Processor Technology Reviews, Analysis And News
Processors come in many types for different applications. However, when it comes to computing, whether mobile, on the desktop or in the Internet of Things, these chips are widely known as the "brains" of the operation. Here you'll find Hot Hardware reviews and news on products from the biggest names in PC and mobile processors from Intel and AMD, to Qualcomm, ARM and more.
After what seemed like months of leaks and speculation, Intel officially announced its 9th Generation Core desktop CPU line-up a couple of weeks back, at a lavish event in New York City. Though the upcoming Core X series processors, the beastly 28-core Xeon W-3175X, and the 9th Gen Core i family don’t feature new architectures, all of the parts bring something fresh to the table, whether it be soldered thermal interface material, unlocked multipliers in the case of the Xeon, or updated silicon designs that incorporate more core resources, among other things. One of the most anticipated and...
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Today is a big day for Intel -- the company is announcing a massive update to its processor families with new 8th generation Coffee Lake-based Core SKUs for both mobile and desktop platforms. On the mobile side of the equation, the most interesting processors are no doubt Intel's new six-core Coffee Lake parts, starting with the Core i7-8750H. This processor comes with base/max single-core turbo boost clocks of 2.2GHz and 4.2GHz respectively, while the Core i7-8850H bumps those clocks to 2.6GHz and 4.3GHz respectively. Both processors have six cores (12 threads), a TDP of 45 watts and 9MB...
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Intel and AMD rocked the tech industry to its core late last year, when the pair announced that forthcoming Intel 8th Gen Core processors would feature integrated Radeon graphics. We had heard rumors of the two rivals working together in such a fashion for well over a year, but it seemed like such a far-fetched idea that we didn't lend much credence to the potential. Well, here we are at CES 2018, and Intel is giving us more details on its 8th generation Intel Core processors with integrated Radeon RX Vega M graphics. The mashup of an Intel processor with an AMD GPU is made possible by the...
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Intel’s newest 8th generation Core processors are here and have delivered promising early results in our initial tests on the desktop, and more recently in Dell's XPS 13 laptop. The biggest change with Intel's 8th Gen Core Mobile processors comes by way of doubled core counts. This makes many of this new generation of Core i5 and i7 mobile chips true quad-core processors now, with support for up to eight threads with Hyper Threading, all within a 15W TDP target. This improvement does not come without trade-offs, of course, as we see base clocks dropped by up to 900MHz relative to each chip’s...
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The upheaval of the high-end desktop processor segment continues today with the official release of Intel’s latest Coffee Lake-based 8th Generation Core processors. 2017 easily been one of the most exciting years in a decade for desktop processors, thanks in no small part to AMD’s entire line-up of Ryzen products, including the monstrous Threadripper, which propelled the company back into contention at virtually every price point.Intel was at the ready with a host of ultra-high-end processors – namely the Core X series – that allow the company to lay claim to the fastest desktop processor on the...
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Over the last few months, Intel slowly divulged a number of details regarding the two processors we’ll be covering today, its flagship 18-core, behemoth Core i9-7980XE and its slightly smaller sibling, the 16-core Core i9-7960X. The fact that these two processors were in the works was officially disclosed all the way back in May, no doubt in an attempt to quell the impending AMD Threadripper firestorm, but specifics like frequencies, cache, and TDP were initially held back.Those specifications were eventually revealed, and some benchmarks leaked as well, but today we’ve got the full, official scoop....
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Intel announced its Xeon Scalable processor family based Skylake-SP a few weeks back, but today marks the official launch of the platform. These new processors feature a new microarchitecture versus previous-generation Xeons and Intel has revamped the naming convention and arrangement of the product stack as well. Whereas previous-generation Xeon processors carried version, class, and model number designations – for example, Xeon E5-2697 v4 – the Xeon Scalable processor family is now designated by Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze categories, with a single model number.The new naming convention...
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Over the next few months, Intel will be releasing an array of new high-end desktop processors in the recently-announced Core X Series, based on the Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X micro-architectures. The first chips in the series to arrive in the lab are the 10-core Core i9-7900X and quad-core Core i7-7740X. We’ve got an array of benchmarks and overclocking data on tap with the processors, but due to some unexpected shipping issues, we weren't able to complete all of the test we would have liked. Rest assured, we’ll update this piece as soon as we can with a full set of numbers -- it will just take...
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Intel announced its family of Xeon Scalable Processors in early May, featuring the Skylake-SP microarchitecture. Those processors haven’t officially launched just yet, but today the chip giant is revealing one of the key technologies being leveraged in the Xeon Scalable Processor family. A new mesh interconnect architecture has been designed to increase bandwidth between on-chip elements, while simultaneously decreasing latency, and improving power efficiency and scalability.In a blog post on the company’s website, Akhilesh Kimar, Skylake-SP CPU Architect explains, “The task of adding more cores...
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We’ve heard rumors regarding Intel’s upcoming Kaby Lake-X and Skylake-X processors for the past few months, but today it's finally time for the official roll-out of these new flagship Intel CPUs. We were no doubt impressed by the initial specs that leaked (especially over the past week), but the final product may actually be a bit more impressive than we initially thought.Intel bills these new Core i5 X-Series, Core i7 X-Series, Core i9 X-Series, and Core i9 Extreme Edition processors as its “Most Powerful, Most Scalable” desktop processors to date. We’ve known for a few weeks now that Intel would...
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We have covered Intel’s Kaby Lake microarchitecture on a few occasions already. We outlined the architectural details in this piece, and have evaluated a handful of mobile devices powered by Kaby Lake at this point, including the gorgeous Asus ZenBook 3 and updated Dell XPS 13. Today, however, Kaby Lake makes its official debut on the desktop, with a brand-new flagship quad-core processor – the Core i7-7700K – and newly refreshed 200 series motherboard chipsets.The Core i7-7700K has hardly been a secret. The processors actually went on sale at a couple of major on-line retailers recently and benchmark...
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Intel 7th Gen Core Series Kaby Lake WaferIntel is readying a new family of processors based on its next-gen Kaby Lake microarchitecture. We’ve heard quite a bit about Kaby Lake over the last few months, and were even able to show you it in action last week while covering IDF, but today we’ve got many more details to share on the microarchitecture that will be foundation of Intel’s upcoming 7th Generation Core processors.If you’re unfamiliar with Kaby Lake, it is the follow-up product to last year’s Skylake. Kaby Lake borrows heavily from Skylake; its CPU cores, cache structure, and graphics engine...
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Overwatch Running On Intel Kaby Lake-Based, Next-Gen Dell XPS 13 This morning’s opening keynote at the annual Intel Developers Forum was rather eventful. In addition to unveiling the Project Alloy merged reality headset, the Project Aero Drone platform, and a number of maker-oriented devices, Intel also showed off its next-generation Kaby Lake-based 7th Generation Core processors and some new virtual reality editing tools built into Epic’s Unreal Engine. Kaby Lake is the follow-up product to current, 6th Generation Skylake-based Core processors. With Kaby Lake, however, Intel is adding native support...
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Back in March, Intel launched its Xeon Processor E5 v4 family of products, based on the Broadwell-EP core. We had the chance to evaluate a dual Xeon E5-2697 v4-based system with a total of 36 cores (72 Threads) and detailed some of the changes and new features in Broadwell-EP. As powerful as that 36-core system was, the E5 v4 family is not Intel’s top-end server offering. That designation belongs to the Xeon E7 v4 product family being announced today, which typically features more cores, more cache, and support for additional sockets.Xeon E7 v4 Processor, Top And BottomThough they are a different...
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