Mobile PIIIs offer laptop power savings

Intel has today taken the wraps off five mobile processors including the first mobile Pentium III chip that consumes less than one watt of power.

The new range of processors is aimed at all types of notebook design, including full-size, thin and light, and ultra portable.

Intel's mobile Pentium III chip running at 750Mhz is the fastest mobile PC processor available. The chip includes Intel's Speedstep technology, launched at the beginning of the year, which allows laptops to run at speeds on a par with desktop chips, without reducing battery life.

Speedstep enables laptops to operate in two modes: maximum performance and battery-optimised. The technology automatically chooses which mode to use depending on whether the laptop is running on batteries or is plugged into the mains. For example, a laptop running at 700Mhz powers down to 500Mhz when running on battery power, saving battery life.

The 750Mhz Pentium III chip averages less than two watts of power consumption in battery-optimised mode and around 4.5 watts fully operational.

An Intel spokesman said this compares to consumption of around 13 watts consumed by a previous processor, the Pentium III mobile 600Mhz. "The saving is huge," he said.

The new lower-power mobile Pentium III 600Mhz consumes less than one watt of power in battery-optimised mode.

Intel also launched mobile Intel Celeron processors at 650Mhz, 600Mhz and 500Mhz.

All mobile Pentium III processors feature a 100Mhz system bus, 256Kb full-speed advanced transfer cache, advanced system buffering and internet streaming SIMD extensions for high performance.

Pricing starts at $134 per unit when bought in 1000-unit quantities.

At the same time, the chip giant unveiled two chipsets for Pentium III processor-based PCs targeted at the mainstream desktop market.

The 815 and 815e chipsets, based on the company's Hub architecture, provide graphics functionality with the ability to upgrade via an external graphics card for either AGP 4x or AGP 2x graphics capabilities. Both chipsets also feature support for PC133 and PC100 SDRAM memory.

Pricing starts at $41 each for 1000-unit quantities.

Analysts say the launch couldn't have come at a better time for Intel, which is suffering a dent to its image after delays to its low-level Celeron processor, codenamed Timna, Pentium III delivery problems and new launches from rivals AMD and Transmeta.