As people have said before, GPU hindrance is a bigger "obstacle" than the CPU nowadays.
Consider you that the current MBA combo of C2D and 320m has a score of 60/40 (60 for CPU and 40 for GPU). Now, lets say that the score of 60 in the CPU is capable of doing everything we can, and the 40 in the GPU is enough for our needs.
Now what sandy bridge does is offset the balance.
The 60 in the CPU score becomes a 80 and the 40 in the GPU score becomes a 20. Although both scores only got affected by 20 points, the difference between a 40 GPU and 20 GPU is the difference between playable and unplayable.
On the other hand, a score in the CPU of 60 and 80 are only marginal increases due to the fact that we can already do such tasks at a lower score.
Now considering that people might need more powerful CPUs, it is understandable that they might want an upgrade.
But mind you the lack of CPU power can be made up by the time.
Handbrake on a Sandy Bridge might take 20 minutes to encode a video, while on the core2duo it might take 60 minutes.
The difference is 40 minutes, a matter of time, but in the GPU case, the difference between the 320M and the 3000HD cannot be made by time.
Just because you let your 3000HD get used to the game settings does not mean it will run better over a certain period of time. Engineers always try to find the point where is perfect to sacrifice enough, but still gaining enough. That means, they will find a price point where it can suffice the needs of the general population. Whether you fit in the general population is another question.
My biggest concern is the fact that GPU cannot use time as a make up for the lack of power, while the CPU can. For those who say that the 3000HD does not suck, it might not for your needs, but I believe that the GPU trade off for CPU power will be a downgrade to most amount of users. People play more games than they encode. People play more games than they use w/e task that requires a SB processor.
Also, as I have mentioned before, why are we so hypocritical about GPU users? People keep saying that one should not use the MBA as a gaming machine, which is capable of, but instead they want a faster, stronger, better processor. Couldn't I ask the same thing? Why would you need such a good CPU?
Apple, by upgrading to the sandy bridge processors knows that is downgrading to a certain extent, but in order to keep the stock holders happy and keep the revenue up, they must take a step. whether is a step forward or backward, the general population will see a stronger CPU as a step forward, thus buying more MBAs. I hope that the macrumors community knows better than that.
Furthermore, we do know that at some point we must use the Sandy Bridge processors since the C2Ds are running out. Do we like it? Definitely not. But we must know that intel is playing dirty business tricks, and is trying to catch up to the Nvidia 320m which is a few years old driver. We should complain about Intel creating bottlenecks for the advancement of technology and not argue whether Intel 3000HD sucks or not. It does suck, but dont get me wrong, we should blame Intel than each other.
I hope I made a clear point. Thank you.
