Intel Pentium B970 CPU sighted

Before the launch of Ivy Bridge mobile microprocessors in April 2012, Intel is going to launch several new budget and mid-class models based on almost year-old Sandy Bridge microarchitecture. Mobile Celeron family will be updated with 2 new mainstream and 2 ultra-low-voltage CPUs. It was previously reported that they will be available in the 1st quarter 2012. We recently learned that the Celerons will be released on December 11 . Also in the near future, Intel will offer new Core i3-2370M and i5-2450M SKUs. According to Technical specifications of HP Pavilion dv6 Notebook (PDF file), these two parts may also be launched on December 11. The HP document also revealed new Pentium processor B970:

Starting from the first Sandy Bridge Pentium B940, each new mobile Pentium CPU boosted clock speed by 100 MHz while keeping all other features. Dual-core Pentium B970 is not an exception. It boasts 2 MB level 3 cache and 2.3 GHz core frequency, which is 100 MHz higher than on Pentium B960. We believe that other B970 features will be identical to currently produced microprocessors from B9xx series. The upcoming Pentium should have on-chip HD graphics, no Hyper-threading, SSE4 support, and it will fit into 35 Watt power envelope. As the HP document states, the B970, along with Core i3-2370M and Core i5-2450M, will be available in dv6 notebooks from December 11. We suspect that this date coincides with the official launch date of these CPUs.

The table below contains specifications of microprocessors, that are either confirmed, or suspected to be launched on December 11:

Model	Cores	Threads	Frequency	Turbo Frequency	L3 cache	Socket Type	TDP	Price
Core i3-2370M	2	4	2.4 GHz	N/A	3 MB	Socket G2	35 Watt
Core i5-2450M	2	4	2.5 GHz	3.1 GHz	3 MB	Socket G2	35 Watt
Mobile Celeron 797	1	1	1.4 GHz	N/A	1.5 MB	BGA1023	17 Watt	$107
Mobile Celeron 867	2	2	1.3 GHz	N/A	2 MB	BGA1023	17 Watt	$134
Mobile Celeron B720	1	1	1.7 GHz	N/A	1.5 MB	Socket G2	35 Watt	$70
Mobile Celeron B815	2	2	1.6 GHz	N/A	2 MB	Socket G2	35 Watt	$86
Pentium B970	2	2	2.3 GHz	N/A	2 MB	Socket G2	35 Watt