Sandy Bridge arrives from Intel with up to 50% performance boost
Intel pulled its Sandy Bridge launch forward today, launching the new family a full two days earlier than the planned January 5th date at CES. And with 15 desktop parts and 14 mobile parts, what a launch it is. The 29 total parts announced make it Intel's biggest launch ever.
Initial reviews are now coming in, and it looks like Intel has a winner on its hands, at least for now. Anand is the first one out with truly comprehensive looks at both the desktop and mobile parts, and he's quite impressed. Sandy Bridge's completely overhauled microarchitecture gives it between a 10 percent and 50 percent performance boost over its predecessor in some instances, depending on the workload. For now, Intel has mainly chosen to exploit the benefits of its new design by keeping clock speeds low and offering the same level of performance as Arrandale, but at much cheaper prices.
Apple watchers will note that Intel did indeed launch a 17W mobile Sandy Bridge part, which is a prime candidate for a MacBook Air. It's possible that once the platform's OpenCL x86 support is finalized, we could see Apple use the new processor in a MacBook Air refresh. We wouldn't expect this for some time, though, since Apple just updated the laptop.
