Intel to Launch Trio of Graphics-Less Sandy Bridge CPUs

Intel will soon update its processor portfolio with some three new chips based on the Sandy Bridge architecture which, in a rather strange turn of events, will come with their on-board GPU disabled.

The reasons behind Intel’s decision are not known at this point in time, but we suspect that the chip maker is trying to get rid of some CPU dies that don’t have working on-board graphics.

As VR-Zone has revealed, the three processors are the Core i5-2380P, Core i5-2450P and a somewhat older acquaintance of ours, the Core i5-2550K.

With a base clock of 3.1GHz and a maximum Turbo Speed of 3.4GHz, the Core i5-2380P greatly resembles the Core i5-2400, sans the integrated GPU of course.

The Core i5-2450P on the other hand is a bit odd as both of its 3.2GHz base and 3.5GHz Turbo frequencies are 100MHz lower than those of the Core i5-2500.

Last but certainly not least is the Core i5-2550K, which as we speculated at the beginning of December it has 100MHz higher base and Turbo frequencies than the current i5-2500K, which means that this will run at 3.4/3.8GHz.

All three models have 6MB cache, but none of them have VT-d or TXT support, a feature all previous non-K SKUs in the Core i5 family supported. Hyper-Threading also won’t make it in the features list, while TDP should be set at 95W.

The launch date of the three new models is not yet known, but VR-Zone expects them to arrive in the first part of 2012.

As far as prices are concerned, both P-series CPU models should have a slightly lower MSRP than their counterparts with on-board graphics, but we don’t know where Intel wants to position the Core i5-2550K in its lineup.