Intel brings a six-core i9 CPU to laptops

[zdw]

There appears to be no LPDDR4 support in these processors, which seems like a major omission:

https://ark.intel.com/products/134903/Intel-Core-i9-8950HK-P...

Which means they'll be stuck using LPDDR3-2133 memory with the same bandwidth as previous generations in any power conscious design.

For example, Apple's MacBook Pro line continues to use LPDDR3-2133: https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/

I wish AMD would add LPDDR4 support to their mobile chips, if only to light another fire under Intel to have feature parity like they did with core count.

[neverminder]

I don't understand how long will this bullshit continue. At the moment your average phone can technically support more than 16GB of RAM (LPDDR4), but not Intel's laptop CPUs. Is there some kind of massive obstacle that we don't know about?

[sundvor]

Meanwhile, if you're willing to go to DDR4, then e.g. the XPS15 is looking mighty nice: https://www.anandtech.com/show/12605/dells-8th-gen-alienware...

"internals of the XPS 15 model 9570 have been upgraded: [...]a fully-unlocked six-core Core i9-8950 HK."

"Since the new processors support DDR4-2666 memory, Dell will equip its new XPS 15 with 8 – 32 GB of DDR4-2666. "

It even scores 4 lanes PCIe Thunderbolt, finally.

(I'm looking at upgrading my original X1 Carbon with a new one in the next couple of years myself so will probably wait for the LPDDR4).

[mciancia]

It will suck if we still won't see macbook pro with more than 16GB of ram because of that

[gameswithgo]

Does it have more l2 or l3 cache to mitigate this? are there any benchmarks where this has a large effect? Is the I9 with 6 cores still faster than the I7 with 4 across the board?

With more cores memory bandwidth does start to become more and more of an issue...

[merinowool]

Yeah, those new Intel chips are useless. I can't believe they wasted resources to build something like that. I really need a new laptop, but in 13 inch format I don't think I can get one with 32 or 64 GB of RAM. Only having 16 GB is a huge problem and make work difficult needlessly.

[StillBored]

So, the laptop processor has a higher turbo frequency than the desktop parts?

Sigh, the same old intel, they accuse others of selling desktop parts as server cores, but they are the ones that don't have a proper desktop lineup. Rather their focusing entirely on power/thermal constrained mobile parts, and then packing as many as possible into a server part. Desktop users get whatever random dies are left over. At least the new "workstation" series xeon's acknowledge that there are users for which single threaded desktop performance is still important.

[coldtea]

>Rather their focusing entirely on power/thermal constrained mobile parts

So where the market is? Sounds like smart for a for-profit.

If anything, one could accuse them that they didn't do that enough (e.g. missed on the mobile phone market), not that they did it.

[neogodless]

Anandtech.com points out how Intel doesn't release information about the limitations of the boost - primarily that it's very much a single core clock boost, and it's unknown what speeds the multiple cores can increase to. Perhaps on desktop, they can all hit 4.2Ghz, while the mobile chip is limiting them to 3.8Ghz. Of course, those are made up numbers and wild speculation. Until we have comparable benchmarks, the boost speed itself doesn't mean much to us.

[sigi45]

turbo frequency is not everything.

Every benchmark i know from intel desktop cpu versus mobile cpu is the same: desktop wins by big margins.

I'm guessing that the mobile version does have less execution units.

[MikusR]

Much better article. https://www.anandtech.com/show/12607/intel-expands-8th-gen-c...

[dang]

OK, we'll change to that from https://www.engadget.com/2018/04/03/intel-8th-gen-i9-laptops....

[bhouston]

The Intel Core i7 laptop series also features 6 core CPUs:

Core i7-8850H

Core i7-8750H

Core i7-8700T

Just not clocked as high as the i9.

I wonder if any of these 6 core laptop CPUs will have the AMD integrated graphics - it appears not at this moment. I was looking forward to that on an upgrade to my Dell XPS 15.

Who is getting the AMD integrated graphics CPUs then? Apple? I really wanted one in my Dell as I was hoping it would be faster and more power efficient than the NVIDIA 1050/1050 Ti.

[kikimaru]

The model numbers you're looking for are iX-8xxxG.

Dell are doing preorders on XPS15 2-in-1; HP doing same on the 15" Spectre x360.

[rsynnott]

> Who is getting the AMD integrated graphics CPUs then? Apple?

Doesn't really fit Apple's line. The 13" probably doesn't have the thermal headroom for it at all, and it's not an improvement on the discrete AMD stuff already used in the 15" MBP. Might work for a low-end 15" MBP, but it's not like it's a particularly cheap part, anyway.

[fxxxit]

The AMD integrated chips has 100W TDP (up from this 45W) so not really in the same league

[chx]

WTF. The Core i7-8700T is a desktop CPU with 6 / 12 cores/threads at 2.4-4.0 GHz at 35 W for 303 dollars.

