8 cores in a 45 watt TDP CPU? That would be impressive! Hopefully that would translate to higher clock speeds with four and six core workloads.. I don't think these processors are any more efficient than coffee Lake.. so it would be interesting what the base clock speed is with 8 cores fully loaded
also laptops are typically gimped somehow. usually through cooling, power suppy, both, or bios/embeded controller limits. ive seen 45w cpus throttling hard without ever going past 25w. if you really want performance make sure your laptop can actually supply the power, doesnt have hardcoded bios/embeded controller limits, and has a cooling system up to par. you may have to repaste or undervolt or get a laptop cooler/stand. gud luck
Most likely cooling is the issue, how can a laptop not supply 45w to its cpu? Anyway an 8 core 45w cpu probably runs at 1.XX ghz with all cores enabled anyway.
Not really. A 8750h at 3.9ghz a cores with undervolting is close to the 45w rating, plus or minus. So if a 6 core 12 thread cpu at 3.9ghz is 55w, then in the same 55w you can probably get 3-3.2 GHz 8 core, which is awesome.
That 8750h is running 6 cores at 2.2ghz base, and i think we all know that intel's tdp is for base clocks not turbo clocks. No one is talking about undervolting here so lets leave that out.
Yes, the performance improvement will not be 30% over 6 core. similar to it wasn't 50% for 4->6 cores. Cinebench only scores 1050 for 6 core at 45 watt(limited) this is from 800 for 4 core. Now if your laptop does cool well you can bump the 6 core to 55 watts and get closer to 1200 cine-bench. This is only a ~27% bump for a 50% in cores. so I guess we should assume ~16% bump in performance for a 33% bump in cores for the same wattage. Intel really needs to get to 7 NM on the notebooks first. As AMD is likely going to be releasing a 7nm 8 core notebookchip soon enough
No, your clock frequency estimation is too low. Even assuming that Coffee Lake Refresh processors do not have a better efficiency than Coffee Lake processors, the frequency for 8 cores @ 45 W should be around 2.7 GHz or 2.8 GHz for non-AVX programs. For AVX-256 programs the frequency for 8 cores @ 45 W should be at least 2.1 GHz or 2.2 GHz. You should remember that already 4 years ago, in the first variant of the 14 nm process, Intel was making Broadwell processors with 8 cores @ 45 W having a 2.1 GHz base frequency (and 2.6 GHz turbo; this was Xeon D-1541). Now, in the improved process used for Coffee Lake Refresh, the frequencies must be better.
On Coffee Lake processors, when you are just using a graphic desktop and when using neither a 3D program, e.g. a game, nor a video playing program, which is the normal case when doing a task like the compilation of a software project, the power consumption for the uncore and for the GPU is only around 2 W, so it is negligible. That Xeon has actually a larger power consumption for the uncore, due e.g. to including dual 10 Gb/s Ethernet interfaces.
The problem is not CPU, you put a modern discrete GPU in the system and it pretty much need double or even triple the power. I think it really quite impressive that have 4+ Ghz in Turbo mode and would not doubt i9-9980HK is 5Ghz which is stated in top chart. I more not doubt Intel is making significant improvement in power and soon CPU wise like no difference in mobile and desktop cpus
Hell, the previous generation i5-8350U was a 15w TDP (25w TDP-up) CPU that runs 4 cores 8 threads. No reason they wouldn't be able to run 8 physical cores at double the TDP.
The i5-8350U is a monster too. Unthinkably fast for a 15-watt CPU, it's as fast as the highest performance 130-watt CPU's from a decade ago and most recent 65-watt CPU's from the previous generation!
This is true. I've got an i5 6300HQ and an i7 2630QM.
I was playing around and uploaded the results of CPUz bench and my numbers were nearly double some of the others. When I checked in on that the laptops that were running so poorly had small fans or were designed to run nearly silently.
