Intel has provided some projected performance numbers for their new Penryn processor. The projections were provided at the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing.

Pat Gelsinger, senior vice present and general manager of the Digital Enterprise Group, provided the performance estimates. "For desktop PCs," he said "expect increases of about 15 percent for imaging-related applications; 25 percent for 3-D rendering; more than 40 percent for gaming; and more than 40 percent faster video encoding with Intel SSE4 optimized video encoders."

The indicators were based on pre-production 45nm Hi-k Intel® quad core processor running at 3.33 Gigahertz (GHz) with a 1333 Megahertz (MHz) front side bus (FSB) and 12MB cache versus an Intel® Core 2 Extreme processor QX6800 introduced last week at 2.93 GHz with 1066 FSB and 8MB cache.

For high performance computing applications, Mr. Gelsinger said to expect gains up to 45 percent for bandwidth intensive applications and a 25 percent increase for servers using Java.

There has been no formal announcement as to when the Penryn family of chips might appear in Intel Macs. However, they are slated to replace Intelis Core 2 Duo processor currently shipping.