Mar 14, 2011 07:26 GMT  ·  By

Reports about Intel's upcoming line of Pentium processors based on the Sandy Bridge architecture have been making their way onto the Web for quite some time now, but it now seems that we are getting nearer to their launch date as a Pentium G840 has just surfaced in China.

Launched in January of 2011, Sandy Bridge is Intel's latest processor architecture and it brings a number of improvements that boost its instruction per clock performance as well as its energy efficiency.

In addition, the chip is Intel's first CPU that integrates the graphics core on the same die as the processor itself while also adding Quick Sync transcoding support to the mix.

These features should make Sandy Bridge ideal for building an entry-level system around it, but, unfortunately, users that wanted to go this route had to opt for the more expensive Core i3 processors that don't always fit inside their budget.

As a result, Intel has started to develop a Pentium version of the chip that should be available in the not-so-distant future.

One of the processors in the Pentium family will be called the G840 and a CPU-Z screenshot provided by the Chinese Inpai website reveals that the chip will feature dual processing cores, that will be clocked at 2.8GHz, as well as 3MB of L3 cache memory.

According to the same website, the integrated graphics core is run at 850MHz and can reach speeds of up to 1100MHz when the need arises.

As it was expected, Pentium Sandy Bridge processors won't feature support for the Hyper-Threading and Turbo Boost technologies or the AVX instruction set, but they will get VT-x and SSE4.

Next to the G840, Intel's Pentium lineup also includes the 2.9GHz G850, the 2.6GHz G620 and the low-power G620T that comes clocked at 2.2GHz.

No specific details regarding pricing are available at this time. (via TechPowerUp)

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Intel Sandy Bridge based Pentium G840 CPU spotted in China
Intel Sandy Birdge-based Pentium G840 processor CPU-Z screenshot
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