First laptops with Intel Sandy Bridge CPUs spotted

Intel isn’t expected to formally launch Sandy Bridge until early January at CES 2011, but laptop manufacturers are already gearing up to start selling products based on the company’s latest mobile platform. Laptoping did some digging around and found three laptops models from Lenovo, Acer and Gateway, each sporting the quad-core Core i7-2630QM running at 2GHz.

Most details about the chips themselves remain unknown, but it appears that performance and gaming laptops will be the first to benefit from the new Sandy Bridge processors, which should be accompanied by the HM65 chipset part of Intel's Huron River platform. The notebooks in question offer screen sizes of 15.6 and 17.3-inches, a minimum 4GB of DDR3 memory, and some are paired up with Mobility Radeon HD 6550 or HD 6570 graphics that should replace the HD 5500 series.

HP also posted details on a fourth laptop, an updated Pavilion dv7, powered by the Core i7-2630QM running at the same 2GHz. A full range of Intel's desktop chips is due to launch in the first half of next year – you can find a list detailing specs, prices and release dates over at Expreview.com, but note that this is still unofficial information.