I've worked on computers for years, I know how important cooling is so that was a factor in my purchase. I didn't realize at the time that it was would double the performance between two otherwise identical laptops. The last laptops I had didn't have turbo or thermal throttling until it hit shutdown temps.
Honestly I'd expect base clock to be very low for all 8 cores loaded. Anything, anything at all above base clock will mean more than 45W. Intel's old philosophy of "hurry to sleep", when you have a crazy high boost on a single core or two for a few seconds then the cpu goes to a very low power state seems to be at odds with these much higher core count cpu's. It worked fine for the old 2c/4t mobile parts but it seems less appropriate for 8c/16t cpu's. You buy an 8 core cpu usually because you have a need for a lot of cores crunching away for a longer period of time which means the "rush to sleep" design philosophy doesn't really work here. I'm thinking there's going to be a lot of power limit throttling on these
It doesn't work that way. They won't clock up. 45W isn't enough for an 8750H, far less a 9980HK. Out the box without undervolting you can expect over 1GHz throttle on the CPUs, with 8750H units generally running at 3GHz under heavy stress (or less).
Don't let any of this fool you, the performance will be EXACTLY the same as it was on 6 cores, because the CPU will only be doing 45W of work, and there's no efficiency changes between 7th, 8th and 9th generation chips (in terms of perf/watt). It's the same thing with 8th gen -U chips; they're 4c/8t boosting to 3.7GHz on the 8550U certainly, but 15W is not getting you more than roughly 1.7GHz under load without undervolting (which won't even get you to 2GHz before you run into stability issues anyway).
The reason base clocks are so low is because OEMs lie and say it isn't throttling if it isn't turboing, so when you're dropping from 4.3GHz on 6 cores to 2.9GHz on your $800 i7-8950HK (yes I typed i7 because that's really what it is.. a worse-binned i7-8700K) because you can only draw 45W under load your OEM can say "well that's normal". They got your money long ago.
Please note though: intel CPUs use MSR registers to denote throttling to the OS, and if you're not boosting to maximum turbo, the intel CPU will tell the OS that it's throttling. Power? Thermal? Current? VRM? doesn't matter really... the CPU reports itself that it's throttling. So "not throttling below base clock isn't throttling" is just a convenient lie that OEMs tell to avoid actually making good/well-performing/etc laptops.
> "the performance will be EXACTLY the same as it was on 6 cores"
No, this is not true. More cores at a lower frequency are more efficient than less cores at a higher frequency.
Because of that, 8 cores @ 45 W will run at a frequency larger than 75% of the frequency reached by 6 cores @ 45 W, which is around 3.2 GHz for non-AVX tasks, e.g. for compiling programs. Therefore the Coffee Lake Refresh processors should have a frequency of at least 2.5 GHz for 8 cores @ 45 W non-AVX, more likely of 2.7 or 2.8 GHz, so they will compile a software project faster than the current 6-core processors. The same is true for any other task which can use all the available threads.
Well, due to dropped voltage, it'll be a bit better, you're right about that, but in practice it won't show too much (also know that the increased cache size will draw just a bit more power).
However, from checking the 7600U versus the 8250U, the 8250U was no benefit when both were completely at the power limit of 15W. So I was extrapolating that, but it might be a clearer difference with only a 33% bump in core count vs simply doubling processing power. Either way, it'll game worse and it'll still never come even CLOSE to clocking up under any load.
That or intel can make them 120W power limit like they should be?
I agree that the extra performance will be much less than the 33% that would come from 8/6 cores. In the best case, the extra performance will be about half of that, i.e. around 16% for a program which scales perfectly with the clock frequency.
For most multi-threaded programs, the increase in speed might be only around 10%.
I also agree that multi-threaded programs that run without pauses will never reach clock frequencies close to those allowed by the turbo limits, because the power limits will determine much lower frequencies.
