With the introduction of the new 3 Series chipset family at Computex Taipei, Intel also announced a mobile version of Intel's Core 2 Extreme chip which is lined up to hit store shelves in high-end gaming notebooks equipped with Nvidia's SLI graphics technology, which uses two graphics chips instead of one.
"It's going to be for a hardcore gamer who values performance over anything and my suspicion is that you're going to see them in 17-inch [notebooks] and above, but we'll see," Maloney said. "At the Santa Rosa launch, there were 21-inch notebooks introduced."
Nvidia is looking to extend the company's Extreme Edition brand first introduced for desktop PCs in 2003, now targeting mobile gamers. The chip will initially be used in three notebooks: two from Asus, one with a 15-inch LCD screen and the other with a 17-inch; and the "Dragon" notebook from HP. As the notebook business continues to grow, Intel plans to position themselves aggressively in the lucrative segment.