Today marked the launch of Intel's long-anticipated second-generation Centrino platform, code-named Sonoma. CNETAsia was given a briefing of the components of the new chip bundle along with a first look at some new notebooks using the new platform. ASUS, Acer and IBM were among some of the manufacturers who gave us a preview of their new models.

View the new Sonoma notebooks

	Presenting the Sonoma-based Samsung X25. No news on a Singapore launch date though.

The new Centrino platform changes Intel's entire mobile technology setup. Sonoma notebooks comprise the new Pentium M "Dothan" chips with a higher 533MHz front-side bus, the Intel 915 Express chipset and will support Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG (802.11a/b/g wireless LAN).


The 915 chipset will have support for DDR 2 memory and the PCI Express interface with a faster transfer speeds. Two versions of the 915 chipset exist. The 915PM notebooks targets the gamers as a dedicated graphics chip such as the nVidia GeForce Go 6200 is needed for 3D rendering. Casual users can opt for the 915GM which will handles graphics with the inbuilt Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 900 sharing up to 128MB of memory.

	Expect ATI Mobility Radeon X600 / X700 to be present in notebooks.

Intel claims that PCI Express can deliver a performance increase of up to four times the graphics bandwidth of the previous PCI bus so you can expect better 3D rendering with PCI Express-compatible cards such as the ATI Mobility Radeon X600. We were also given a demonstration of a PCI Express TV tuner card on a new IBM ThinkPad T43 where TV programs and The Incredibles game were played to showcase the card's capabilities. If you can live with integrated graphics, Intel mentioned that its new graphics engine, the Intel GMA 900 has 2x the graphics performance of the previous Centrino's Intel Extreme Graphics. Other features include high-definition audio in the form of Dolby Digital 7.1 surround sound support.

Expect a slight increase in performance and battery life for Sonoma laptops. According to Intel's figures, a notebook powered by the new 730 processor has a 5 percent performance increase and 6 percent rise in battery life over a system running on the 725 processor in MobileMark 2002. Both the 730 and 725 processors are running at 1.6GHz.

New notebooks based on the Sonoma platform, included the Fujitsu LifeBook E8020, ASUS W3N, Toshiba Tecra M3 and Samsung X25. 80 new models will be launched soon with a total of more than 150 new designs by mid-2005. Some are due for release in the coming week, so look out for our coverage. Meanwhile, here's our showcase of the laptops we were given a glimpse of.

View the new Sonoma notebooks

New Sonoma notebooks