Intel always seems to head off any new AMD announcement with some juicy news of its own, and last week was no exception -- sort of. While the hardware world waits anxiously for the upcoming Phenom II release, Intel and some of its partners chose to unveil the world's first mainstream quad-core mobile processor.

The difference this time was that the unveiling wasn't Intel's idea. In fact, had it not been for Acer touting a new notebook, many would have missed the debut of the Core 2 Quad Mobile Q9000.

Inside the Q9000

Positioning a mainstream mobile quad-core is a tightrope act, as Intel doesn't want to risk cannibalizing sales of its existing and premium-priced laptop quads. The obvious remedy is to reduce clock speeds, which Intel has done by dropping the Core 2 Quad Mobile Q9000 to 2.0GHz, compared to 2.26GHz for the model Q9100 and 2.53GHz for the Core 2 Extreme Mobile QX9300.

That's not much of a slowdown, you say? You're right -- who would be willing to pay more than double the new CPU's price for only a 13 percent boost in clock speed? So Intel took the extra step of tweaking the architecture, using a new Penryn core with 6MB of Level 2 cache (3MB shared by each pair of cores). Previous Core 2-based mobile quads featured 12MB of L2 cache.

This change brings relative performance lower. Combined with the clock-speed decrease, the result is a processor that Intel hopes will stake out new territory for quad-core notebook shoppers.

The rest of the specifications are unchanged. Along with support for Intel SpeedStep and Virtualization Technology, the Core 2 Quad Mobile Q9000 is built on a 45-nanometer process, runs on a 1066MHz front-side bus, and has a voltage range of 1.05 to 1.175 volts and thermal design power of 45 watts.

The power and thermal figures are a bit surprising because they're exactly the same as the 2.53GHz Core 2 Extreme Mobile QX9300's. These are likely maximum specs for the entire line, and it's logical that the Q9000 will be on the low end of this range.

Acer Gets the Ball Rolling

The first Core 2 Quad Mobile Q9000 product is a new configuration of the Acer Aspire 8930G, Acer's flagship gaming and multimedia notebook. Other system specs include 4GB of DDR3 memory, an 18.4-inch, 1,920 by 1,080-pixel HD display, a 500GB SATA hard drive, a Blu-ray/DVD±RW combo drive, and Nvidia GeForce 9700M GT graphics with 512MB of dedicated memory.

As laptops go, this would make a killer desktop, and its $1,800 price is pretty killer itself. But there is no reason that more modestly equipped and market-positioned notebooks can't be produced using the Q9000.

Indeed, Intel's most recent price list has the new quad at the same price as a 2.53GHz mobile dual-core. The TDP rating of 45 watts is also not far off that of most Core 2 Duo Mobiles' 34 or 35 watts, let alone 44 watts for the highest-clocked Core 2 Extreme Mobiles.

Notebooks Take Over

The release of the Core 2 Quad Mobile Q9000 could not have come at a more opportune time, as a recent news report from iSuppli revealed that in the third quarter of 2008, shipments of notebook PCs narrowly surpassed those of desktops for the first time.

Sure, that may be a bit misleading, as the iSuppli figures include the red-hot netbook segment, ignore the DIY enthusiast desktop market, and don't reflect a possible holiday spike (or recession plunge) in the fourth quarter . But the trends are still intriguing.

While notebooks' advantage in third-quarter sales was small, they jumped considerably from the same period in 2007, while desktops dipped slightly. Due to increased worker mobility and changes in small-office and household buying patterns, the notebook takeover was expected to happen, but not this early. People are doing more with their notebooks than ever before, and correspondingly expecting far more out of their mobile hardware.

Most notebooks now offer dedicated 3D graphics as an option, and even integrated GPUs have upped the ante in terms of overall performance. Popular games like World of Warcraft are perennial favorites for the mobile crowd, and there are lengthy online discussions about which notebooks and mobile graphics processors are best suited to play it. Dell even produced a custom WoW notebook built specifically to handle the demands of this online game.

And it's not just games; everyone from graphics professionals to SETI converts is demanding more mobile horsepower. People are looking at laptops in a different way, not just as another computing tool in the toolbox, but as full-fledged desktop replacements. This is the perfect time to introduce a reasonably priced mobile quad-core, and there should be a sizable market for it.

A Quad in Every Briefcase

The key to this release is not performance or multithreading, as the Extreme mobile quad-cores already own those records. The Core 2 Quad Mobile Q9000 is all about price and availability.

Intel's 1,000-unit price for the new processor is $348, which is significantly lower than the Core 2 Quad Mobile Q9100 ($851) or Extreme QX9300 ($1,038). This is not only on par with a current mid-range Core 2 Duo Mobile, but lower than the CPUs in first-generation Core 2 Duo notebooks.

The time is ripe for mainstream notebooks with the performance that quad-core technology has to offer, especially if it doesn't take a bank loan to get on board. If laptop vendors respond and cooling and TDP specs follow our expectations, the Core 2 Quad Mobile Q9000 could usher in a new category of notebooks -- one that can not only compete with desktops, but may also help stave off the attack of ultra-cheap netbooks.