More cores for less
A recent change to Intel's processor price list reveals some interesting additions, the most conspicuous of which is a quad-core mobile processor that significantly lowers the cost of entry to that genre of CPU.
The Q9000 is listed as costing $348, while the Q9100 and most of the other "extreme" mobile CPUs all cost $851. So suddenly a lot more system builders may consider it viable to make quad-core notebooks. Such as Acer, if reports are to be believed, although the Aspire 8930G has yet to show evidence of the upgrade on Acer's UK site.
Intel has also added 0.13 GHz of clock speed to four dual-core mobile CPUs and upgraded their names accordingly. There is no additional price for this tweak so, effectively, the P8600 becomes the P8700, T9400 - T9550, P9500 - P9600 and T9600 - T9800.
Here's a good old table for you, including the pre-existing Q9100, so you can see what concessions have been made to price:
| Processor | Price ($) | Clock (GHz) | L2 cache (MB) | FSB (MHz) | Process (nm) |
| Q9100 | 851 | 2.26 | 12 | 1066 | 45 |
| Q9000 | 348 | 2.00 | 6 | 1066 | 45 |
| T9800 | 530 | 2.93 | 6 | 1066 | 45 |
| P9600 | 348 | 2.66 | 6 | 1066 | 45 |
| T9550 | 316 | 2.66 | 6 | 1066 | 45 |
| P8700 | 241 | 2.53 | 6 | 1066 | 45 |
