INTEL BACK IN THE BUSINESS WITH i8 CHIPSET....

Intel has finally shown its hand in the 2017 CPU wars, revealing the processors that’ll power the laptops going on sale before Christmas this year. We still don’t have firm details on the expected ‘Coffee Lake’ desktop chips yet, but this piece will contain everything Intel has officially revealed along with some extra juicy rumours about what’s coming up.

Key points:

• Intel doubles number of processor cores on laptop chips
• New chips are response to AMD’s upcoming Ryzen Mobile
• Revealed laptop chips are 40% more powerful than 7th-gen equivalents and twice as fast as five-year-old equivalents
• Line-up is mix of different Intel architectures for the first time
• No information on 8th-gen Coffee Lake desktop processors

Intel’s first drip of information on its new 8th-generation chips will be music to the ears of people looking to buy a laptop before the start of 2018. From 7th-generation ‘Kaby Lake’ to 8th-gen ‘Kaby Lake’ (you read that right, we’ll explain later, we promise), Intel is claiming a “once in a decade” performance boost of 40% generation-over-generation.

When you look at the figures, it’s easy to see why. The first four chips revealed are from the U-series of CORE I chips. These processors are the most common you’ll find in cheaper laptops, as well as ultra-thin and light notebooks.

Where the last-generation equivalents of these new processors were dual-core parts, Intel has doubled the number of cores. Quad-core performance on an Ultrabook? Result! Well, not quite.

Yes, there will be four cores but there’s more to performance than just number of cores.  These are still low-power processors. In other words, these aren’t intended to replace more powerful quad-core laptops using ‘H’-series CPUs. However, what is clear is that new laptops 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 the UK remains to be seen.

	i7-8650U	i7-8550U	i5-8350U	i5-8250U
Processor frequency (GHz)	1.9-4.2	1.8-4	1.7-3.6	1.6-3.4
CPU cores/threads	4/8	4/8	4/8	4/8
Cache	8MB	8MB	6MB	6MB
Graphics clock speed (MHz)	Up to 1150	Up to 1150	Up to 1000	Up to 1000

This first tranche of new chips will be running on a refined version of Intel’s previous-generation CPU architecture, called Kaby Lake. While it’s the same underlying technology, this only tells part of the story.

While there are more cores, 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.