
Intel Launches 8th Generation CPUs, Starting with Kaby Lake Refresh - satai
http://www.anandtech.com/show/11738/intel-launches-8th-generation-cpus-starting-with-kaby-lake-refresh-for-15w-mobile
======
nfriedly
> _Intel’s big aim with the new processors is, as always, to tackle the
> growing market of 3-5+ year old devices still being used today, quoting
> better performance, a better user experience, longer battery life, and
> fundamentally new experiences when using newer hardware. Two years ago Intel
> quoted 300 million units fit into this 3-5+ year window; now that number is
> 450 million._

Yep, Intel's problem is that most folks don't _need_ a new CPU, especially for
a computer that's always plugged in.

I'm refurbishing a 6-year-old system with a Pentium E5800 for a friend, and
initially it felt dog slow. However, once I swapped the mechanical hard drive
with a solid state disk, it instantly feat like a zippy little machine. It
already had enough processing power for everything they wanted (browsing,
office, youtube, etc.)

~~~
jjjsdf87777
The big grief I have with "general computing" platforms is their insistence of
sticking with the traditional form factor.

ATX, ITX, PCI- _, DDR_ ...outdated, overboard, clunky designs for most people.

Take a Mac Mini-like design, and make modules that can stack or otherwise
attach to expand capabilities. IMO, this is what Apple should do and be done
with the whole "But Mac Pro users ...!"

A project Ara-like desktop, both its size and modularity, would probably offer
more than enough computing power for most users (browsing, office, youtube).

~~~
stamps
Like the HP Elite Slice?

[http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/elite-
slice/overview.html](http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/elite-
slice/overview.html)

~~~
pjc50
Cute! Shame the pricing is "elite" too.

Slice >£1000 inc tax: [http://store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Offer.aspx?p=b-pc-hp-
elite...](http://store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Offer.aspx?p=b-pc-hp-elite-
slice#products)

Comparable spec small PC £520:
[http://www.misco.co.uk/product/2688486/HP-280-G2-SFF-
Desktop...](http://www.misco.co.uk/product/2688486/HP-280-G2-SFF-Desktop-PC-
Intel-Core-i5-6500-8GB-RAM-256GB-SSD-Slim-SATA-DVD-Writer-Windows-10-Pro-
Desktop-PC)

------
vladimirralev
Still LPDDR3 with 16GB RAM limitation. What an embarrassment, all phone SoC
today use LPDDR4(x) and technically support more RAM than the desktop Intel
CPUs.

~~~
jrs95
Does anyone know if Ryzen will support LPDDR4 in it's mobile chips? I tried
Googling around for it but couldn't get an obvious yes or no.

Seems sort of unlikely, but if they do support it a lot sooner than Intel,
that would be a big win for AMD.

Even more unlikely would be a Ryzen powered MacBook Pro with 32GB of LPDDR4
RAM...but I'd be willing to pay a lot of money for that. I know Apple tends to
prioritize single core performance on their own chips, but almost all of the
desktop software their pro users are using would run better on Ryzen than on
Intel's current offerings.

Plus, with Intel's Iris Pro gone, Ryzen might allow them to have better
integrated graphics, and bring back a 15" model with no dGPU.

~~~
compuguy
Wait, they aren't making chips with Iris Pro graphics anymore? That seems like
an odd decision.

------
mrmondo
Good to see lower power usage but the one thing I still feel is missing is
widespread support for ECC on the desk(lap)top.

~~~
tammer
Curious what your use case is that entails ECC? Are you currently being held
back without it?

~~~
TorKlingberg
This shouldn't de downvoted, it's a fair question. Just a few years ago ECC
was widely considered an unnecessary belt-and-suspenders thing that made
enterprise hardware expensive. I guess the general perception changed with the
Rowhammer attack.

~~~
MichaelGG
I don't think so. Well before Rowhammer, Google published their paper showing
the high amount of memory errors they get.

What's changed is higher memory densities, making it even more important.

------
zachruss92
I'm kind of disappointed in this. While they are upping the core count, the
overall clock speed is being decreased across the board. This means that
single threaded processes will theoretically perform slower (I know it still
turbos up).

Honestly, I just upgraded to Ryzen from a 3770k and. My 3770k ran all cores at
4.2GHz (overclocked, obviously) and the only reason I updated was becasue I
wanted to upgrade to NVMe and DDR4. That was 4 years old and I had no CPU-
bound performance issues. I really think Intel needs to start innovating more
rather than being complacent or AMD is actually going to steal the show.

Super happy for the competition though!