The same is true for the current Coffee Lake processors. I have a Coffee Lake i7-8559U, which has 4 cores and the power limits configured by the BIOS are 50 W for the first minute, then 30 W forever.
The behavior of this processor with 4 cores @ 30 W is very similar with that of a processor with 6 cores @ 45 W.
For multi-threaded programs that use 100% the cores, it can do only around 3.6 GHz @ 50 W and around 3.2 GHz @ 30 W.
Nevertheless, when the cores are used much less than 100% of the time, the frequencies may raise until the 4.1 GHz all-core turbo limit, and when a single thread is active, the 4.5 GHz single-core turbo is really reached.
I expect that these 8-core processors will behave similarly, so when lightly loaded they may reach up to the 5 GHz turbo, but reaching so high clock frequencies will be quite seldom events in normal operation.
That's at base clock. Intel's TDP numbers are basically meaningless at this point. At 5Ghz it's going to run stupid hot and will throttle in every laptop ever -- just like the current Core i9 Throttles in every laptop ever...
So when can we expect Icelake ( I believe ? Since Cannonlake was canned ), 10nm Notebook CPU? They keep changing roadmap I cant even remember what is what anymore.
What is the problem? Do they increase performance each generation? I think the greatest improvements were done from 6th gen till 9th gen, when they focused less on process and more on improving silicon and current process. So, I really don't care that they are still on 14nm if they give us better performance and more cores each and every generation.
Like many here I'm sceptical about the clocks, my 7700hq maintains it's max all cores clocks with undervolt and liquid metal, feeling the need for an upgrade in CPU power I got the 8750hq which was disappointing it couldn't even come close to it's turbo clocks, I had to return it I was having the same results as my 7700hq. I think what we really need is much higher clock speeds, 4c/8t is enough for gaming if they click high enough say 4.5ghz, giving more cores and lower frequencies just makes the CPU worse. Then there is the cooling, I don't think any normal laptop can keep those CPUs cool enough (unless you go drastic), and if you need a desktop replacement then you'd get one of those huge laptops, if you decide to go that road why not get a proper desktop CPU.
This. My 7700HQ can't go past 3 GHz all cores loaded (non AVX) without temps reaching into 90s. I have to use Intel XTU to undervolt and use cTDP down to around 20W to achieve reasonable temps (high 70s to low 80s) and performance (2.9-3GHz all core). I can get sustained 3.5-3.6 GHz on single core load (can probably go up to its advertised 3.8 if I relax the cTDP but I can't be bothered messing with XTU everytime ). My laptop probably has crappy cooling (Acer Predator) and has a 1060 on top of it. Acer's bios wouldn't even let me disable HT....
As you have already said, this is due to the crappy cooling typical for most laptops, except for some of those sold as "mobile workstations" or as "gaming laptops".
I have an Intel NUC with a Coffee Lake processor. Even if it has a laptop cooler in a case smaller than most laptops, the cooling is good so that temperatures in the 90s are reached only at sustained 50 W power dissipation, when the 4 cores are 100% used at around 3.6 GHz.
At sustained 30 W power, the temperatures are in the 70s and the fan is silent, while the 4-core 100% frequency is around 3.2 GHz.
When the cores are not used 100%, the turbo frequencies are reached.
Unfortunately most laptop or small computer reviews do not include this information about the power limits set in BIOS (e.g. for this NUC: 50 W for first minute, then 30 W forever) and about which are the clock frequencies, temperatures and noise at those power limits.
Whenever I use a new computer, this is the first thing that I test and usually the results are a surprise, because I could not find them anywhere online.
Here's hoping they come up with a quadcore successor to the Pentium Gold. Atom is as good as dead so it's nice to have a beefier tablet chip. The 4415Y in the Surface Go is decent but it deserves to have turbo.
