Intel's Santa Rosa Platform is Alive on Vestel Notebook at CeBIT

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Intel's Santa Rosa Platform is Alive!

While we were at CeBIT this Monday (the last day of the show), we visited with a Turkish company named Vestel. Vestel produces notebooks and LCD screens that are sold mostly in Europe. While looking over some of the notebooks Vestel had on display we noticed one with specifications that indicated a 2.4GHz T7700 Intel processor. I could not believe my eyes, they actually had a Santa Rosa notebook running there!

Here are some first shots of the Santa Rosa platform with its X3100 integrated video accelerator.

The specifications of the Vestel notebook (view large image)

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Vestel notebook running the T7700 2.4 GHz Santa Rosa processor (view large image)

 

The Intel X3100 video accelerator scores a 2.7 on Vista’s System Performance Assessment, 128 MB dedicated memory for the X3100 (view large image)

I must have been the first one to notice this at the show, despite the fact it had already been running for five days. Once I'd pointed this out it only took a couple of minutes for the chief of Toshiba come over from their booth next door and complain to Vestel that they are not permitted to show off the new Santa Rosa platform. It is forbidden to do so by Intel. I hope that I do not bring this new company any problems and Intel doesn't catch wind of this, their notebook lineup is quite nice and they could offer some strong competition in Europe! Some pics of more Vestel notebooks are below:

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Thanks for the detective work and uncovering Vestel!

I was actually at their booth a few days before you and was impressed by their lineup, I did not notice the DJR154SG notebook (what a mouthful) running Santa Rosa notebook like you did though. They had a ton of notebooks there, which is my excuse for missing it I guess.

That's hilarious the Toshiba guys busted over to challenge Vestel on this. I'm unfamiliar with this company, but looking at their website it seems that they make a number of products, from TVs to air conditioners to washing machines.

http://www.vestel.com/en/products

 

Windows experience index: 2.7

For shame!!!

 

I'm sure the low score is because of the integrated graphics. I'd be curious to know what the score for the processor was.

 

Great find Charlie. The Vestel notebooks do look quite good, but as Andrew mentioned, we've not heard of the company before.

 

WTF! My GMA950 gets a higher score than that!

 

Funny how they put an S/PDIF on there when Vista won't let you use it correctly.

 

Good find Charlie! Those Vestel notebooks look good. Quite stylish, I might add.

 

Thanks for the complimants guys.

Please keep in mind that this notebook was running on Beta drivers. The Santa Rosa platform will be launched at May (I asked the Intel chief, he only said Q2 2007) so that means that they have a lot of time to write a good driver for this video card.

Vestel is an old and well known company in Turkey. Now it is also in the notebook business. I wonder if they will ever be able to compete with Asus and Acer though. I wish them luck (Turkish here too )

Edit: Lappyhappy I know reliased that I should have also checked that. That's a real shame!

 

Ahh, right.

I would have expected Intel to have had more mature drivers for it already.

But, since it's not out until May, they have time.

 

is that carbon fibre casing in the last picture or is it just me but still i really adore the backlit keyboard reminds me of the MAC acctually

 

Same here. That picture caught my eye right off because of the backlit keyboard.

 

vestel is known brand in northern-eastern europe, they sell cheaper domestic electronics...

 

Well they are calling it a GMA X3100 instead of the GMA X3000 for the desktop G965. It may be a marketing thing, but if there has been some changes in the hardware, which is possible that some bugs were fixed from the original GMA X3000 implementation, it would certainly explain why the drivers are immature since the existing GMA X3000 ones wouldn't be fully compatible.

 

Intel knows about this...

 

Never heard of Vestel before but they sure do have some eye catching laptops.

 

Is that good or bad?

=P

 

I really wish there are more laptops out with backlit keyboards much like the keyboards on smartphones/pdas. I'm sure it has to do with the battery life and the added cost of adding LEDs under the keyboard. beautiful laptops though, but I wonder if they're the ODM's or they just rebrand.

 

Oops, if they didn't before they do now, I forgot we had Intel employees in the forums. Huh.

 

well they certainly have my attention now in my opinion this was a publicity stunt to gain morea ttention which they have done now
i like the looks of their latops eye catching too
too bad though the dont sell here in the middle east or in the states either would be nice to see some cheap priced good looking and quality latops for sale....but too bad we dont know about their reliability yet but still all the more look promising now

 

Great post Charlie, good find. I like that last laptop with the backlit keyboard. I don't know of any other laptop that has one of those but an Apple MacBook Pro.

This is all certainly very exciting, Santa Rosa is only a bit over a month away from release.

 

2.7 My Inspiron 6000 with a ATI x300 128mb card scores 3.4 in Vista. I guess I will buy a dedicated card when I buy a new laptop this summer.

 

The drivers, the drivers, the drivers!

I'm really hoping that Intel's finalized drivers really will unlock the full potential of the card. Great find though, this shows us that Santa Rosa is really really close! Now wheres OSX Leopard?

 

Lol, yeah you gotta point. That S/PDIF is useless with HDCP.

 

I agree.

All laptops should at least have the option. I'd easily pay $50 or perhaps even more for the option of a backlit keyboard.

 

We need a workaround

 

i second your opinion its a great option to have along with the ambient sensor

 

From what I understand, mature drivers aren't expected until Q3 of this year. Meaning, X3000 wouldn't be any faster than a GMA950 until then. Shame really, but worth the wait. Heard it'll play Half-Life 2 at 1280x800 with respectable detail settings.

 

I hope it can do better than HL2. Laptop's are sorely lacking in GFX department. I was hoping GMA3000 would solve this like i740 video card did for base level graphics on desktops.

Good find. I'm holding out for Laptop purchase when Santa Rosa is available. I may have to look at Vestel units.

 

I'd also like to say there is massive room for manufacturers to reduce the price on laptops, so lets hope Vestel can move this way. The Santa Rosa chipsets shouldn't make the base machines any more expensive, in fact it should replace the cheaper levels straight away on release.