If you are looking to buy a laptop before the end of 2018, Intel’s latest announcement will be music to your ears. From 7th-generation to the 8th-generation CPUs, Intel is claiming a “once in a decade” performance boost of 40 percent generation-over-generation. Intel started rolling out the 8th-generation family from August 21, beginning with a range of mobile processors designed specifically for sleek and light notebooks and two-in-ones.
“This new mobile family sets the bar for outstanding performance, including a boost of up to 40 percent gen over gen, and that jumps to 2×2 if you compare it with a 5-year-old machine…We’ve been able to do all of this without compromising battery life. In fact, you will be able to get up to 10 hours of 4K UHD local video playback on a single charge,” Gregory Bryant, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Intel said.
The first four chips revealed are from the U-series of Core i chips. These processors are most commonly found in cheaper laptops, as well as ultra-thin and light notebooks. These chips are low-power processors, and aren’t intended to replace more powerful quad-core laptops using ‘H’-series CPUs. Regardless, laptops powered by these chips will be much better at handling multiple tasks at the same time (such as loads of browser tabs), and should make many tasks a lot smoother.
Intel says 80 laptops will be available with the new quad-core chips before the end of the year, although how many come to India remains to be seen.
The i7-8650U, i7-8550U, i5-8350U, i5-8250U will be running on a refined version of Intel’s previous-generation CPU architecture, called Kaby Lake. While it’s the same underlying technology, the base clock speed of each chip is substantially lower than their predecessors. The Core i7-7600U, for example started at 2.8GHz, while the new i7-8650U will run as low as 1.9GHz. ALSO READ: Intel investing Rs 1,100 crore in India afresh
There are more laptop chips we’re still waiting to hear about, such as the H-Series (high-end), M-Series (mid-tier quad-core) and Y-Series (ultra-low-power), along with the rest of the U-series range, which normally consists of a dozen or more chips. ALSO READ: Intel’s new SSD 545s brings affordable storage solution with improved performance
Intel’s SVP Bryant also revealed that the first wave of 8th-generation Intel Core processor-powered devices featuring i5 and i7 processors will come to the market beginning September. Post that, 8th-generation processors will continue to roll out through the coming months, with the first desktop processors coming in the fall, followed by processors for enterprise customers, and a broad range of other options purpose-built for different segments. The 8th-generation family will even include some of Intel’s first 10nm products.