After the Announcement for the arrival of Intel’s 8th Gen Core Series Processors we were super exited about it. Finally, today Intel officially announced their 8th Gen Core processors. This is the 1st wave of the series including Four U-series Processors made mostly for Thin & Light Ultrabooks & 2-in-one’s. So, here are the main pointers that you need to know about the 8th Generation Of Intel Core Processors.

So, this series will be known as Kaby Lake R & we have two i7 & two i5 U-series variants as the very first members of the 8th Gen Core series. Some new improvements that all of these variants have in common are listed below,

1. All of these processors now come in Quadcore configurations that support Hyper Threading. So,  we’re getting 4 Cores & 8 Threads on both the i7 & the i5 variants.
2. 8 MB L3 Cache on both i7 variants & 6 MB L3 Cache on both i5 variants.
3. Intel UHD 620 Graphics support in all the four variants.
4. Upto 40% Performance Increase over their 7th Gen Kaby-lake Predecessors.
5. Improvements in Productivity with Faster 4K and 360 Degree Video Edits, 48% Faster General Photo Editing & 28% Faster Adobe Lightroom Editing.
6. Upto 2400 MHz Dual Channel DDR 4 RAM support in all the four variants.
7. Windows Mixed Reality Support.

The image blow includes the main specifications for the 8th Gen U-series Processors,

The 8th Gen Processors live up quite well in some segments of what we expected. But, more processors are coming out later this fall including the H-series Processors for High-end Laptops, Y-series Processors for Fanless Laptops & 2-in-ones & S-series Processors for Desktop PCs & Workstations. So, we have to wait till the whole range comes out to know if some of our other expectations get fulfilled or not.

But, not all the areas were improved. Some of them are still exactly the same with their 6th & & 7th Gen Predecessors. These areas include,

1. Still 14 nm Fabrication Process Technology (We expected 10 nm for the 8th Generation)
2. Still only 12 PCIe Lanes in U-series (We expected increased numbers of PCIe Lanes)
3. Still on Thunderbolt 3 port Support (We expected a brand new Thunderbolt 4 technology)

[ Update: 10nm Processors are in for some future introductions of this series ! ]

So, some steps still look backwards & simply lacking innovation. But, still we think bumping up all U-series i7 & i5 variants to Hyperthreaded Quadcore configurations will increase the multitasking performance significantly. Coupled with new Intel UHD 620 Graphcs, finally Ultrabooks may perform well in multi-threaded Graphics Intensive tasks like Professional Photo & Video Editing and also stuff like 3D Rendering.

Intel 8th Gen Core Processor powered Laptops will start being available in September from various OEMs including ASUS, Acer, Dell, HP & Lenovo. No doubt the 1st wave will be Ultrabooks & 2-in-ones. Don’t expect H-series processors right now, as they’ll take some time to hit the market.

The Pricing details (Recommended Customer Price on Intel ARK) are listed below for all the Four variants mentioned above.

Intel® Core™ i7-8650U : $409.00

Intel® Core™ i7-8550U : $409.00

Intel® Core™ i5-8350U : $297.00

Intel® Core™ i5-8250U : $297.00

Now, we don’t think Intel’s price listing is completely correct here as both i7 variants & both i5 variants have the same price. But anyway, if Intel does any correction in the details, we’ll update that here.

[Update 1: Pricing Details Listed

Update 2: Partner OEM Names Updated]

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