Intel Sandy Bridge Processors Out In Malaysia Early

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Intel is expected to launch and detail the first batch of their ‘Sandy Bridge’ generation processors at the international Consumer Electronics Show next month. TFTS will be on-hand for the announcements, but we may not have to be anymore. Malaysian electronics store ‘Compuzone’ has begun selling what are allegedly three differentiated legitimate models of Intel Sandy Bridge processors – ahead of Intel’s CES announcement.

Although Intel has yet to release various model names or clockspeeds, various leaked lists have come out before, most of which we’ve covered on this site. The Intel Core i5-2300, i5-2400 and i7-2600 were on those lists and appear to be on sale in Compuzone. At first glance, I assumed they were fake chips in faux packaging – likely mislabled Pentium 4′s or something. But, everybody says these are legit.

Don’t worry, Compuzone has got your motherboard requirements, too. They’ve begun selling an ASUS P8 motherboard which has the correct LGA 1155 socket that is compatible with these new processors. Compuzone isn’t alone in selling the motherboards, either, as they’ve popped up on a number of other Asian websites. Some have suggested that this could actually be Intel slowly introducing the chips and motherboards – but I highly doubt it. If Intel was planning to slowly sneak them into retail channels, we’d see legitimate review sites start posting their benchmarking speeds and such of the chips, but we haven’t.

Intel’s Sandy Bridge is supposed to be a big performance increase over the previous generation, although dedicated computer hardware bloggers are in disagreement over how much of a performance increase over Gulftown/Westmere we’ll see. AMD’s Bulldozer is also supposed to give Sandy Bridge a run for it’s performance money, but I doubt that.

Regardless, it looks like 2011 will be a good year for processors. Or 2010, if you live in Malaysia.