Dell Bets on Intel Penryn for its High-End Laptops

Dell will begin offering Intel's Penryn processor as an option on several notebooks within a week or so, according to sources close to the computer giant. Although the 45-nanometer generation of Penryn processors targeted at laptops was announced back in early January, the chips haven't exactly leaped into laptop lineups. So far, Hewlett-Packard is the biggest taker of one Penryn chip: the Core 2 Duo T9300 (2.5GHz, 6MB L2 cache). Dell has not specified yet which models will get the processors, but the company's high-performance notebooks, such as the XPS, are likely candidates. Intel's 45-nanometer mobile processors integrate 6MB of cache versus 4MB for the older 65-nanometer Merom generation, and the lower-end chips integrate 3MB versus 2MB for the Merom-class processors.