I remember many (many!) years ago, when you could choose between a 16.6MHz 386, or a 25Mhz, or even a 33.3MHz. The differences made sense: you had 386 models that were twice as fast as other ones. I wonder though, what difference does it make to sell a 9980H and 9980HK with 4% price difference. Yes, yes, one is unlocked, the other isn't... Is it really necessary to sell the locked one? Do 20usd, on a processor that costs nearly 500usd, which will go in a system that will cost probably 3x as much, make sense?
It's unfortunate that most laptop designs these days, especially from the biggest OEMs, trend toward thin-and-light rather than fast-and-cool. Yes, there's a clear demand for the former, but there is unfulfilled demand for the latter.
All the advancements in chip, battery, screen, storage tech - but somehow cooling is just an afterthought, and mobile workstation CPU TDP has been stuck at paltry 45 W, for a decade. Why can't we have some sort of advanced materials or liquid cooling or whatever, to bring that mobile CPU TDP capability at the high-end (so what, if thick-and-heavy DTR-style) up to 65, or even 90 W? Even in absence of advanced tech, it clearly can be done for mobile GPUs; why can't it be done for mobile CPUs?
Yes, there's the option of going with a boutique design like Sager that sticks a desktop CPU into a DTR notebook form factor, but one still worries about thermal throttling even with those builds... Besides, a full-on desktop CPU isn't optimal for good battery life when doing light computing off the mains. Maybe the ideal configuration would be something like ARM's big.LITTLE: a couple of lightweight, low-TDP mobile cores paired with a set of high-TDP desktop cores for when you need that grunt, coupled with a dual-mode cooling system that can run efficiently at low TDPs or kick into high-power mode when high TDP is needed. One can dream...
The short answer to your question is physics. 45W is "a lot" of heat to be dissipated. Have you seen the size of heatspreader for a 65W desktop CPU? 45W is already a huge amount for a portable device. What this article shows is that, today, cooling solution for 45W, on portable devices, are largely inadequate. It is not the first time, and won't be the last.
I am looking forward to laptop based on the 3750U (https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-7-37... which uses "only" 35W, and this includes a beefy GPU. I think it is a better balance, than a 45W CPU with 8 cores and an "anemic" GPU.
Or the reverse question; Why can't INTEL have some sort of advancement, to bring 10, 7, 5 and 3 nm to the table like Samsung or TSCM are on their way or doing. I refuse to buy the idea that its only cause it keeps outstandingly selling at 14nms. Meanwhile, users needing mobile solutions with highly demanding sequential loads are been deprived of high GHz working CPUs at lower TDPs, precisely the main benefit smaller lithography has.
You can actually trick the CPU by adding a negative offset to the reported TDP, if your actual wattage is bumping to 60W and you have an offset of -32W, the CPU will think that you are running at 28W and the PL1 throttle will never kick in.
Search for IMON tweak in google and you'll find more info.
For comparison on my 8750H i get average 3.9 GHZ on all cores on idle and on gaming i get turbo to max frequency too only on video encoding (and heavy tasks) i get stable 3GHZ on all cores but it is with custom curve so new cpus may handle more than mine i am guessing
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danwat1234 - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
8 cores in a 45 watt TDP CPU? That would be impressive! Hopefully that would translate to higher clock speeds with four and six core workloads.. I don't think these processors are any more efficient than coffee Lake.. so it would be interesting what the base clock speed is with 8 cores fully loadedOpencg - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
also laptops are typically gimped somehow. usually through cooling, power suppy, both, or bios/embeded controller limits. ive seen 45w cpus throttling hard without ever going past 25w. if you really want performance make sure your laptop can actually supply the power, doesnt have hardcoded bios/embeded controller limits, and has a cooling system up to par. you may have to repaste or undervolt or get a laptop cooler/stand. gud luckshabby - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
Most likely cooling is the issue, how can a laptop not supply 45w to its cpu?Anyway an 8 core 45w cpu probably runs at 1.XX ghz with all cores enabled anyway.
