Intel may be waiting until CES 2011 to roll out the red carpet for its latest processor architecture, but that's not stopping retailers from selling Sandy Bridge ahead of schedule. Some Malaysian stores began selling desktop Sandy Bridge chips last week and various notebooks with the new processors have appeared from companies including Asus and Santech.

Adding to that list, VR-Zone reports that an electronics store in Singapore is selling the new Sandy Bridge-powered HP Pavilion dv6. The dv6-4103TX is aesthetically identical to existing systems, except for an updated Intel sticker, but it's internals have been upgraded to the 2GHz (2.9GHz Turbo Boost) Core i7-2630QM processor and AMD Radeon HD 6570M graphics.


Meanwhile, a forum member over at Notebook Review has purchased a new HP dv7 (the dv7-4290us to be exact) from Micro Center and it's also outfitted with an i7-2630QM and Radeon HD 6570M. Other specs include 6GB of DDR3 RAM, a 1TB 5400RPM HDD, a Blu-ray player, a 5-in-1 card reader, a 9-cell 93WHr battery, and a 17.3-inch 1600x900 LED-backlit display.

The owner of the dv7 posted some pictures and preliminary benchmark results. Its 9-cell battery provides just under four hours of life when running Hulu, and 4.5 hours when browsing the web and listening to music. The system also scored 41.07fps/4.81pts in Cinebench 11.5's OpenGL/CPU tests, 10065 3DMarks in 3DMark06, and P1281 3DMarks in 3DMark11.