------
tachion
I wonder how companies like Apple, that have quite stagnant and stable release
cycles (compared to other brands) will handle that situation. Does it mean
their customers will have to sit on 'old' CPU's again for another generation
or two? Latest MacBooks were released ~80 days ago and their release cycle is
~300 days on average. Obviously I wonder, because I was about to order a new
Apple machine for myself and now I'm not sure if I shouldn't (the same problem
over and over again) just wait a bit longer.

~~~
nik736
I don't think the regular MacBook have those chips. These are the ones for the
13-inch MBP entry level models.

~~~
tachion
I thought of MacBook as of 'MacBook family' and not as 'The MacBook 12"'. To
be more precise, when I said I wanted to buy a new machine, I was thinking
about The MBPR 15".

------
sundvor
Oooh moving to a baseline of 4 cores; this means we'll see quad core Lenovo X1
Carbons / Ultrabooks soon. :)

I for one am excited.

~~~
throwaway613834
Do you happen to have any idea how long we'll have to wait for that? Might
they be out in a month, or might it take a few more?

~~~
sundvor
I'm guessing January next year with February availability, going by previous
releases. (This is purely my own speculation, considering CES/previous
releases.)

~~~
throwaway613834
Thanks! :) Do you think this would be the case for the first quad-core
ultrabooks/notebooks as well, or just these particular Lenovo products would
take that long? I haven't been keeping up with CPU releases so I don't recall
how long it takes for them to reach the portable market...

~~~
acous
This article [1] contains some info: "Intel tells us that we should start
seeing laptops using the new CPUs hit the market in September."

[1] [http://www.anandtech.com/show/11738/intel-launches-8th-
gener...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/11738/intel-launches-8th-generation-
cpus-starting-with-kaby-lake-refresh-for-15w-mobile)

~~~
throwaway613834
Oh, awesome, thanks!

------
samstave
What does the term "lake" represent in these family of CPUs?

Apparently asking this makes me an idiot to some... while I'll admit to simply
laziness...

I assume that it would tie a technology together as a code name for this
family of procs, but in the case of "lake" they use it in multiple differing
technologies...

So was curious if it meant something else non-obvious to me.

~~~
wmf
It doesn't mean anything; Intel has a bunch of unrelated products that all
have lake codenames.

------
Zekio
Wait isn't 7th gen already essentially a refresh of 6th gen?

~~~
Synaesthesia
Yeah Intel are not following the tick-tock pattern anymore, they are having
more revisions on the same node, and some of the revisions are more slight.
Anandtech had an article on it a while back.

~~~
stephens_chris
Correct. About a year and a half ago, Intel announced they were ditching tick-
tock for a three step model of process-architecture-optimization.

------
Aardwolf
How about some consumer desktop ones with ECC RAM support?

~~~
mamon
Never gonna happen. ECC is "pro" feature for Intel, reserved for Xeons only.
They have to justify high price of Xeons somehow.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Even AMD think of it as such. Ryzen doesn't have it disabled on the desktop,
but AMD haven't validated it either.

~~~
agumonkey
Didn't AMD employees confirm it a few times on the web already ?

~~~
onli
ECC is working with AMD if the motherboard supports it, but you can't always
be sure that the motherboard does support it correctly. You need to rely on
user reports/what the motherboard producer promises, instead of it being a
default feature that always works.

Still a lot more than what Intel offers in that space.

~~~
agumonkey
Thanks

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throwaway613834
I remember seeing claims of 15-30% improved single-threaded performance. Does
anyone know how legitimately I should take these? They sound way too good to
be true...

~~~
skummetmaelk
Maybe per watt?

~~~
throwaway613834
That's not the impression I got, but I'm not well-versed in the marketing
terminology. Is that the impression you get from here?
[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/intel-
claims-30-perf...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/intel-
claims-30-performance-boost-for-8th-generation-processors/)

~~~
onli
I might miss something in that article, but this 15-30% performance increase
when pitting a dual core against a quad core is pretty bad. I don't see the
mention of single thread performance. It talks about overall benchmark
performance.

~~~
throwaway613834
I'm pretty sure they mean single-threaded, but I've seen different numbers
floating around. Here I see between 11-29% depending on the model:
[https://videocardz.com/72112/intel-claims-i7-8700k-to-
be-11-...](https://videocardz.com/72112/intel-claims-i7-8700k-to-be-11-faster-
than-7700k)

~~~
onli
Okay. Well, you should wait for benchmarks. If like in the anandtech article
mentioned the clock rate gets decreased, and that would be very normal when
adding more cores, then a single thread performance increase is very unlikely.
In the last launch Intel did not get close to those numbers, and that was
without a core increase.

Also, there seems to be some confusion whether those processors now are a kaby
lake refresh or the new coffee lake architecture. The videocardz article
mentions Coffee Lake (and some other news articles call those processors that
as well), but the anandtech article defines them as a Kaby Lake Refresh. A new
architecture would make a single thread performance increase more likely.

