Sandy Bridge Comes Out Early Again In Asia

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Last week, a Malaysian computer store was found to be selling Intel Sandy Bridge processors and the motherboards that use them. Today, we go back to Southeast Asia as Sandy Bridge has popped up early again, this time, inside of an HP dv6 laptop. A beefy new Core i7 processor has shown up inside the aforementioned laptop in a Singaporean mall.

The processor in question is the Intel Core i7-2630QM, which should have four-cores and a clockspeed of 2.2Ghz. That’s based on early rumors and leaked product lists that have come out. Folks have been speculating about Sandy Bridge processor models and speeds for so long, it’s hard to know what to believe anymore.

Intel does have fabs in Southeast Asia, which is where people believe that these early parts are coming from. I am more inclined to believe that this HP laptop is the real deal, whereas it’s possible that the boxed retail Sandy Bridge processors could be fakes with the real boxes. Considering that we’re starting to see Sandy Bridge bits on sale, I believe that we’ll see them go on sale directly after Intel announces them at CES next week (as opposed to Intel announcing parts and prices, then saying they’ll be available in a month). Shameless plug – we’ll be at CES next week and we’ll be live blogging the Intel press conference.

Here’s the full specs of the HP dv6 laptop that was on sale with the Sandy Bridge processor:

• 15-inch display
• Intel Core i7-2630QM
• 4GB of RAM
• AMD Radeon HD 6570M

Reports out of Singapore say that the body and style of the laptop are indifferent than current models, save for the new processor and other spec upgrades. The asking price was S$1,899 ($1,461). Expect HP, and other companies, to immediately begin selling these laptops (officially) after Intel officially details their Sandy Bridge parts at CES next week.