Intel Core i7-8809G Confirmed With 3.1GHz Base Clock, Radeon RX Vega M GPU
It's quite a big deal that Intel and AMD have partnered to build a new processor package incorporating an 8th Generation Core H-series CPU with a Radeon Vega GPU, plans of which Intel announced two months ago. We expect quite a bit of fanfare and ballyhooing when the first multi-chip module (MCM) package arrives, though in the meantime, an overclocking page at Intel's India portal has tipped what that will likely be—a Core i7-8809G.
The new chip shows up on a page promoting overclocking Intel's unlocked processors. When you scroll down, there is a section that lists several unlocked CPUs so that users can compare the clockspeeds and other features, such as the amount of L3 cache and TDP. The chart contains 13 processors in all (a baker's dozen), with the Core i7-8809G topping the bottom third, sitting above the Core i7-8700K, Core i5-8600K, and Core i3-8350K.
We're not sure if Intel intended to publish the chip or if somebody jumped the gun with a website revision. Like the rest of the entries, the new entry is hyperlinked, though clicking on it brings up an error page instead of an official processor listing like all the rest. However, even with the link not working, we now have some concrete specifications direct from Intel to work with, so that's a start.
The Core i7-8809G is listed as a quad-core processor with Hyper Threading support, allowing up to eight threads to crunch through multi-tasking chores. It has a 3.1GHz base clockspeed, 8MB of L3 cache, a 100W 'target package' TDP, and support for two channels of DDR4-2400 memory. As for graphics, Intel lists two types, including AMD Radeon RX Vega M GH Graphics (iGPU) and its own HD Graphics 630 (iGP).
Beyond that, the listing does not provide any other details, though we can attempt to extrapolate additional information on our own. Specifically, the listing suggests the CPU portion of the module is based on Intel's Kaby Lake G architecture, not Coffee Lake as the model otherwise seems to imply. That's because every desktop Coffee Lake processor up to this point has six physical cores, whereas the Core i7-8809G has four.
One thing we don't know is how powerful the Radeon Vega graphics chip is, as potentially indicated by the GH designation. We presume it is using second generation high bandwidth memory (HBM2), as Intel indicated when it announced its partnership with AMD, though the listing does not provide any confirmation of this or say how much graphics memory is in play.
The Core i7-8809G is the same chip that showed up in some leaked benchmarks in November, along with a second MCM package, a Core i7-8705G. Those early numbers looked pretty good, and could be a hint of better things to come with driver optimizations.
Hang on tight folks, we're only three days into 2018 and things are already getting interesting.