Intel Intros Four 35W Dual-Core Ivy Bridge Processors

Intel really dropped a bombshell today, having officially launched no less than fourteen dual-core / quad-core central processing units, all built on the 22nm manufacturing process.

Out of the 14 chips, four are the sort that will be utilized in the construction of mid-range notebooks. They are called Core i5-3320M, i5-3360M, i7-3520M and i5-3210M. The first three are priced at $225 (181 Euro), $266 (214 Euro), $346 (279 Euro), but the fourth was not given a tag for some reason, in the Intel slides posted by Engadget. Fortunately, the rest of information is readily available. The Santa Clara, California-based company made a point of publishing it well ahead of Computex, apparently. To start off, the Core i5-3320M has a base clock of 2.6 GHz and a Turbo Boost 2.0 frequency of 3.10 GHz (dual-core) or 3.30 GHz (when only one core is used).

On the same note, the integrated graphics (HD 4000) normally runs at 650 MHz, but can jump as high as 1,200 MHz. The second chip, Core i5-3360M, runs at 2.8 GHz (3.3 / 3.5 GHz) and the same speeds for the GPU. Thirdly, the i5-3210M normally operates at 2.5 GHz, but can achieve 2.9 GHz / 3.1 GHz when necessary. Its GPU is limited to 1,100 MHz though. Fourth and finally, the i7-3520M has a base speed of 2.9 GHz and Turbo Boost frequencies of 3.4 / 3.6 GHz and 650 MHz/ 1,250 MHz GPU performance.

All processors make do with 35 W of energy and 3 MB of L3 cache, except for the Core i7-3520M, which has 4 MB L3 cache. Finally, the newcomers support HyperThreading (four threads), PCI Express 3.0, Intel Secure Key, Intel OS Guard, AES/TXT/vPro technology and Virtualization. Stay tuned as we go through all the other CPUs that Chipzilla saw fit to formally release. Products based on them won't appear until Computex, but that event isn't really far off (June 06-09, 2012).

Posted in: Hardware, Preview