Despite availability being set for three months from now, listings appear

Feb 14, 2013 09:05 GMT  ·  By

It is one thing to fish for sporadic information on a topic of interest, and an entirely other one to be handed all the relevant data on a silver platter. The latter has occurred for a certain pair of Intel CPUs.

Forth-Generation Intel Haswell CPUs were, last we heard, scheduled for a release during this year's Computex trade show in June, 2013.

That includes everything from desktop chips to the ultra low-voltage models meant for ultrabooks.

By that logic, one would think that retailers wouldn't be very quick to list any of the CPUs until a few weeks down the line.

This logic doesn't hold any bearing now, though, since two stores have already added a pair of the fourth-generation CPUs to their lists.

PCSuperStore, for example, has begun to accept pre-orders for the Core i7-4800MQ, bearing the part number BX80647I74800MQ.

Its page seems to have disappeared, but the price was of $400.32 / 298-400 Euro when it was up, according to CPU World.

The other CPU, which is still listed, is called Core i7-4900MQ and has the box number BX80647I74900MQ. Its price is of $601.06 / 447.45-601 Euro.

Both processors have the HD 4600 integrated graphics unit, with a stock 400 MHz clock and 1.3 GHz Turbo frequency.

They also have 8 MB cache memory and the same TDP (thermal design power), of 47W, which fits their MQ monikers (they are meant for laptops).

As for x86 clocks, the Core i7-4800MQ has a frequency of 2.7 MHz (3.7 GHz maximum Turbo Boost) and the 4900MQ 2.8 / 3.8 GHz.

In conclusion, the two CPUs will be used in high-end laptops and will replace the likes of Core i7-3940XM Extreme Edition, i7-3840QM and i7-3740QM (Ivy Bridge).

Observers may notice that the specs are the same between the third-generation and fourth-generation chips, but worries should be minimum, since Haswell will have improvements to the architecture of both the CPU and GPU cores.