There’s a glut of new Intel Coffee Lake CPUs on the way in the coming year – looks like Intel may have finally gotten their machinery actually rolling new chips off the production line. Hooray for China!
What about if you need a new processor today? Well, these are the best CPUs for gaming right now.
A release notes post for the benchmarking and analytics tool, AIDA64, has highlighted a whole bunch of new Intel processors which are likely on the way in the new year. The software has added detection for a broad set of previously unannounced Coffee Lake processor names, from Celeron and Pentium right up to Core i7 and Core i9.
Yes, Core i9.
There’s reference to a notebook Core i9 chip, based on the Coffee Lake architecture (so, not of the Skylake-X design), which is designated as the Core i9 8950HK. It’s the only i9 processor mentioned, with a pair of H-series mobile Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs too. Quite what the difference will be with the top-end Core i9 is unknown as yet – maybe Intel have decided not to use the Kaby Lake G nomenclature for their AMD Radeon-toting laptop chip.
That’s probably unlikely; we’re guessing it will just be the only unlocked six-core, 12-thread laptop processor in the high-end notebook market, and not really a massive departure from the Core i7 range.
Given that there’s likely going to be an AMD Ryzen refresh, using the advanced 12nm lithography, early next year, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise for Intel to be looking to ship more Coffee Lake to counter team red.
But that’s not the only cause for surprised and moderately intrigued facial expressions – the AIDA64 release notes also reference some potential 9th Gen Core architecture too. There are eleven 9-series chips noted in the Core i3 and Core i5 ranges, in standard, low-power, and presumably business trim, but strangely nothing suggested for the Core i7s.
So, is that a reference to next year’sIce Lakeplatform, or some half-generational refresh… some sort of Iced Coffee Lake, if you will?
One of the new 9th Gen CPUs is a multiplier-unlocked Core i5 9600K, but since there is no other new identifiers noted in the release it seems the 9th Gen will essentially purely be a Coffee Lake refresh. Even if it gets a new generational naming scheme.
What’s that we’re going to be on? 14nm++++++++++++?
Intel look like they’re going to be getting seriously chip-happy in the new year, let’s just hope they can actually manufacture enough of them…