yeeeeman - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
Not really. A 8750h at 3.9ghz a cores with undervolting is close to the 45w rating, plus or minus. So if a 6 core 12 thread cpu at 3.9ghz is 55w, then in the same 55w you can probably get 3-3.2 GHz 8 core, which is awesome.shabby - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
That 8750h is running 6 cores at 2.2ghz base, and i think we all know that intel's tdp is for base clocks not turbo clocks.No one is talking about undervolting here so lets leave that out.
sharath.naik - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
Yes, the performance improvement will not be 30% over 6 core. similar to it wasn't 50% for 4->6 cores. Cinebench only scores 1050 for 6 core at 45 watt(limited) this is from 800 for 4 core. Now if your laptop does cool well you can bump the 6 core to 55 watts and get closer to 1200 cine-bench. This is only a ~27% bump for a 50% in cores. so I guess we should assume ~16% bump in performance for a 33% bump in cores for the same wattage. Intel really needs to get to 7 NM on the notebooks first. As AMD is likely going to be releasing a 7nm 8 core notebookchip soon enoughAdrianBc - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
No, your clock frequency estimation is too low. Even assuming that Coffee Lake Refresh processors do not have a better efficiency than Coffee Lake processors, the frequency for 8 cores @ 45 W should be around 2.7 GHz or 2.8 GHz for non-AVX programs. For AVX-256 programs the frequency for 8 cores @ 45 W should be at least 2.1 GHz or 2.2 GHz. You should remember that already 4 years ago, in the first variant of the 14 nm process, Intel was making Broadwell processors with 8 cores @ 45 W having a 2.1 GHz base frequency (and 2.6 GHz turbo; this was Xeon D-1541). Now, in the improved process used for Coffee Lake Refresh, the frequencies must be better.shabby - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
Don't forget the igpu needs some power too, that xeon you mentioned didn't have an igpu, while these certainly do.AdrianBc - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
On Coffee Lake processors, when you are just using a graphic desktop and when using neither a 3D program, e.g. a game, nor a video playing program, which is the normal case when doing a task like the compilation of a software project, the power consumption for the uncore and for the GPU is only around 2 W, so it is negligible. That Xeon has actually a larger power consumption for the uncore, due e.g. to including dual 10 Gb/s Ethernet interfaces.shabby - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
I guess i was thinking of a different use case, but i do wonder how much a fully loaded igpu affects the boost clocks.0ldman79 - Monday, February 18, 2019 - link
Shabby, on my i5 6300HQ, 2.3 base, 3.2 turbo, normally runs 2.8GHz at 100% load.When pushing the IGP instead of the GTX 960M the CPU locks at base speed. It will still rarely ever come close to the 45W the package is rated at.
HStewart - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
The problem is not CPU, you put a modern discrete GPU in the system and it pretty much need double or even triple the power. I think it really quite impressive that have 4+ Ghz in Turbo mode and would not doubt i9-9980HK is 5Ghz which is stated in top chart. I more not doubt Intel is making significant improvement in power and soon CPU wise like no difference in mobile and desktop cpusSamus - Tuesday, February 19, 2019 - link
Hell, the previous generation i5-8350U was a 15w TDP (25w TDP-up) CPU that runs 4 cores 8 threads. No reason they wouldn't be able to run 8 physical cores at double the TDP.The i5-8350U is a monster too. Unthinkably fast for a 15-watt CPU, it's as fast as the highest performance 130-watt CPU's from a decade ago and most recent 65-watt CPU's from the previous generation!
0ldman79 - Monday, February 18, 2019 - link
This is true.I've got an i5 6300HQ and an i7 2630QM.
I was playing around and uploaded the results of CPUz bench and my numbers were nearly double some of the others. When I checked in on that the laptops that were running so poorly had small fans or were designed to run nearly silently.
I've worked on computers for years, I know how important cooling is so that was a factor in my purchase. I didn't realize at the time that it was would double the performance between two otherwise identical laptops. The last laptops I had didn't have turbo or thermal throttling until it hit shutdown temps.
