Chromebooks may soon receive Intel Core CPU upgrades

According to Digitimes, the Chromebook series of Google notebooks could be seeing upgraded hardware in the near future.

The sources claim to be directly from the Chromebook manufacturers themselves who were supposedly told that Atom-equipped Chromebooks may be out the window in favor of Core iX-based hardware. As encouragement, Intel would supposedly provide a 10 to 20% discount on Core CPU prices for the manufacturers.

The major reason for the hardware upgrade could be due to intense competition from cheaper, Windows 7-based netbooks. Currently, the hardware specs for available Chromebooks reach up to an Intel Atom N570 CPU, while some Windows netbooks offer similar hardware at cheaper prices with a more familiar OS. When compared to netbooks, the “overall price/performance ratio is disappointing,” noted Digitimes.

Currently, both Samsung and Acer are offering some of the more well-known Chromebooks, including the Series 5 and Cromia. A Core iX update, either to Sandy Bridge or even the first generation Core CPUs, would give the Google notebooks a large boost in performance with hopefully minute sacrifices to battery life.

See our review of the Samsung Series 5 for more information on the Chrome OS-based notebook.

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