Intel pulled its Sandy Bridge launch forward today, launching the new family a full two days earlier than the planned January 5th date at CES. And with 15 desktop parts and 14 mobile parts, what a launch it is. The 29 total parts announced make it Intel's biggest launch ever.

Initial reviews are now coming in, and it looks like Intel has a winner on its hands, at least for now. Anand is the first one out with truly comprehensive looks at both the desktop and mobile parts, and he's quite impressed. Sandy Bridge's completely overhauled microarchitecture gives it between a 10 percent and 50 percent performance boost over its predecessor in some instances, depending on the workload. For now, Intel has mainly chosen to exploit the benefits of its new design by keeping clock speeds low and offering the same level of performance as Arrandale, but at much cheaper prices.

Apple watchers will note that Intel did indeed launch a 17W mobile Sandy Bridge part, which is a prime candidate for a MacBook Air. It's possible that once the platform's OpenCL x86 support is finalized, we could see Apple use the new processor in a MacBook Air refresh. We wouldn't expect this for some time, though, since Apple just updated the laptop.

The main place where Sandy Bridge really leaps ahead of its predecessors is in GPU performance. Sandy Bridge's relatively simple, primitive, fixed-function GPU manages to compete with lower-end and midrange discrete GPUs in both the mobile and desktop spaces, thanks to a combination of high clock speed and tight coupling with the CPU. Once Intel delivers a fully modern, programmable GPU with Ivy Bridge, the chipmaker could put a serious hurt on AMD and NVIDIA eliminating the rationale for buying a low-end or midrange discrete GPU. But that's a topic for another day...

One of the reasons why reviewers are so astounded by Sandy Bridge's on-die GPU performance in games is that Intel's previous GPU hardware has been so terrible. In this sense, watching Sandy Bridge's GPU compete with an NVIDIA 320M in a game run on the "low quality" setting is a bit like watching that scene in Forrest Gump where Forrest starts to run and his leg braces go flying off. Sure, he may not be going straight to the Olympics, but you still can't help but cheer.

Aside from performance, the two other features of Sandy Bridge's GPU that have gotten attention are its hardware-based transcoding engine and its DRM-enabling security hardware. Both of these additions are artifacts of Intel's current obsession with all things TV and CE.

The transcoding engine, called Quick Sync, absolutely chews through video file conversions at record speeds. This will be great for HTPC builders, or anyone else who does a ton of transcoding.

The other big feature is a movie service tied to Sandy Bridge called "Intel Insider." Intel's pitch for the service is that it uses content protection technology that's built-in to Sandy Bridge's hardware so that, unlike software protection, it can't be cracked. So anyone who wants to use the service will need a Sandy Bridge CPU to view the content.

If you're of the belief that the absence of ironclad DRM is the one thing holding back the digital movie revolution, then Intel Insider is great news. But if, on the other hand, you don't think that Big Content has the nerve to restrict 100 percent of its HD digital movie distribution to Sandy Bridge users, then you realize that Intel Insider won't make a lick of difference. It only takes one HD copy of a movie to leak out into the wild to enable Internet-wide sharing; so if Intel Insider can't protect every HD single copy of a movie, then it can't protect any of them.

We'll have a lot more to say about Intel Insider and Intel's digital movie plans as more details come to light at CES. So stay tuned to this week's show coverage for more on this front.

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