~~~
jsnell
The table in the article shows a ~5% increase in boost clocks for the high end
models. Those are what matters for single-core performance, not the base
clocks.

~~~
onli
I think that would be correct for the Desktop, but in laptops the turbo clock
normally(?) does not work for a sufficient long time to give it any meaning.

~~~
lorenzhs
It does in well-designed machines, although usually not in the ultraslim ones.
The ThinkPad T470 can sustain full turbo indefinitely according to
notebookcheck. Lenovo's premium line (X1 Carbon/Yoga) cannot, though, as
they're too thin and light for a sufficiently capable cooling system, and will
throttle after a while.

~~~
throwaway613834
Would you have a link to the page you're referring to? I'm wondering if that's
also true for the T470p.

~~~
lorenzhs
The T470 review is at [https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-
ThinkPad-T470-Core-i5-F...](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-
ThinkPad-T470-Core-i5-Full-HD-Notebook-Review.198130.0.html) \- but keep in
mind that's a 15W i5. The 35W CPUs in the T470p produce a lot more heat. I'm
sure notebookcheck has a review of that, too.

------
ksec
I wonder how many Programmers here using Macbook Pro need an Iris Graphics?
Compared to this newest UHD 620 ( Which really is just HD 620 with HDMI 2.2
support ), the Skylake Iris Graphics is rougly 50% to 60% faster. But with
Kaby Lake Refresh you get Quad Core instead of Dual Core.

I wonder how many would prefer to have a Quad Core Macbook Pro 13" instead.

* These 15W parts can be TDP Config up to 25W. Which Fits the Macbook Pro uses.

~~~
jjawssd
Integrated graphics are great for the power savings but a 2015 Macbook Pro can
not drive a 4K display higher than 24 frames per second.

~~~
CharlesW
That's an HDMI limitation. With DisplayPort, my early 2015 MBP drives my Dell
P2715Q at 60Hz.

~~~
photojosh
My _2013_ 15" MBP drives my 4K display at 60Hz...

~~~
jjawssd
I'm assuming this is with DisplayPort?

~~~
photojosh
Yes.

My comment was just an extra anecdote to the grandparent comment... if you
want 4K at 60 fps, why aren't you plugging in via DP instead of HDMI?

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happycube
Just _not_ in time for back to school - good for intel's margins, bad for all
the students stuck with dual core lie5's/7's.

------
chx
The Turbo/base ratio is getting interesting. The previous generation saw a
1.6x Turbo max but this generation now sees 2.2x -- a clear testimony how the
four cores, alas, are for show. Obviously there will be a little improvement
but I wouldn't expect earth shattering results.

~~~
bhouston
You get four cores at less than half speed. Sort of think, can you just get 2
cores at 4/5th speed and it would be able the same?

Very strange scaling this chip has.

------
nik736
Isn't it better to have more powerful single thread performance for developing
in single threaded languages? Looks like a step backwards than? Double the
core count and more l3 cache sounds good, even though they crippled the base
clock speed.

~~~
Filligree
They lowered the _base_ clock speed, yes. That's the minimum clock you can
count on, assuming a correctly designed laptop, even if all four cores are
going flat out.

In practice, the clock is set to limit power usage and thermal load. A better-
cooled system will automatically run faster (not really applicable to
laptops), and if you're only using a single thread then you'll see the same
clock rate you did before, or a bit above.

~~~
lorenzhs
Cooling limitations are extremely applicable to laptops! You can easily have
two different machines with identical CPUs and 10%+ performance difference
because one has a proper cooling system while the other doesn't. Check the
notebookcheck rankings if you want to see some specific numbers.

~~~
Filligree
Sorry, I meant that in the sense that no laptop is "properly cooled". There
definitely can still be variations. :P

~~~
lorenzhs
That's not actually true! From [https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-
ThinkPad-T470-Core-i5-F...](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-
ThinkPad-T470-Core-i5-Full-HD-Notebook-Review.198130.0.html):

" _Our stress test with the tools Prime95 and FurMark (at least one hour) on
mains is not a big challenge for the ThinkPad T470. Thanks to the increased
TDP limit, both components can maintain their maximum respective clocks over
the course of the review. [...] The two CPU cores maintain the full Turbo
Boost at 3.1 GHz and the graphics card 998 MHz._ "

------
xcasex
aaand with linux, baytrail is still an issue, even though 4+ intel engineers
are working on cracking that nut.

