ECost, a U.S. online store, is taking orders for an HP Pavilion dv6-2157sb laptop with the Core i3-330m processor. The processor runs at a speed of 2.13GHz, according to the .

The laptop is priced at US$919 and includes 4GB of DDR3 memory, a 320GB hard drive, wireless networking, a 15.6-inch screen and the Windows 7 OS.

Intel last week said it would officially release the next generation of laptop and desktop processors at the Consumer Electronics Show, which will be held in Las Vegas January 7-10. The chips will be available under the Core i3, i5 and i7 brands and will offer better application and graphics performance than Intel's existing Core 2 Duo processors.

The new chips integrate the CPU and graphics processor in a single package, which could improve graphics performance while drawing less power. The graphics chips will be able to play back full 1080p high-definition video and decode Blu-ray movies.

Better performance also comes from running more threads on each core for faster task execution. A dual-core Core i3 chip, for example, will be able to run four threads simultaneously, compared with two threads on existing dual-core Core 2 Duo processors. Intel's new Turbo Boost technology, featured in the i3, can ratchet up the speed of a processor core or even shut off a core when not needed to save power.