The i7-8750H has the amount of cores and thread it is rated at 2.2-4.2 GHZ. But it's 45 W and 395 dollars. That's a lot of money and heat to pay for a paltry 5% speedup at the very top -- and let's not forget the non Turbo speed is 8% lower.

[thesausageking]

Ghz range != performance. Among other differences, the i7-8700T only has turbo on one core.

[jpalomaki]

Intel press release: https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-core-i9-processor-come...

[slipwalker]

So, are those chips immune to the Spectre and meltdown already ?...

[nfriedly]

Nope. It's basically the same design that they already had, just with the clock speeds and TDP's moved around a bit.

[jotm]

Are there any real attacks on consumer/prosumer machines using Spectre/Meltdown already?

[dis-sys]

11 years after the first quad core laptop hitting the US market. Well done Intel!

https://www.cnet.com/news/first-quad-core-laptop-hits-u-s/

[coldtea]

Because there was some contract that cores have to be increased before some end date?

If anything, most cores are underutilized in laptops even today...

[dmix]

> All of the new processors and their accompanying chipsets will support Intel's Optane technology. [..] Intel claims the technology helps game levels load 4.7 times faster on the Core i7 8750H

Anyone try out these Optane chips yet and seen a significant difference? This is apparently the other big announcement coming to laptops...

[wtallis]

There's no new Optane hardware yet, just a renewed attempt to push Optane caching for mobile use. Intel plans to release cache-sized Optane SSDs that have low power idle states, to replace last year's 16GB and 32GB modules that idle at 1W.

Intel is also updating their Windows drivers to enable Optane caching of non-boot drives. For the past year, Optane Memory caching has only been usable for the boot volume. This driver update should be available for both the new platforms and for all existing Kaby Lake platforms that support the original Optane Memory implementation, since there's no motherboard firmware functionality that needs to be updated for non-boot volumes.

[nfriedly]

I think that's compared to loading from a 5400rpm mechanical hard drive. I'll easily believe that optane is 4.7x faster than that.

I also expect most high-end NVME SSDs are going to be in a similar ballpark, maybe "only" 4.5x faster or something.

[bo1024]

This claim doesn't make sense to me. I think game loading times are primarily limited by the hard drive. It's about loading data from there into RAM (and/or GPU RAM). The hard drive would be the bottleneck.

[bob_theslob646]

I just hope the do extensive testing on cooling these machines.

As a former user of laptop workstations, there is nothing worse than having to always lug around a bulky UPC as well as worry about overheating.

The other reason I could see them doing this is maybe related to wanting to push people to use more graphic related applications (3D rendering), but even that is slowly going to cloud.

[mark-r]

Intel is dead to me until they support ECC memory in their desktop processors like Ryzen does.

[KeitIG]

I don't really understand the demand for this, does not having an i9 defeat the purpose of laptops (working without a power source)? I usually buy laptops with i5 processors which is the perfect trade-off between performances and battery life.

[KillerRabbitt]

Based on the slides, do some processors lack virtualization support?

[Carioca]

The only technologies they lack are related to remote management, as joathonW said: https://ark.intel.com/products/134903/Intel-Core-i9-8950HK-P...

[sebazzz]

Must be a mistake. Other than video rendering, virtualization is a good task for a multi-core processor.

[mtgx]

Did I miss it or is there no mention of price? I assume that's because it's going to be more expensive than AMD's 8-core chips?

[MikusR]

$583

[TwoNineA]

Good is competition. Began the Core Wars have.

[astrodust]

Finally the regular i7 has moved beyond four cores. It only took ten years.

[mikerg87]

Anyone more in the know - how much ram could one of these new chips handle - the 16GB limit is something that has to go.

[dorfsmay]

Isn't the 16 GiB a self-imposed limit by the laptops manufacturers rather than the processors?

[grkvlt]

You can buy an HP zbook x2 with i7-8650U and 32Gb today, if you want? And there's even a mobile Xeon laptop from HP that supports 64 Gb...

[mnw21cam]

That web site is extremely heavy. I hate to think how much Javascript it's trying to run in the background.

[ferdbold]

Better upgrade to a shiny new CPU to run all that pesky Javascript, then!

[notafxn]

It's super fast and light here. Is your ad blocker up to date?

[einrealist]

Accidently dropped my gaming laptop during the weekend. Guess I will buy a new one. The Gigabyte Aero 15X v8 looks promising. So this is a nice coincidence.

The only issue is the missing Spectre / Meltdown silicon fixes. And even when they are available, its probably pure luck to get a model having it. :(

[lwhalen]

Great. Can we get > 16GB RAM while we're at it? :-)

[tasty_freeze]

Does this generation add any hardware support to mitigate/eliminate meltdown and/or spectre?