Ej24 - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
Honestly I'd expect base clock to be very low for all 8 cores loaded. Anything, anything at all above base clock will mean more than 45W. Intel's old philosophy of "hurry to sleep", when you have a crazy high boost on a single core or two for a few seconds then the cpu goes to a very low power state seems to be at odds with these much higher core count cpu's. It worked fine for the old 2c/4t mobile parts but it seems less appropriate for 8c/16t cpu's. You buy an 8 core cpu usually because you have a need for a lot of cores crunching away for a longer period of time which means the "rush to sleep" design philosophy doesn't really work here. I'm thinking there's going to be a lot of power limit throttling on theseD2ultima - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
It doesn't work that way. They won't clock up. 45W isn't enough for an 8750H, far less a 9980HK. Out the box without undervolting you can expect over 1GHz throttle on the CPUs, with 8750H units generally running at 3GHz under heavy stress (or less).Don't let any of this fool you, the performance will be EXACTLY the same as it was on 6 cores, because the CPU will only be doing 45W of work, and there's no efficiency changes between 7th, 8th and 9th generation chips (in terms of perf/watt). It's the same thing with 8th gen -U chips; they're 4c/8t boosting to 3.7GHz on the 8550U certainly, but 15W is not getting you more than roughly 1.7GHz under load without undervolting (which won't even get you to 2GHz before you run into stability issues anyway).
The reason base clocks are so low is because OEMs lie and say it isn't throttling if it isn't turboing, so when you're dropping from 4.3GHz on 6 cores to 2.9GHz on your $800 i7-8950HK (yes I typed i7 because that's really what it is.. a worse-binned i7-8700K) because you can only draw 45W under load your OEM can say "well that's normal". They got your money long ago.
Please note though: intel CPUs use MSR registers to denote throttling to the OS, and if you're not boosting to maximum turbo, the intel CPU will tell the OS that it's throttling. Power? Thermal? Current? VRM? doesn't matter really... the CPU reports itself that it's throttling. So "not throttling below base clock isn't throttling" is just a convenient lie that OEMs tell to avoid actually making good/well-performing/etc laptops.
AdrianBc - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
> "the performance will be EXACTLY the same as it was on 6 cores"No, this is not true.
More cores at a lower frequency are more efficient than less cores at a higher frequency.
Because of that, 8 cores @ 45 W will run at a frequency larger than 75% of the frequency reached by 6 cores @ 45 W, which is around 3.2 GHz for non-AVX tasks, e.g. for compiling programs. Therefore the Coffee Lake Refresh processors should have a frequency of at least 2.5 GHz for 8 cores @ 45 W non-AVX, more likely of 2.7 or 2.8 GHz, so they will compile a software project faster than the current 6-core processors. The same is true for any other task which can use all the available threads.
D2ultima - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
Well, due to dropped voltage, it'll be a bit better, you're right about that, but in practice it won't show too much (also know that the increased cache size will draw just a bit more power).However, from checking the 7600U versus the 8250U, the 8250U was no benefit when both were completely at the power limit of 15W. So I was extrapolating that, but it might be a clearer difference with only a 33% bump in core count vs simply doubling processing power. Either way, it'll game worse and it'll still never come even CLOSE to clocking up under any load.
That or intel can make them 120W power limit like they should be?
AdrianBc - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
I agree that the extra performance will be much less than the 33% that would come from 8/6 cores.In the best case, the extra performance will be about half of that, i.e. around 16% for a program which scales perfectly with the clock frequency.
For most multi-threaded programs, the increase in speed might be only around 10%.
I also agree that multi-threaded programs that run without pauses will never reach clock frequencies close to those allowed by the turbo limits, because the power limits will determine much lower frequencies.
The same is true for the current Coffee Lake processors. I have a Coffee Lake i7-8559U, which has 4 cores and the power limits configured by the BIOS are 50 W for the first minute, then 30 W forever.
