INTEL PROMISES FASTER SPEEDS WITH NEW PROCESSORS

Intel is set to announce three new Whiskey Lake U-series chips (its midrange line for laptops), and, for the first time, three 8th-Gen Amber Lake Y-series processors.

While the company is still using the same underlying architecture for the U-series, the Lake Y-series processors are integrating gigabit Wi-Fi support, the upshot of which Intel says is dramatically faster internet speeds, especially apparent on cheaper, midrange laptops that previously would not have been able to attain such speeds.

Intel has also built added support for virtual digital assistants Cortana and Alexa into both chip series. The new chips will be marketed under the “Optimized for Connectivity” tag, which Intel hopes will convey that they are the newest and fastest available.

The new U-series Whiskey Lake chips have a two-core, four-thread i3-U145U model clocked at 2.1GHz (which can be boosted to 3.9GHz), the quad-core, eight-thread i58265U clocked at 1.6GHz (with a boosted speed of 3.9GHz), and the quad-core, eight-thread i78565U, clocked at 1.8GHz (with a boosted speed of 4.6GHz).

The Y-series Amber Lake chips, which are less powerful, have dualcore/four-thread configurations, ranging from 1.1GHz (boosted to 3.4GHz) on the m3-8100Y to 1.3GHz (boosted to 3.9GHz) on the i5-8200Y to 1.5GHz (boosted to 4.2GHz) on the top i7-8500Y.

Intel is rumored to be introducing its 9th generation processors in October, based on improvements to the existing 14nm process. The new Core i9, i7, and i5 chips will be branded as 9th generation processors.

The flagship Core i9-9900K processor is expected to ship with 8 cores and 16 threads and will include 16MB of L3 cache and UHD 620 graphics chip. The 9th gen Core i7 processor is expected to ship with 8 cores and 8 threads (up from the current 6 cores), with the Core i5 shipping with 6 cores and 6 threads.