Intel Pentium B980 processor spotted

In less than a week Intel will release new mobile processors for mid-class notebooks. At this time we know about 8 different Core i5 and i7 models, and they will be priced from $200 to $350. Less expensive SKUs from mobile Celeron and Core i3 families will be available in the third quarter. We suspect that in the Q3 Intel may also launch budget Pentium microprocessors. One of these chips, Pentium B980, surfaced in specifications of Clevo W258ELQ (cached copy of the page), Hewlett Packard ProBook 4540s and Lenovo G480 laptops. Specifications of Clevo notebook also includes details on two unreleased Celeron B730 and B820 processors.

According to laptops' specifications, Pentium B980 is a Sandy Bridge part with two CPU cores, and 2 MB of level 3 cache. The processor operates at 2.4 GHz, which is a notch above B970 model. The new Pentium will support DDR3 memory with 1333 MHz data rate, and will fit into 35 Watt thermal envelope. We believe that remaining B980 features will be indistinguishable from other member of Pentium B9x0 series, i.e. it will support only basic technologies and SIMD extensions up to SSE4, and will not have Virtualization and Hyper-Threading technologies. It's likely that the Pentium will be produced in a socket-G2 compatible PGA package.