Intel Sandy Bridge-E Launch Date and Time Revealed – Report

We have heard the November 14 launch date for Intel's Sandy Bridge-E processors mentioned in a couple of previous reports, but now a website has managed to find out not just the date, but also the time the NDA for these processors will be lifted.

In a report written by none other than Charlie Demerjian, SemiAccurate has revealed that the NDA for Intel's first LGA 2011 processors will be lifted on November 14 at 12:01am PST (Pacific Standard Time).

Although the accuracy of this source can be contested, this is not the first time we hear about the November 14 release date, since a series of previous reports have also suggested the same date for the launch of Sandy Bridge-E.

The initial release will include just the Core i7-3960X and 3930K processors as the third member of the family, the quad-core Core i7-3820 will apparently make its entrance into the market in February of 2012.

SemiAccurate doesn't reveal why Intel reached this decision, but just yesterday a report came out to suggest the same thing, while also claiming that availability of Sandy Bridge-E parts will be scarce with just “tens of thousands” of CPUs being shipped by Intel.

The reason for this decision is that current consumer Sandy Bridge-E CPUs use the C2 stepping, which is going to be replaced quite soon by a new C3 revision of the CPUs.

At this moment, we don't know what improvements will Intel introduce in the new C3 SKUs, but it seems like the chip maker is also working on the D stepping, that is said to resolve all the issues present in the first commercial iteration of the processors.

A release date for the D version of Sandy Bridge-E isn't available, but there aren't expected to arrive until much later next year.