The Intel Centrino platform is now commonplace amongst the latest laptops in the market. It is a "platform", meaning that it is a computing infrastructure upon which all laptops components (e.g. the CPU, graphics card, RAM) are installed and interoperate.
 

The various forms of the Intel Centrino CPU

Different processor cores are used in the Intel Centrino platform. The earlier, first two generations of the Pentium M processor core were called "Banias" and "Dothan". These used an 855 mobile chipset. The latest, third generation Pentium M processor core is called Sonoma and is based on the 915 mobile chipset.

Without getting too technical about it, you should know that the Banias is the least efficient of the three processor cores. The Dothan is the most energy efficient of the three. The Sonoma core, on the other hand, is a simply a speed upgrade of the Dothan. Note that Sonoma based Centrino notebooks have worse battery life than ones based on Dothans, simply because Sonomas are not as energy efficient as Dothans.

What an Intel Centrino CPU looks like

There are essentially two chipsets used in Centrino based laptops. The first is the older 855/865 chipset which is used by the Bania and Dothan cores. While they provide decent graphics performance, they will not be able to run the most modern 3D games.

The 915 chipset used by the Sonoma core, however, is much better - it has a superior graphics processing unit based on Extreme Graphics 2 - and it will play most modern 3D games.

The wireless cards supported by the Intel Centrino platform also differ. They are spelt out below:

• 2100B - 802.11b 11Mbps only
• 2200BG - 802.11b (11Mbps) and 802.11g (54Mbps)
• 2915ABG - 802.11a (11Mbps), 802.11b (11Mbps) 802.11g (54Mbps), support for future technologies