Core “i” Sandy Bridge Powered MacBook Air Anticipated

CNET’s Brooke Crothers says that for those impatiently anticipating a MacBook Air speed bump to Intel “Sandy Bridge” processor power, an inkling of such a machine’s potential performance can be found in the ultrathin Samsung series 9 NP900X3A laptop and the 13-inch MacBook Pro.

The Samsung subnotebook uses Intel’s latest ultra-power-efficient 1.4GHz Intel Core i5-2537M low-power silicon, which is also expected to power the next 11.6-inch Air revision, and Intel’s Sandy Bridge HD 3000 graphics, which the next Air will also presumably be equipped with. The latest Intel integrated graphics are pretty unanimously reviewed as better than expected but still falling short of the perfomance provided by the Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics used in the current MacBook Air. The positive trade-off is to be found in the Core ‘I” chip’s superior processor speed.

For the full report with performance comparison graphs, see:
http://cnet.co/dYv7Yp