PC World posted an article that reveals the shipping date of dual-core Sandybridge CPUs to roughly be February 20th. Computer manufactures will start using the dual-Core i5 and i7 processors first.
The first Sandy Bridge processors to ship were quad-core chips, mainly for high-end laptops. The dual-core chips will likely go into end-user and ultraportable laptops, many of which were shown at last month’s Consumer Electronics Show. Fujitsu said it plans to use dual-core Core i7 chips in its high-end ultraportable laptops.
But didn’t Intel announce a massive delay in shipping Sandybridge CPUs and Chipsets, can anyone – including Apple – even ship a functioning laptop?
Yes and no.
The reason for Intel to announce a recall was due to the company finding a flaw in the Sandybridge Chipset. Overtime the Chipset’s SATA connections could degrade causing a serious performance hit. However, the problem doesn’t affect the first two SATA ports which Intel is heavily pitching to OEMs – including Apple – to speed up the launch time of laptops powered by its newest CPUs. This could give Apple an opportunity to introduce Sandybridge powered Macs as the two non-affected ports would be connecting the Hard Drive and potentially an Optical Drive.
A leaked screenshot from a internal Best Buy product database gives further evidence for a spring MacBook Pro launch.
