Despite Intel's recent problems with the 6-series chipsets, it looks like the company is steaming ahead with plans to ship the dual-core variants of its Sandy Bridge processors later this month.
According to the chip-giant's official product database, the dual-core, four-thread processors in the Core i5 mobile and Core i3 mobile and desktop families will be released on 20 February. At the top of the mobile stack are the Core i5 2540M and 2520M, which will clock in at 2.6GHz and 2.5GHz, respectively, and both fit into a 35W TDP. There's also a low-power 17W Core i5 2537M clocked at 1.40GHz and a pair of embedded CPUs clocked at 2.5GHz due to be released on the same day.
Slightly lower down the scale is the mobile Core i3 2310E, clocked at 2.1GHz with a 35W TDP. As far as we can tell, the feature set is largely the same as on the Core i5 models, with the exception of Turbo Boost, which is disabled on this lower-end chip, and support for AES and Trusted Execution Technology.
On the desktop side of things are three new chips in the Core i3 family - the 3.3GHz 2120, the 3.1GHz 2100 and the 2.5GHz low-power 2100T. The first two have a 65W thermal-envelope, while the latter manages to squeeze into a 35W TDP. Again, the Core i3 chips won't support Turbo Boost, and are limited to 3MB total cache, compared to 6MB on the desktop Core i5s. Otherwise, the specs are pretty much the same as their four-core cousins.
Although it seems odd that Intel would roll out new CPUs when the chipsets won't be available until April, the news that the company is shipping a limited supply of controllers to select partners means that it might not be too much of a problem. Of course, it's still possible that Intel will push back these new processors until the supply of the 6-series chips is more stable.
