How To Identify Laptops With Sandy Bridge

The new 2^nd generation i series CPU is already out in the market. This will result in a huge plunge in older laptops running the older CPU. It will be easy to find laptops that have i 7 cores going below the $1000 mark. If you think that you are getting a bargain out of those older generation cores, you may be mistaken. The truth is, laptops newer 2^nd generation cores known as Sandy Bridge CPUs are not expensive too. You can easily get a high end i7 2^nd generation CPU for just around $1500. This is a very affordable price to pay for the latest hardware. The newer 2^nd generation cores have graphics chip that are 3 times better and offer a 30 % improvement in performance.

In this article, I will show you how to identify laptops that are of the newer 2^nd generation cores. It is more worthwhile to open your eyes wide to make a correct choice to get the newer models, because the 2^nd generation machines come with the newer USB 3.0 drives and Blu-Ray drives. People who use their laptops to do video conversion will be able to benefit a lot from such chips. Apart from having faster speed, it will also draw less battery while delivering even more speed.

Make and model

Newer 2^nd generation i-core chips have 4 numbers in the laptop model while the 1^st generation chips have only 3 numbers. The first number is a digit 2 which represents 2^nd gen chips. For instance, a previous i7-630QM core is one example of a 1^st gen device, compared to a i7-2630QM which is a 2^nd gen chip.

Blue Sata ports

 

The newer 3.0 USB ports will have a different color so that users can tell between the normal ports and the faster one. If you want to do a quick scan to tell between the 2^nd generation cores, look for those that have blue USB ports and that may be one tell tale sign that it is sporting a 2^nd generation chip. Else, it may have two letters “SS” labelled on the USB port that represents “Super Speed”.

The sticker

As with the usual norm, Intel will always paste a sticker on the laptop. The stickers will look totally different with a split opening in between is the logo will be the new look for the Sandy Bridge processors. I will insert an image for users to identify between the older and newer logo.

With new technologies dishing out in a very fast pace, it is important to keep up with the times. I hope that this information is useful to readers of this article who are looking for a new laptop.