Sandy Bridge Archive

Some of the big news coming out of the CES show in Las Vegas yesterday was Intel’s announcement about their new line of processors with a code name of Sandy Bridge. These processors will actually be called the next generation of Core processors to consumers when they hit shelves this week. I don’t know about you but I find shopping for a processor much like buying a mattress. It’s nearly impossible to easily figure out the the differences in the levels and figure out which is the latest and which is a much older model. I’ve noticed several times where the home shopping channels (i.e. QVC & HSN) sell “dual core” processors which sound super new and fancy but are actually several years old.

It appears the key to making sure you are buying the new Core Sandy Bridge processor is to make sure the product number has four digits. For example, “Intel Core i5 2400 Processor” is one of the new processors in the Intel Sandy Bridge lineup. Computerworld and Tom’s Hardware have good, in-depth reviews of the new processors. If you like graphs and tests using the latest version of Quake or Doom, Tom’s is the place to go.

If you want to be the first on your block or in your Twitter stream to own one of the new Intel processors, here are some options for places to purchase the chip. My guess is that we won’t see lines like we see with anything Apple releases.

MicroCenter will be offering the processors starting on January 9th and is offering a number of in-store only deals. It looks like the pricing after the discounts will range from $149 for the Intel Core i5 2400 to $279 for the Intel Core i7 2600K Unlocked processor.

Update – the MicroCenter link above no longer takes you to the sales page for the new processors. We are hearing that MC jumped the gun – the processors don’t actually go on sale until January 9th.
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