VR-Zone

Intel processors for 2012 carry the codename Ivy Bridge. These 22nm processors will be known as the 3000 series, for example Core i3-3200, i5-3330 or the i7-3770 (regular and K, S, T editions). The clock speeds will vary from 3 to 3.5GHz, while the models now officially support the prevailing DDR3-1600 memory standard.

The parts were scheduled to debut in January 2012, but as the time passed by, Intel wanted to extract as much money as possible from the existing Sugar Bay platform and the Sandy Bridge architecture, with both bringing record profits for the company. Bear in mind that Sandy Bridge lost almost a quarter after the infamous chipset recall at the beginning of 2011. Intel marked a billion dollar loss with the recall costs and obviously decided to milk the existing products for as long as possible. The fact that AMD's Bulldozer processors failed to light up the market only increased that reason. Ivy Bridge will come to market only when necessary to do so.

Furthermore, the platform just needed development time to complete the complete 2012 platform (Maho Bay) and processor (Ivy Bridge). This wasn't helped by a wave of and process problems and retirements that recently started to happen at Intel, as the original baby boomers (joined Intel in 1970 and 1980s) are beginning to leave the company.

Additionally, the company needs time to develop drivers for the graphics part. After all is said and done, the new Ivy Bridge processors should debut in April-May 2012 timeframe alongside Maho Bay platform i.e. B75, Q75 and Q77 chipsets.