Intel never quite reached 4GHz with the Pentium 4. Despite being on a dedicated quest for gigahertz the company stopped short and the best we ever got was 3.8GHz. Within a year the clock (no pun intended) was reset and we were all running Core 2 Duos at under 3GHz. With each subsequent generation Intel inched those clock speeds higher, but preferred to gain performance through efficiency rather than frequency.

Today, Intel quietly finishes what it started nearly a decade ago. When running a single threaded application, the Core i7 2600K will power gate three of its four cores and turbo the fourth core as high as 3.8GHz. Even with two cores active, the 32nm chip can run them both up to 3.7GHz. The only thing keeping us from 4GHz is a lack of competition to be honest. Relying on single-click motherboard auto-overclocking alone, the 2600K is easily at 4.4GHz. For those of you who want more, 4.6 - 4.8GHz is within reason. All on air, without any exotic cooling.

Unlike Lynnfield, Sandy Bridge isn’t just about turbo (although Sandy Bridge’s turbo modes are quite awesome). Architecturally it’s the biggest change we’ve seen since Conroe, although looking at a high level block diagram you wouldn’t be able to tell.

Ever since the Sandy Bridge preview, we’ve been waiting to see what Intel’s new architecture could do for mobility. No longer would quad-core notebooks require discrete graphics solutions, and performance would improve as well. While many of the desktop parts make do with a trimmed down graphics controller, nearly all of the mobile Sandy Bridge processors are packing a full set of 12EUs. Combine the improved efficiency of Intel’s new HD Graphics solution with double the clock speed of Core 2010’s IGP, and you have a recipe for mainstream graphics that may finally move out of their parents’ basement. We’ve been vigorously testing our Sandy Bridge notebook for the past couple of weeks, throwing everything we had available at it. Processor and graphics performance are markedly improved over Arrandale and Clarksfield, and battery life shows promise as well. Sandy Bridge may be a nice upgrade on the desktop, but for laptops and notebooks it’s nothing short or revolutionary.