Set to arrive in January 2010

Nov 23, 2009 14:48 GMT  ·  By

As it has been written on several occasions, the Santa Clara, California-based chip maker, Intel is expected to debut a new line of mainstream processors, based on the company's next-generation 32nm manufacturing process. Codenamed 'Clarkdale', the new CPUs will be aimed at the desktop PC segment and will be part of the chip maker's Core i5 and Core i7 lines of products. According to the most recent details that have hit the Internet, the new units have already been listed for pre-order, by some European retailers.

Slated for release sometime in January 2010, the new Intel desktop CPUs have been designed to incorporate a GPU and a CPU core in the same processor. Designed on the company's new 32nm manufacturing process, the new chips are expected to replace the company's current line of mainstream processors, ultimately replacing the older Core 2 Duo family of processors. Like the current Core i5 chips and some Core i7 processors, the new Clarkdale processors will be compatible with the chip maker's LGA 1156 socket.

On that note, it appears that some retailers have jumped at the opportunity of listing the new processors, almost two months ahead of their presumed January debut. According to the listing on the HPM-Computer German website, the new Intel processor lineup will include the Core i3 530 and 540 models, as well as the Core i5 650, 660, 661, and 670, all of which will be featured with Hyper-Threading, 4MB of L3 cache and support for dual-channel DDR3-1333 memory.

As far as pricing goes, the new models will range from 103.90 Euro up to 252.90 Euro, providing differentiations in CPU and GPU clock speeds, as well as TDP. From the six new models, the Core i5 661 has the highest GPU clock, at 900MHz and the highest TDP, of 87W. Meanwhile, the i5 670 model comes with the highest CPU core, of 3.46GHz, while the TDP stays at 73W, like the rest of the other CPUs.

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Intel's 32nm Core i3 processors listed
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