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The build-up to Intel’s eighth-generation Core processors has been as drawn out and hyped up as much as the latest season of Game of Thrones. But it is finally here, with the first batch of laptops with eighth-generation Intel CPUs expected to hit the shelves in September.
At first glance, the announcement that the new CPUs are merely a Kaby Lake Refresh is somewhat disappointing. However, do not despair just yet. Put through its paces running through the Sysmark benmark, the latest CPUs come up trumps. Earlier this year, Intel said that its latest processors would be 30 per cent faster than last year’s chips. However, when put to the test, the CPUs are actually 40 per cent speedier, a 10 per cent surprise for all of us.
And when it comes to five-year-old computers – the kind Intel expects the majority of consumers to upgrade from – they’re likely to operative twice as fast at productivity tasks.
Intel achieved this by cramming four CPU cores into its U-series chips for the first time ever. Additionally, Intel managed to squeeze another 500MHz of Turbo Boost performance into the chips, allowing them to reach speeds up to 4.2GHz. Whereas last year’s seventh-generation CPUs were focused on improving 4K performance, the coming offerings will feature far more raw performance.
The eighth-generation Core family for ultraportables ranges from the i5-8250U, with speeds between 1.6GHz and 3.4GHz, and the i7-8650U, clocking from 1.9GHz to 4.2GHz. They’re all quad-core chips, but as usual, you can expect better performance from the i7 lineup.
Despite having more power under the hood, Intel says the new CPUs won’t be a step backward when it comes to battery life. Its current benchmarks indicate that laptops running these chips should feature around 10 hours of battery life when playing 4K video. That’s pretty much the same as before
With quad-core performance, the possibility of ultraportable notebooks replacing their cumbersome predecessors could finally be a reality.
