Intel has released a new range of CPUs as part of its refresh of the Coffee Lake, eighth-generation and there are some impressive specifications among them. The top chip in the range, the Core i9 8950HK comes with six cores and 12 threads, along with 12NM of cache. What's truly impressive though is its clock speed. If the laptop can handle the thermal overhead of such a chip, it can go all the way up to 4.8GHz on a single core if required.
It's unlocked too, so in theory a laptop manufacturer could factory overclock it -- or provide the functionality for the end user to do so -- and see a laptop running at more than 5GHz without much of a push. In a 45w TDP chip, that's very impressive.
Elsewhere in the range, we have two new Core i7 CPUs which also sport six cores and 12 threads, though they clock up to 4.2 and 4.3GHz respectively. The new i5 CPUs, the 8400H and 8300H are clocked at 4.2GHz and 4.0GHz when Turbo'd and have four cores and eight thread support. Oddly enough their TDP remains at 45w however.
At the desktop end of things, there are no new top-tier chips, but a couple of new Core i5s have been announced the 8600 and 8500. They fit into the middle of the range and offer something between the 8400 and 8600K. They are joined by a new i3 8300 which could be a more attractive buy for those with a slightly inflated budget. Especially with the launch of new mid-range chipsets which will make the motherboard part of the upgrade that bit cheaper.
This refresh appears to be an attempt by Intel to combat the swift turnaround AMD has had with its Zen+ architecture for a second round of Ryzen chips. Although they aren't massively more powerful than their predecessors, they have a die shrink down to 12nm, which improves efficiency and also pack on 2-300MHz extra on the core, making them a little faster too.
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