The behavior of this processor with 4 cores @ 30 W is very similar with that of a processor with 6 cores @ 45 W.
For multi-threaded programs that use 100% the cores, it can do only around 3.6 GHz @ 50 W and around 3.2 GHz @ 30 W.
Nevertheless, when the cores are used much less than 100% of the time, the frequencies may raise until the 4.1 GHz all-core turbo limit, and when a single thread is active, the 4.5 GHz single-core turbo is really reached.
I expect that these 8-core processors will behave similarly, so when lightly loaded they may reach up to the 5 GHz turbo, but reaching so high clock frequencies will be quite seldom events in normal operation.
WinterCharm - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
That's at base clock. Intel's TDP numbers are basically meaningless at this point. At 5Ghz it's going to run stupid hot and will throttle in every laptop ever -- just like the current Core i9 Throttles in every laptop ever...ksec - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
So when can we expect Icelake ( I believe ? Since Cannonlake was canned ), 10nm Notebook CPU?They keep changing roadmap I cant even remember what is what anymore.
And do they support 64GB DDR4 Memory on Notebook?
yeeeeman - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
What is the problem? Do they increase performance each generation? I think the greatest improvements were done from 6th gen till 9th gen, when they focused less on process and more on improving silicon and current process. So, I really don't care that they are still on 14nm if they give us better performance and more cores each and every generation.sonny73n - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
Keep living in your dream, fanboy.peterfares - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
You can get 64GB with 2x32GB DIMMs now. I think 7th gen and later will take it. Maybe even 6th gen too.jabbadap - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
What? No six core notebook cpu variant?Xex360 - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
Like many here I'm sceptical about the clocks, my 7700hq maintains it's max all cores clocks with undervolt and liquid metal, feeling the need for an upgrade in CPU power I got the 8750hq which was disappointing it couldn't even come close to it's turbo clocks, I had to return it I was having the same results as my 7700hq.I think what we really need is much higher clock speeds, 4c/8t is enough for gaming if they click high enough say 4.5ghz, giving more cores and lower frequencies just makes the CPU worse.
Then there is the cooling, I don't think any normal laptop can keep those CPUs cool enough (unless you go drastic), and if you need a desktop replacement then you'd get one of those huge laptops, if you decide to go that road why not get a proper desktop CPU.
palladium - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
This. My 7700HQ can't go past 3 GHz all cores loaded (non AVX) without temps reaching into 90s. I have to use Intel XTU to undervolt and use cTDP down to around 20W to achieve reasonable temps (high 70s to low 80s) and performance (2.9-3GHz all core). I can get sustained 3.5-3.6 GHz on single core load (can probably go up to its advertised 3.8 if I relax the cTDP but I can't be bothered messing with XTU everytime ). My laptop probably has crappy cooling (Acer Predator) and has a 1060 on top of it. Acer's bios wouldn't even let me disable HT....AdrianBc - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
As you have already said, this is due to the crappy cooling typical for most laptops, except for some of those sold as "mobile workstations" or as "gaming laptops".I have an Intel NUC with a Coffee Lake processor. Even if it has a laptop cooler in a case smaller than most laptops, the cooling is good so that temperatures in the 90s are reached only at sustained 50 W power dissipation, when the 4 cores are 100% used at around 3.6 GHz.
At sustained 30 W power, the temperatures are in the 70s and the fan is silent, while the 4-core 100% frequency is around 3.2 GHz.
When the cores are not used 100%, the turbo frequencies are reached.
Unfortunately most laptop or small computer reviews do not include this information about the power limits set in BIOS (e.g. for this NUC: 50 W for first minute, then 30 W forever) and about which are the clock frequencies, temperatures and noise at those power limits.
