As the formal launch of Intel’s new codenamed Whiskey Lake-U processors approaches, it is seemingly inevitable that their model numbers and specifications will get published by OEMs ahead of time. This week HP has done just that, inadvertently publishing the frequencies of some of the upcoming processors, all the while ASUS and Synnex have confirmed their model numbers as well as some other specs. As it appears, Intel has managed to increase Turbo clocks of the new chips rather significantly when compared to their predecessors.

Intel first announced its Whiskey Lake-U processors for mobile PCs back in April and then shed some light on these chips at Computex. According to Intel, the CPUs will belong to its 8th Generation Core family, will be made using a 14 nm process technology, and will offer a double-digit performance gains when compared to the Kaby Lake Refresh parts. It is unclear whether the Whiskey Lake-U processors have any microarchitectural improvements over their ancestors, but this week we learned that they will at least have higher Turbo frequencies.

HP on Wednesday accidentally published specs of its upcoming Pavilion x360 convertible based on the Whiskey Lake-U SoC and disclosed specs of the chips it plans to use. In the meantime, ASUS and Synnex (1, 2) confirmed existence of CPUs with such model numbers.

As it turns out, HP will offer three Whiskey Lake-U processors with its Pavilion x360 notebooks: the quad-core Core i7-8565U, the quad-core Core i5-8265U, as well as the dual-core Core i3-8145U. HP’s disclosure indicates that all of these SoCs feature Intel’s UHD 620 iGPU with 24 EUs, so at least on the graphics front Whiskey Lake-U will offer similar features as their predecessors. In the meantime, specs published by ASUS indicate that the new CPUs will support DDR4-2667 memory, thus offering an upgrade.

If we compare alleged specs of the upcoming Whiskey Lake-U processors with comparable Kaby Lake Refresh chips, we will notice that the new SoCs do not have any advantages in terms of base frequencies, but feature massively higher turbo clocks, on the order of 500 to 700 MHz. The latter will have an impact on responsiveness of future laptops, but under prolonged heavy loads such PCs may not perform much differently than systems featuring KBL-R CPUs.

General Specifications of Intel's 2017/2018 Mainstream Notebook CPUs
Whiskey Lake-U Kaby Lake Refresh
  Cores Freq.
Base
Freq.
Turbo
L3 TDP   Cores Freq.
Base
Freq.
Turbo
L3 TDP
Core i7-8565U 4 1.8 GHz 4.6 GHz 8 MB 15 W Core i7-8550U 4 1.8 GHz 4
GHz
8 MB 15 W
Core i5-8265U 1.6 GHz 4.1 GHz 6 MB Core i5-8250U 1.6 GHz 3.4 GHz 6 MB
Core i3-8145U 2 2.1 GHz 3.9 GHz 4 MB Core i3-8130U 2 2.2 GHz 3.4 GHz 4 MB

Intel traditionally does not comment on unreleased products and therefore it is impossible to verify accuracy of the specs published by HP.

Related Reading:

Sources: Tom’s Hardware, Notebookcheck.net

Comments Locked

40 Comments

View All Comments

  • HStewart - Friday, August 10, 2018 - link

    Maybe on desktop but not on the mobile side
  • ikjadoon - Thursday, August 9, 2018 - link

    Eh, that shows a 0.7% uplift between Skylake and Coffee Lake; I don't think "www.cpupgrade.com" has done the statistical confidence testing to show that 0.76% increase is real and not within margin of error.

    I mean, not that they're aiming to be misleading (it's a handy site, FWIW), but confirming a 0.7% increase would take tens of dozens of rounds in identical thermal and system conditions.

    I don't think we can stand behind that kind of reasoning, however nice I do admit it "feels right" for a newer product to perform a teeny bit better than an older product.

    //

    Agreed. There are many reasons *why* we're stuck at essentially no IPC upgrades, but I actually did mean to just point out that it's not a measurable difference, in at least how we test hardware.
  • abufrejoval - Friday, August 10, 2018 - link

    The other problem is that too much rethinking can lead to Spectre type leaks....
  • HStewart - Friday, August 10, 2018 - link

    "The other problem is that too much rethinking can lead to Spectre type leaks...."

    These type issue is probably a key reason why Intel 10nm is late.
  • Samus - Thursday, August 9, 2018 - link

    4.6GHz turbo for a 15W chip is nothing to balk at. IPC improvement or not, that's insane. My Dell Latitude with an i5-8250U is insanely fast, almost laughably so compared to my 2 year old HP Elitebook i5-6300U. Multithreaded performance is nearly DOUBLE for the same power envelope.
  • HStewart - Friday, August 10, 2018 - link

    Yes indeed - similar as my XPS 15 2in1 - it much faster also especially on CPU.
  • HStewart - Friday, August 10, 2018 - link

    "As 2019 Cannon Lake is only a 10nm die shrink of 2015 Skylake, we'll need to wait until 2020 for even a 1% boost in Intel IPC"

    Cannon Lake is not just a 10nm die shrink - it also has serious updates that include architecture changes include AVX-512 for consumer level chips. There are likely additional improvement - especially on Ice Lake version which is like 2019 version - 2018 is cannon lake and probably only limited low power cpus.

    One thing I wish people would ignore the nm - part of process - Intel's 10nm is supposedly similar to other company's 7nm - just calling the process with a smaller number does not mean it more dense - you have to consider how it layer. Intel 10nm is taking a longer because it much more challenging process than others.
  • gsalkin - Thursday, August 9, 2018 - link

    Soooo is Intel abandoning the 15W 2+3 configurations?
  • Valantar - Friday, August 10, 2018 - link

    No reason to suspect that; larger iGPUs always launch later than their "standard" siblings.
  • HStewart - Friday, August 10, 2018 - link

    Larger GPU are coming with Artic Sound - and my guess they are coming in EMIB configurations - similar to i8605 in my XPS 15 2in1 - minus of course the AMD "White Label" GPU.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now