Intel has announced its most powerful Core i9 processor chips for laptops. The announcement was inevitable given the increased focus on laptop technology these days. Intel’s first ever i9 laptop chip will provide “the best gaming and creation laptop processor Intel has ever built.”
Intel rocked the world when it first announced the Core i9 processor for Desktop PCs. Ever since the announcement was made for desktops, speculation began regarding the laptop release. There is an increased focus on making portable solutions and at the consumer level, a laptop is probably more used and preferable over a desktop PC. Therefore, it was a matter of time before the chip made its way to laptops.
Now that the first Core i9 chip is making its way to laptops, it will help laptops boost their performance in many tasks and also help enhance the gaming laptop experience too. The new chip will be known as the Intel Core i9-8950HK, which can reach as high as 4.8 GHz with turbo boost. The new laptop processor is also the first ever mobile Intel processor to have six cores and 12 threads. The shift to six cores will make the processor perform much faster according to Intel.
The increase in overall speed is roughly 29% according to Intel as compared to previous generation Intel processors. It’s not just the speed that the new six-core processor improves either. Gaming sees a significant boost with a 41 percent increase and 4K video editing is now 59% faster with the newest Core i9 chip. Content creators and streamers who use 4K videos will definitely appreciate the drastic increase in performance, especially people who game in 4K and upload their gameplay.
Intel’s announcement didn’t end with the Core i9 processor though, newer versions of other processors will also be making their way to laptop devices. New i7 and i5 processors will be launched for laptops which will be based on the company’s 14nm++ architecture (also known as Coffee Lake). However, they won’t be getting the new 8th-gen Kaby Lake R chips which are slightly improved versions of the Coffee Lake processors.
The Kaby Lake R chips are part of the U-series of Intel processors. However, the Coffee Lake chips are part of a different lineup known as the H-series lineup (they’re also part of Intel and AMD’s hybrid Radeon Vega M chips which have high-level integrated graphics built-into them). However, the i9, i5, and i7 Coffee Lake chips have one tiny drawback, they’re not thin or lightweight.
Many people prefer thin laptops over thin ones nowadays. Gone were the days where laptops used to be very thick and it would be a hassle just to carry them around, defeating the purpose of portability. Therefore, if you don’t mind a slightly thicker and heavier laptop, then an i9 Coffee Lake chip fitted laptop will be a significant upgrade from your current laptop. Most of these Coffee Lake chips are designed for companies where size and weight of the machine don’t matter, it’s raw power that counts for them. In terms of just power, there’s no match for Intel’s i9 chip.
Intel is also adding support for its Optane memory to both its desktop and laptop processor chips which will help boost overall speed significantly. Moreover, if you see badges such as Core i5+, i7+, and i9+ on new computers, that means they’ll have the new processors and optane memory. There’s no word yet on how pricing will go for laptops with these chips, however, there have been a few laptops announced that will contain the all-new 6 core processor.
Gaming on laptops has been largely frowned upon for many years but over the past few years, the laptop gaming scene has vastly improved. The introduction of these new chips will help laptop gaming improve even more which will help desktop gamers shift to laptops too, which, given the busy lives many people live, is the preferable option.