Sandy Bridge processors on sale early

No-one cares about launch dates any more

IF YOURE DESPERATE to get your hands on Intel’s upcoming Sandy Bridge processors before they officially launch, it seems like you have to take a trip to Malaysia, as there the new processors have already gone on sale. Now they’re not supposed to be selling the processors early, but it seems like some local shops don’t really care.

It’s possible that this is the case in other parts of the world as well; it’s just that the first reports are coming out of Malaysia and we’ll be checking out the computer market in Taipei tomorrow to see if there are any Sandy Bridge processors on sale there. Currently only three models are available, although the good news is that they are very close in price to the list prices we reported about back in November which indicates that those list prices are close to the real deal.

The Core i5 2300 is listed at 585 MYR ($186), with the Core i5 2400 at 609 MYR ($194) and finally the Core i7 2600 is listed at 939 MYR ($299) according to lowyat.net. The site also has pictures of the three CPU models in retail packaging which are said to be from one of the retailers Facebook page. Pictures of two different motherboard models are also provided. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen motherboards on sale early, as the same scenario took place when Intel’s LGA-1156 platform launched, although processors didn’t appear ahead of the launch.

In related news we’ve also seen plenty of listings for various LGA-1155 boards on sale in Taiwan from both Asus and Gigabyte. It’s not the full line-up of boards from either manufacturer, but most board models appear to be on offer. The question is whether or not there are processors on sale or not, as without the processors, the motherboards aren’t much good to anyone. Considering that there is availability of CPUs in parts of the world, we would expect benchmark figures to start to appear ahead of the launch, something Intel can’t be too happy about, no matter how the new platform performs.S|A

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