Intel Discontinues Four Mobile Sandy Bridge CPUs
As Intel is moving to Ivy Bridge, the company is making some room and phasing out Sandy Bridge chips.
Intel just told its customers that it will be discontinuing four mobile Sandy Bridge processors ranging from the higher-end mainstream, to the very high-end of the market.
The affected processors:
- Core i7-2620M (2.8 GHz, tray price $346)
- Core i7-2720QM (2.2 GHz, tray price $378)
- Core i7-2820QM (2.3 GHz, tray price $568)
- Core i7-2920XM (2.7 GHz, tray price $1,096)
According to a product change notification, customers are able to order the CPUs until December 19 of this year and final shipments are scheduled for June 19, 2013. Intel already sells four different Ivy Bridge processors at the exact same price points of the canceled Sandy Bridge processors, which makes the older CPUs redundant as production volume of the 22 nm Ivy Bridge versions come online.

This is a 55 Watt fully unlocked chip. If it were ever put in an ultrabook it would melt. They use use 17 Watt CPUs. This chip is intended for monster laptops that are already overpriced and it is a small volume market. It is not a result of AMD falling behind. Intel has priced their top of the line CPUs for both desktops and laptops around $1000. This CPU is in the same market as the i7-990X, i7-3960X, i7-940XM as well as others.
Not to mention AMD did the same thing with their top-of-the-line when they were in front of Intel.
Intel's highest end CPUs don't go into ultrabooks. They go into overpriced gaming/workstation laptops.
I had a loaner laptop for work last year for about a month, and it had a SB extreme mobile chip in it. It was crazy fast, and could put my desktop to shame, but it was also a $5k mobile workstation.
Quite true; if AMD was ahead on performance you could expect a price hike in comparison to their current CPU portfolio.
Personally I am getting really tired of the Intel vs AMD argument, especially since AMD openly stated in March of 2011 they want their strategy to match how they feel people use computers today rather than top x86 workload benchmarks (google Exposing the Phantom x86 Bottleneck). As an enthusiast I am a little butt hurt on this decision but I see the logic in trying to get better/cheaper machines in the larger part of the sales pie rather than invest in an arms race that only 5% of the audience cares for.
And they don't even support OCing...
Here here. Four years ago, I spent $2,400 on a top of the line Dell XPS 17" laptop with every option checked off from the best CPU and graphics card to the highest resolution (1920x1200). I used it for portable gaming and video/photo editing while on vacations, trips, and family visits. Many months ago the screen started having those horrendous vertical line problems until it became useless. It was parted out on eBay for less than $300 total.
It has since been replaced by a $450 HP Pavilion 17.3" 1600x900 with Intel 3000 on board graphics and an i3 processor. It is every bit as fast in apps as that old Dell, but can't play today's games (have a PS3 for portable suitcase living gaming these days). Never again will I spend thousands on a top tier laptop. There are so many better things to do with that extra money. Like build a nice home built rig with a GTX680 and enjoy Crysis 2 and BF3 at 60+FPS with a 1920x1200 27" monitor...and then add a PS3 for portable gaming.
thats what happens when you get the high end processor FROM EITHER COMPANY.
when amd beat intel, they were sky high, intel has always had the high end chips cost a crap ton, most people wont be spending over 500$ on a cpu though, and lets be honest, even the worst quad amd still makes is more than enough for 95% of the people out there, there is no need, at least on a laptop (different than desktop replacement) to have a high end cpu
The extreme editions support overclocking.
Even back when AMD was ahead, their most expensive CPUs were cheaper than some of Intel's.
A lot of notebooks use up to 30-45w CPUs. 55w is extreme for a current laptop, but 17w is not as high as the norm goes. 17w sounds more like ultrabook CPU power consumption and low-end notebook power consumption. Even many mid-range laptops have CPUs that consume significantly more power than that.