Whenever I use a new computer, this is the first thing that I test and usually the results are a surprise, because I could not find them anywhere online.
serendip - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
Here's hoping they come up with a quadcore successor to the Pentium Gold. Atom is as good as dead so it's nice to have a beefier tablet chip. The 4415Y in the Surface Go is decent but it deserves to have turbo.yankeeDDL - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
I remember many (many!) years ago, when you could choose between a 16.6MHz 386, or a 25Mhz, or even a 33.3MHz. The differences made sense: you had 386 models that were twice as fast as other ones.I wonder though, what difference does it make to sell a 9980H and 9980HK with 4% price difference. Yes, yes, one is unlocked, the other isn't... Is it really necessary to sell the locked one? Do 20usd, on a processor that costs nearly 500usd, which will go in a system that will cost probably 3x as much, make sense?
boeush - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
It's unfortunate that most laptop designs these days, especially from the biggest OEMs, trend toward thin-and-light rather than fast-and-cool. Yes, there's a clear demand for the former, but there is unfulfilled demand for the latter.All the advancements in chip, battery, screen, storage tech - but somehow cooling is just an afterthought, and mobile workstation CPU TDP has been stuck at paltry 45 W, for a decade. Why can't we have some sort of advanced materials or liquid cooling or whatever, to bring that mobile CPU TDP capability at the high-end (so what, if thick-and-heavy DTR-style) up to 65, or even 90 W? Even in absence of advanced tech, it clearly can be done for mobile GPUs; why can't it be done for mobile CPUs?
Yes, there's the option of going with a boutique design like Sager that sticks a desktop CPU into a DTR notebook form factor, but one still worries about thermal throttling even with those builds... Besides, a full-on desktop CPU isn't optimal for good battery life when doing light computing off the mains. Maybe the ideal configuration would be something like ARM's big.LITTLE: a couple of lightweight, low-TDP mobile cores paired with a set of high-TDP desktop cores for when you need that grunt, coupled with a dual-mode cooling system that can run efficiently at low TDPs or kick into high-power mode when high TDP is needed. One can dream...
yankeeDDL - Monday, February 18, 2019 - link
The short answer to your question is physics. 45W is "a lot" of heat to be dissipated. Have you seen the size of heatspreader for a 65W desktop CPU?45W is already a huge amount for a portable device.
What this article shows is that, today, cooling solution for 45W, on portable devices, are largely inadequate. It is not the first time, and won't be the last.
I am looking forward to laptop based on the 3750U (https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-7-37... which uses "only" 35W, and this includes a beefy GPU. I think it is a better balance, than a 45W CPU with 8 cores and an "anemic" GPU.
Nexing - Tuesday, February 19, 2019 - link
Or the reverse question; Why can't INTEL have some sort of advancement, to bring 10, 7, 5 and 3 nm to the table like Samsung or TSCM are on their way or doing. I refuse to buy the idea that its only cause it keeps outstandingly selling at 14nms.Meanwhile, users needing mobile solutions with highly demanding sequential loads are been deprived of high GHz working CPUs at lower TDPs, precisely the main benefit smaller lithography has.
Zingam - Friday, February 22, 2019 - link
Do you have any explanation why hyperthreading is out?hackness - Friday, February 22, 2019 - link
You can actually trick the CPU by adding a negative offset to the reported TDP, if your actual wattage is bumping to 60W and you have an offset of -32W, the CPU will think that you are running at 28W and the PL1 throttle will never kick in.Search for IMON tweak in google and you'll find more info.
berkkocaturk - Wednesday, March 6, 2019 - link
For comparison on my 8750H i get average 3.9 GHZ on all cores on idle and on gaming i get turbo to max frequency too only on video encoding (and heavy tasks) i get stable 3GHZ on all cores but it is with custom curve so new cpus may handle more than mine i am guessingB-29_Bomber - Monday, April 22, 2019 - link
How accurate is that core count for the 9750H? I read on an Acer Predator Helios 300 2019 article that its only a 6 core 12 thread CPU...