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.