Intel's long-awaited mainstream variants to the Nehalem micro architecture are meant to officially arrive this September under the Core i5 and Core i7 brands. However, in a rare case of Intel losing control over its distribution channel, it appears some of these processors along with P55-based motherboards are already available in Taipei’s well-known Guang Hua computer market.

Intel initially declined to comment on early sales of the chips, but has recently revealed to PC World that it is looking into the matter. The chips in question include the 2.66GHz Core i5 750, 2.83GHz Core i7 860 and the 2.93GHz Core i7 870. All three are socket 1156-compatible, feature 8MB of L3 Cache, a TDP of 95 watts, support Turbo Boost, dual-channel DDR3 memory, and (except for the lowest-end model) Hyper-threading.

Prices are pretty much in line with previous rumors at about $207, $303 and $576 respectively. On the motherboard front, P55-based products from Gigabyte range anywhere from $165 to $280, with MSI selling P55 boards priced from $150 to $245 and Asus from $166 to $282 depending on features.