Intel releases upgrade cards for Sandy Bridge CPUs

Intel is releasing an upgrade card system for three Sandy Bridge CPUs which have higher capabilities than that they are actually sold with. The i3 2102, i3 2312M and Pentium G622 will all have upgrade cards available which add improved performance, the gains differ between the CPUs, lets look at what each one does for each CPU:

• For the i3 2102 you will probably get a clock speed boost from 3.1GHz to 3.6GHz which essentially makes the i3 2102 and i3 2153 and results in a performance boost of about 11-15%.
• For the i3 2312M you will probably get an extra 1MB of L3 cache and a clock speed boost from 2.1GHz to 2.5GHz which essentially turns the i3 2312M into an i3 2393M and results in a performance boost of about 10-19%.
• For the Pentium G622 you will probably get a clock speed boost from 2.6GHz to 3.2GHz which will give you around 15-23% more performance making your G622 a G693.

These cards are only based on well publicised speculation currently, the source of the current performance estimates is AnandTech but the speculation has been around for nearly a year now so we expect there is some integrity behind it. Early thoughts suggest the upgrade card will be a flat $50 cost for all three CPUs which seems a bit steep for the Pentium G622 since it costs only $65 initially. However, it has been pointed out for those with OEM built systems where upgrades void warranties these cards will prove a useful option.