14 DAY TRIAL // As you might have learned by now, Intel's new line of Sandy Bridge CPUs is set to erupt onto the market in early January, and for this reason, Intel's already taking the necessary marketing steps in order to prepare for its arrival, one of the first being to phase out some of its existing 45nm CPU models.
So, as Digitimes informs us, the chip manufacturer has already notified its various partners that it plans to phase out no less than 21 CPU part numbers, the reason invoked by ol' “Chipzilla” being, quite obviously, the very big plans the company has in store for their latest and best architecture, Sandy Bridge.
Apparently, Intel issued a PDN (also known as a product discontinuance notice) for the Core i7-975X earlier this quarter with end of lifecycle (EOL) to take place in the first quarter of 2011, while the Core i5-750 will go down the same route in the first quarter of 2011 (EOL time scheduled for Q3, 2011). In terms of quad-core CPUs built using the 45nm processor, the models that will face the all-mighty Intel axe will apparently be the Core 2 Quad Q9650 (that has already been PDN-ed early this quarter), followed by five more processors including Core 2 Quad Q9300, 9505 and Q8400, that will suffer the same fate in Q3. Moving down to dual-core offerings, it would seem that models Core 2 Duo E8600 and E8500 should receive the aforementioned notice in the third quarter with Core 2 Duo E7500 and E7600 scheduled to have PDN in the second quarter and EOL in the fourth. Last, but certainly not least, come the company's single-core CPUs, headed by the Pentium E6300, already a recipient of the dreaded PDN, followed by the Pentium E5600, that will get the PDN in the second quarter and will be killed off in Q3. The Pentium E5600 and E6600 will both receive the DN in the first quarter of 2011, while the Celeron E3200 and E3300 get their death notice in the first and the fourth quarter of 2011, respectively. Of course, given the fact that Intel has decided to phase out so many CPU models, it's quite likely that they'll also launch plenty of replacements from the Sandy Bridge family, but we'll come back with more details on this topic later on.