Core i7, Core i5, or Core i3 CPU will automatically have integrated graphics.

4. The new Core i7, Core i5, and Core i3 CPUs will have Hyper-Threading technology, which means that each core will have two threads. Thus, your laptop's operating system will recognize these processors as having four cores.

5. With Arrandale, Intel does away with the Front Side Bus by integrating the memory and a PCI-e controller (graphics) into the processor package itself.

6. The new SouthBridge has an official name, and it's called the Intel 5 Series Chipset. There will be multiple versions of it for the home and enterprise markets.

7. The chipset can stream to multiple monitors, with support for dual HDMI and DisplayPort technologies.

8. By eliminating a third chip and consolidating motherboard space, the Arrandale/Calpella platform paves the way for thinner and lighter laptops, while scaling performance.

9. TurboBoost technology, an intelligent form of overclocking, is automatically activated when you are running 2D and single-threaded applications, and deactivated when you're running multi-threaded applications, for better performance.

10. The mobile Core i7s mark the end of DDR2 memory. Their dual channel memory controller can support DDR3 memory speeds of up to 1333MHz.