Twinsburg, OH (MMD Newswire) May 27, 2009 — AVADirect, a leading customer computer integrator, has begun offering a Core i7 notebook for sale on its website. AVADirect will be the first official consumer and business retail outlet for this new notebook. AVADirect has already begun taking pre-orders as of last week and plans to ship out the notebooks to expecting customers first week in July.
This new notebook being offered is a big step toward a truly workstation replacement. Unlike previous notebooks utilizing specialized notebook motherboards and components, this notebook is utilizing a desktop processor and desktop components. While power usage will be higher, AVADirect does not need to wait until Intel or some other company designs and implements mobile offerings of current desktop hardware. Notebook hardware always lags behind desktop hardware in terms of technology in power by 6 to 12 months as the hardware needs to be redesigned for notebook usage.
By using a desktop Core i7 processor, the notebook is able to enjoy all the benefits that accompany this hardware platform. Some of the benefits include triple-channel memory, a first ever in a notebook design. Also, the memory in this notebook is high-speed DDR3 memory, running as high as 1333 MHz, with 1600 MHz on the horizon from several memory manufacturers. With an on-board memory controller found only in current Intel Core i7 processors, these notebooks will enjoy over four times the memory bandwidth of older notebook technology. Other benefits of this platform is the re-introduction of Simultaneous Multi-Threading, SMT for short, otherwise known as HyperThreading when it was first introduced on Pentium 4 processors. SMT allows for a single processor core to work on two threads at the same time, effectively doubling the core count that the operating sees. With the current Core i7 processors having four cores, SMT virtualizes up to eight cores, allowing for even the biggest applications to be run faster than ever.
The D900F is not an entirely new design. It was based on an older model known as the D901C. This model again used a desktop processor and desktop components, but was based on the ageing Core 2 technology which limited its total overall performance. However, this system implemented a few features which can be found on the D900F such as the ability to hold three hard drives, Bluetooth, WUXGA 17″ LCD screen, wireless N, internal card reader, Blu-Ray reader and writer, webcam, and a full size keyboard. Full specifications of the system can be seem below.
- Screen: 17″ WSXGA+, optional WUXGA
- Processor: Core i7 series
- Memory: Up to 12GB DDR3 1333 MHz
- Video Card: GTX 280M with 1GB GDDR3
- Hard Drive: 1.5TB (3x 500GB); RAID 0, 1, 5 support
- Networking: Support for 802.11n; Bluetooth, 1Gb LAN, 56K modem
- Optical: DVD-RW, optional BD/DVD-RW and BD-RW
- Battery: 12-cell Li-Ion 6600 mAh
- Sound: 4 internal speakers, 3 analog inputs/output, 1 S/PDIF output 7.1CH
- Card Reader: Integrated 7-in-1
- Expansion: 1 Expresscard, 1 serial port, 1 DVI, 1 HDMI, 4 USB, 1 Firewire
- Operating Systems: Windows XP, Vista, and 7; Red Hat Enterprise Linux; Ubuntu Linux
- Starting Price: $2538.26
