14 DAY TRIAL // There hasn't been any great announcement proclaiming the entry of Intel's newest Core i3 central processing unit, but the company's Material Declaration Data Sheets (MDDS) database has been updated.
The change to the MDDS database was made over the weekend (February 23-24), exposing the existence of a new chip.
Called Core i3-3250, it seems to be the fastest Core i3-series unit that Intel has ever made, though the number of cores is no higher than two.
There isn't an official specifications sheet anywhere, so we can't say for certain what the unit can do, but the database does mention the chip as using an Ivy Bridge-M-2 core.
That means there are two cores inside, leading to four logical cores (or threads) in Microsoft's Windows operating system.
CPU World has provided some preliminary technical details, though none of them has been confirmed as of yet.
The two cores supposedly run at 3.5 GHz and have 3 MB of L3 cache shared between them. HD 2500 integrated graphics are part of the die as well.
Overall, the chip is a fairly common piece of work, though one that will cast a slightly larger shadow than its peers. The TDP (thermal design power) is of 55 Watts, which is decent enough.
As for the socket, since this is a desktop Ivy Bridge unit, LGA 1155 must have been used, making it compatible with platforms the likes of ASRocK H61TM-ITX.
We don't know when the chip will become available. One might even be correct in saying that it hasn't even been introduced yet, regardless of what the MDDS says.
The box part number of the new central processing unit is, or rather will be, BX80637I33250. At this point, Chipzilla only really needs to launch some mid-range or lower-performance Core i3 units to fill the gap between the series and Pentium.