Intel Reveals More Details of Ivy Bridge Variants at ISSCC
Intel has revealed further details about its 22nm Ivy Bridge platform at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference, which currently takes place in San Francisco.
Following the initial disclosure of Ivy Bridge at IDF Fall 2011, Intel engineer Scott Siers announced that there will be four different Ivy Bridge die models. The dies will integrate two or four cores, two different DX11 graphics units, as well 2 to 8 MB L3 cache. Ivy Bridge will carry up to 1.4 billion transistors that span over an area of 160 mm2, which is about 26 percent smaller than the comparable 216 mm2 Sandy Bridge die with 1.16 billion transistors.
Ivy Bridge will also integrate DisplayPort support and 20 channels of PCIe 3. The memory controller now supports 1.35V DDR3L SODIMMs.
Digitimes reported last week that Ivy Bridge would not be shipping as planned, as the production of the processors appears to be delayed. According to the publication, a small volume of Ivy Bridge chips will be available in April with volume shipments not happening until Q3, which would mean - if Digitimes is right - that volume Ivy Bridge computers won't be available until early Q4. The culprit apparently is the economy and weak demand, which makes it difficult for PC makers to get rid of their Sandy Bridge inventory. However, Intel told VR-Zone that the report is only partially true and only dual-core Ivy Bridge models will be delayed.

Don't waste your money. You already have it made. Wait for a few years.
Don't waste your money. You already have it made. Wait for a few years.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/battlefield-3-graphics-performance,3063-13.html
no difference with an i3 to i7!
That benchmark is based on single player. But when it comes to Multiplayer, its a whole new ball game.
thats ignorant and were have you been? its pretty common knowledge that bf3 multiplayer likes a quad core.
What the hell does that mean? What's a small volume for Intel? What type of CPU's are they - mobile or desktop? Who's getting them? Is Apple getting the CPU's first? Apple doesn't participate in the sticker program, and can give Intel media Buzz that no other PC maker can duplicate. Is that what is meant by small volume? I'm interested but also very bothered by the total lack of details.
It means that OEM orders will be fulfilled first, and then what little is left will be released to the retail market. For you and me, it means there is going to be a backorder on Apple's new MBP when it is released this spring, so order as soon as possible if you're interested, and NewEgg will run out of stock minutes after putting them up for order, much like what happened when they got a limited stock of 7970's a month ago.
I've been fine with games up until now. the e8400 oc's well. It's had it's time in the sun, It ran crysis now for bigger and better things
I would say it probably isn't worth it. I've got a 2700 @ 4.6 myself, and I have no plans on upgrading until the next die shrink, as that usually comes with a new socket as well. I might trade up for a new motherboard when they are release though, as I'm not really impressed with the P8Z68 Deluxe board I'm running right now. Word is they'll support USB3 natively, and won't have to offload the second row of SATA3 connectors to 3rd party controller like my board does. Depends on what other features the new boards come with, and how they are priced.