14 DAY TRIAL // After Intel officially decided to unveil the dual-core mobile Sandy Bridge CPUs a few days ago, we've seen a very larger number of notebooks built around them being pushed onto the market, and it seems that the low-end models from the yet unreleased new MacBook Pro family will get the same treatment.
So, according to a report by 9-to-5Mac, it seems that the aforementioned entry-level MacBook Pro laptops will come equipped with the 2'nd Generation Intel Core i5-2410M CPU, that should provide quite an OK level of performance for average needs.
Despite being just a dual-core, 4-threaded CPU, the new Sandy Bridge mobile processor delivers quite a serious computing punch when compared to its predecessors, running at 2.3GHz normally (but up to 2.6 Ghz when the Turbo Boost technology is activated on both of its cores).
Hyper-threading is also to be found in the new processor, that, unfortunately, offers a smaller cache level compared to the Core i7 CPUs out there (just 3MB).
However, what's really important to point out here is that the new platform doesn't require a discrete GPU anymore, instead relying on the Intel HD Graphics 3000 engine built right on the CPU die.
It's also interesting to mention that the new MacBook Pros will certainly not be the only portable computing systems out there to be built around this particular CPU, with Sony's new Vaio S Series model, that we've already talked about yesterday.
All in all, we'd dare to say that, given the capabilities of this new dual-core processor from Intel, even the lower-end MacBook Pro models will be able to deliver quite a good level of performance, while managing to keep the price points at a more than acceptable rate (if they drop the discrete GPU completely, then they might actually hit the “affordability” threshold).