Intel Arrandale Performance

This is a pretty basic question - has anyone spent any time with any Arranadale machine (there were dozens announced and available to test at CES)? I am so surprised that none of the big review sites, especially NotebookReview.com, has been able to put together even a basic comparison against the Montevina and Santa Rosa platforms. Yes, the Clarksfield has been tested pretty rigorously but that doesn't necessarily equate with what a lower-wattage mobile system will show.

I mean are we talking about a pre-Core 2 Duo to Core 2 Duo type jump (unlikely!) or more of yet another baby step in system capability begging for more properly multi-threaded apps to be pushed out?

 

Here's interesting tests:
http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3705&p=1

You won't notice anything if you only do stuff like browse the web and write documents, but if you do stuff like video editing, compiling/programming, etc. looks very good!

 

I've also been pretty disappointed with NotebookReview. How can we have a whole new line of T-series with whole new architecture, but the only thing they've reviewed almost a week later is the edge? What the heck!?

 

NBR does not really get to choose what machines they receive to review, so you can't pin the blame on them.

 

I read somewhere that the "Turbo Boost" might be entirely useless as it requires that one core is in deep sleep. And even desktop OSs have enough threads nowadays to keep two cores busy. I guess it would eventually need changes to the threading/scheduler to make use of that.
Anybody with more reliable details?

 

Pretty sure this isn't true. Turbo boosts referrences the TDP as the overclocking threshold. And I seriously doubt a single core will exceed the 35W envelope of most Arrandale processors.

 

A whole thread on Arrandale tests. In many of the links in that thread are tests with Core i5 vs the P series.

 

hmmm a "slight improvement" in battery...
that actually shocked me a lot

 

This is FALSE.
It's supposed to increase increments until you reach the specified limit, you hit the TDP wattage threshold or temps.

I own a Core i7 920 on my Windows 2008 server and I've actually see it in action due this.

Supposedly the Arrandales are 1/3 faster while maintaining battery runtimes of their 25W older Core 2 duo counterparts not the 35W Core 2 Duo T models ) and supposedly at the same price points.

Also if you are paranoid, or simply conscious like me, Arrandale runs circles around the Core 2 Duo for encryption, especially for implementations like Bitlocker and TrueCrypt. and even EFS (anything with AES NI).

 

That's the one thing that could actually do make a noticeable difference for everyday usage.
How is that implemented? New instructions? Then it would probably still take some time until compilers pick it up?!

 

I'm a noob at this low-level stuff: wouldn't that require that those applications get recompiled with a compiler that's aware of those AES instructions?