Intel Core 2 Duo T9300

Conclusion:

Intel's Penryn is a wonderful processor for desktops and from our experience with the Core 2 Duo T9300 this is also definitely the case on the mobile side. The Core 2 Duo T9300 had a strong upper-hand in LAME (MP3) and Ogg encoding as well as the Linux kernel compilation test, even when factoring in the other differences between the three ThinkPad notebooks. In addition, Ubuntu 8.04 is shipping with GCC 4.2.3, while the recently released GCC 4.3 contains support for Intel's SSE4.1 and SSE4.2 (Streaming SIMD Extensions) instruction sets. If you upgrade your GNU compiler, you will see even a greater boost in performance thanks to the SSE4 addition. With Intel's Deep Power Down Technology, switching their hafnium-infused circuitry, and building this CPU on a 45nm process, there are also major power and thermal benefits to the Penryn family.

The T9300 is currently the second-fastest Core 2 Duo (non-Extreme) mobile processor, with the Core 2 Duo T9500 having just a 100MHz advantage. This processor with the Lenovo ThinkPad T61 based upon the "Santa Rosa Refresh" had worked well under Linux with Ubuntu 8.04 Beta and had posed no issues at all. The CPU frequency scaling had worked "out of the box" along with the rest of the ACPI subsystem and the only snags are the NVIDIA binary driver with suspend and resume. Later this year Intel will be rolling out their Montevina platform consisting of an Intel Core 2 "Penryn" processor that consumes even less power, Intel's Mobile 45 Express Chipset with GMA X4500 graphics and DDR3 support, and an Intel PCI Express adapter that supports both 802.11g/n wireless and 802.16 WiMax.

We have more articles in the works with additional Linux results for the Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 and the Lenovo ThinkPad T61. Discuss Intel's Core 2 Penryn processors on Linux in the Phoronix Forums.