ASUS' Centrino 2, Puma notebooks leaked

Much of ASUS' notebooks running both Intel's Centrino 2 platform and the corresponding AMD Puma foundation have been revealed in advance, according to several leaks from Notebook Italia. The M-series will still serve as ASUS' media-oriented flagships, but will now trade power savings for performance: the stock M51VR will use Intel's new low-power 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo that uses only 3MB of Level 2 cache but also consumes just 25W of average power, while both the M51VA and the 17-inch M70VM will use a 35W chip that doubles the cache size to 6MB.

All these top-range systems will come with 4GB of memory, but will vary in storage. The smaller M51 models will have up to a 320GB hard disk, while the M70VM launches with up to two 320GB disks in one system. Once part choice improves, the larger system will also have the choice of 6GB of memory and dual 500GB drives that supply a full terabyte of data. Graphics are likely to be based around upcoming variants of NVIDIA's GeForce 9M and AMD's ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3000 video chipsets.

More mid-range Intel systems will also be available. Keeping the same memory and storage, the 15.4-inch V1V will run either the 2.26GHz or 2.4GHz low-power chips and have the option of the full-power 2.53GHz processor; its graphics will be locked to a 512MB Mobility Radeon HD 3650. ASUS additionally plans a high-powered 14-inch F8V lineup that clocks in at 2.4GHz (low-power) or 2.53GHz (full-power) and use either a Mobility Radeon HD 3650 with a full 1GB of memory or a 256MB Mobility Radeon HD 3470.

The Taiwanese PC maker lastly plans to be a vanguard of AMD's new mobile platform and will ship two systems based on the technology. With 15.4-inch screens, the F5Z and X50Z will both share similar dimensions and also use AMD's upcoming 1.9GHz Athlon 64 X2 mobile chip along with a newer integrated graphics chip, the Radeon HD 3200, which promises to outperform the X4500 option from Intel's platform. Both will similarly carry 3GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive. The differences between the two computers aren't explained, though both will be on the market in Europe as early as June for 699 Euros ($1,097) and may fetch similar or better pricing in the US.

Filed under: computers
Other story tags: Intel, ASUS, AMD, Core 2, GeForce, ATI, Radeon, Centrino, Athlon, Puma