With Turbo 1350MHz in top SKUs
 
The Core i7 2000 series is going to be the top clocked Sandy Bridge quad-core and this one will have all eight threads enabled. The interesting part is that monolithic graphics core, that is now a part of CPU and not on a separate die as with Westmere, now works at 850MHz.
 
This is 117MHz faster than the current Westmere 32nm core with 45nm graphics. This is not all as the graphics core can overclock with the help of Turbo 2 all the way to 1350MHz. Intel's so called HD graphics now promises to get some significant performance for immersive mainstream gaming on a broad range of mainstream titles, but we don’t know how much faster can it be from the current generation.
 
Overall many do expect that the Sandy Bridge HD graphics can be significantly faster than the current Westmere 32nm one, but we are quite sure that mainstream ATI and Nvidia cards and even chipsets are going to win against Sandy Bridge Intel HD graphics.  
 
It looks like that even in 2011, Intel plans to offer a mediocre gaming experience, but still its CPUs are the most battery aware and therefore they will continue to win most of the notebook marketshare.

$49.99 and up for dual core with graphics
 
It looks like Pentium won’t be the last stop for Sandy Bridge based 32nm chips. Intel has just revealed to its special few that it plans to make Celeron CPUs based on this new upcoming core, but they will only come in Q3 2011.
 
This will be a dual-core Celeron and we are we believe that the graphics part of the chip will still end up enabled. As far as we know there won't be any chipset with graphics so the only integrated non-discrete graphics choice is the GPU inside of the Sandy Bridge.
 
Sandy Bridge will start in the Legacy L1 market segment it it should be available for $49.99 and of course it will get available in faster iteration that will require more money.
 
Intel still doesn’t talk about the specification of these future Celeron but this will be quite a technology leap as the current Celeron E3300 and E3400 are based on 45nm Wolfdale dual-core with 1MB of cache while the new Celerons of Q3 2011 will have a dual core 32nm with monolithic design.
 
We do need to remind you that Intel’s product roadmap is constantly evolving and Intel tends to change it on a regular basis, as it usually with future developments several quarters away.

Core i3 only two
 
The new thing about the second Core generation codenamed Sandy Bridge is that only the top branded CPUs will have feature hyperthreading.
 
Hypertreds don’t do that much but they do show you that you have „eight cores“ in Windows task manager and you will only see eight threads with top Core i7 CPUs.
 
Core i5 CPUs will be a native quad-core CPUs but they won’t support hyperthreading. This will be exclusively reserved for Core i7 2000 series parts. Core i3 native dual-cores will only support two treads which is step down from current Core i3 CPUs that feature two cores and support four threads.
 
The trend of lack of Turbo support in Core i3 generation will continue with new Sandy Bridge based Core i3 2000 series CPUs.
 
This is the branding and performance distinction that Intel wants to make clearer in 2011 as most people got confused with Core i branding, as Core i5 and Core i7 were overlapping in many performance and feature characteristics. Now the distinction should be more clear, but it looks to us that in most cases you will get less for the same money.

Core i7 2600K with turbo to 3.8GHz
 
The top Core i7 2000 series, the one that we expect in Q1 2011 is going to work at 3.4GHz. The official name is Core i7 2600K and this quad-core CPU runs at 3.4GHz and boasts eight threads. The K stands for unlocked CPU, something that many overclockers plan to warmly welcome and for less experienced users Turbo 2 will overclock the core to 3.8GHz.
 
Turbo 2 can overclock a single core, two cores, or all four cores, depending on the thermals and load in any given moment. The memory of support is DDR3 1066 and 1333 and unofficially it will support even higher clocked memory. Sandy Bridge supports two-channel memory. As we said yesterday, its graphics run at 850MHz native clock and 1350MHz with the help of Turbo 2. Intel calls this Dynamic frequency.
 
The TDP is 95W and the CPU needs 6 series chipset and socket LGA1155 motherboard.

The Core i5 2400 runs at 3.1GHz, has four cores, 6MB of L3 cache but no Hyper Threading. In order to help Intel’s partners test HT functionality however, the i5 2400s being sampled right now have Hyper Threading enabled. For the purposes of our test I’ve run with HT both enabled (to give you an idea of higher end SB parts) and disabled (to give you an idea of i5 2400 performance).
 
The other major difference between what’s out today and what’s coming in Q1 is turbo. Early Sandy Bridge samples, ours included, do not have turbo enabled. The CPU simply runs at 3.1GHz all the time, regardless of workload. The final retail 2400 will be able to run at up to 3.4GHz

Final Words
 
If Intel's roadmap and pricing hold true, then the Core i5 2400 should give you an average of 23% better performance than the Core i5 760 at the same price point. If we compare shipping configurations, the Core i5 2400 should actually perform like a Core i7 880 despite not having Hyper Threading enabled. Clock for clock however, Sandy Bridge seems to offer a 10% increase in performance. Keep in mind that this analysis was done without a functional turbo mode, so the shipping Sandy Bridge CPUs should be even quicker. I'd estimate you can add another 3 - 7% to these numbers for the final chips. That's not bad at all for what amounts to a free upgrade compared to what you'd buy today. Power consumption will also see an improvement. Not only will Sandy Bridge be noticeably quicker than Lynnfield, it'll draw less power.
 
While Nehalem was an easy sell if you had highly threaded workloads, Sandy Bridge looks to improve performance across the board regardless of thread count. It's a key differentiator that should make Sandy Bridge an attractive upgrade to more people.

Sandy Bridge's integrated graphics is good. It's fast enough to put all previous attempts at integrated graphics to shame and compete with entry level discrete GPUs. The fact that you can get Radeon HD 5450 performance for free with a Core i5 2400 is just awesome. As I mentioned before, you won't want to throw away your GTX 460, but if you were planning on spending $50 on a GPU - you may not need to with Sandy Bridge

The overclocking prevention Intel is putting into Sandy Bridge sounds pretty bad at first. However if the roadmap and pricing stay their course, it looks like overclockers looking to spend as much as they did on Core i5 750/760s won't be limited at all thanks to the K SKUs in the mix. The real question is what happens at the low end. While I don't get the impression that the Core i3 2000 series will be completely locked, it's unclear how much rope Intel will give us.