“A lot of people wanted to see a new MacBook Pro based on Intel’s Core 2 Duo processor (code-name “Merom”) at WWDC, but as I’ve said here before, it’s just too soon. The MacBook Pro (15-inch) was announced less than five months ago – on February 14th and Apple doesn’t want to make all their new MBP customers obsolete with a chip upgrade that soon. Not to mention the existing inventory of MBPs they’d be sacrificing,” Jason O’Grady blogs for ZDNet.
“…Although Merom is pin-compatible with Yonah you need a socket interface in order to upgrade to Merom. Both the MacBook and MacBook Pro have Ball Grid Array (BGA) interfaces so upgrading them to Merom is out of the question – unless you really like to solder,” O’Grady writes. AnandTech explains, “If you’ve got a Core Duo notebook with a PGA Socket-M interface, all you should need is a BIOS update and a Core 2 Duo CPU to upgrade your notebook. If you’ve got a BGA CPU, then you’re unfortunately out of luck as desoldering 479 balls from your motherboard without damaging it isn’t for the faint of heart.”
O’Grady writes, “One consolation is that the iMac and Mac mini have socketed interfaces making Merom upgrades possible – but doing so will void your warranty.”
Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Intel Core 2 Duo vs. Core Duo – August 05, 2006
Apple chose well: Anandtech – Intel Core 2 Duo ‘the fastest desktop processor we’ve ever tested’ – July 14, 2006
PC Mag: ‘Top Ten’ list of things to know about Intel’s new Core 2 Duo processors – July 07, 2006
Apple Mac Mini brain replaced with 2.16GHz Intel ‘Merom’ Core 2 Duo and benchmarked – June 09, 2006