COMPUTEX 2009: Intel demoed what is believed to be the world’s first ‘Clarksfield’ based laptop this morning, which featured a quad-core processor derived from Intel’s Nehalem architecture.

Clarksfield is built on Intel’s 32nm process and features four physical cores and eight threads thanks to HyperThreading technology.

The machine was an Asus engineering sample, featuring an undisclosed Nvidia mobile GPU and we had chance to have a quick play around with Crysis at 1,920 x 1,080, which all looked pretty impressive.

Its form factor was definitely not going to be classed as slender, but it was thinner than most gaming laptops of this class we’ve seen in recent years. Intel says that Nehalem’s “flexible and power efficient” architecture is to thank for this.

Intel refused to disclose any further details on Clarksfield at this time, so clock frequencies, amount of cache and thermal design power will have to wait for another day. The company’s representatives also refused to nail down a release date, but one spokesperson did suggest that it would “be out before the end of the year,” which suggests that Intel’s 32nm process is well ahead of schedule like the company promised a few months back.

One thing to note is that we don’t expect to see quad-core processors in Thin and Light notebooks any time soon – you’re probably going to have to wait until 2010 to see Nehalem based ultra-portables with the graphics core integrated onto the CPU die.

Discuss in the forums.