Intel's new Sandy Bridge processor
architecture is eagerly awaited by many, but those of you to curious
to wait for the official launch have now a reason to rejoice as a
recent leak spells out all the future models that will make up
Intel's new line up.
Until now, not so many details were
known about this future product family apart from the fact that it
will use a new packaging called LGA1155 and that will feature an
integrated DDR3 controller and graphics core, but a recent leak
covered by
TCMagazine presents the full
Intel Sandy Bridge processor
line up.
Compared to previous processors, the
greatest change that we see is a reduction in power consumption, the
top Core i7
chips TDP going down from 130W, in current Nehalem
processors, to 95W in the top of the line Core i7-2600K.
Desktop chips will range in speed from
2.5 GHz to 3.4GHz with Turbo available from Core i5 onwards.
The entry level Core i3 processors will feature only 2
cores and the amount of Level 3 cache will be limited to 3MB.
Moving on to the Core i5, chips will
include 2 or 4 cores, some models having Hyper-Threading too, all
the processors including 6MB of Level 3 cache apart from the dual-core
Core i5-2390T which will give up 3MB of its Level 3 cache to feature
a power consumption of only 35W.
Core i7 will go all out though,
with
quad-core, 8MB Level 3 cache and a top frequency of 3.4GHz
(3.8GHz thanks to Turbo).
The new processors will also be
available in some special flavors, set apart by the end letter in
their names.
According to the new naming scheme, K
means that the processors multiplier is unlocked, S refers to a low
frequency model and T stands for lower TDP ratings.
Naming is somewhat easier to read in
the mobile versions of Sandy Bridge, Q standing for quad-core and X
for extreme.
Mobile versions will be available in
dual-core and quad-core variants and feature 3MB. 4MB, 6MB or 8MB of
Level 3 cache.
On the mobile front TDPs will range from 35W to 55W, the
most power hungry processor being the quad-core Core i7-2920XM that
runs at 2.5GHz (3.5GHz maximum thanks to Turbo), packs 8MB of L3
cache and includes the Hyper-Threading technology for a total of
eight logical computing threads.
Unfortunately is to early to talk about
pricing as we are at least four months ahead of the launch.
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