Intel’s next chips will be 30% faster than Kaby Lake

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Intel Coffee Lake
Intel's Coffee Lake processors have a lot of potential.
Photo: Intel

Intel’s next-generation Coffee Lake processors will be up to 30 percent faster than today’s Kaby Lake chips, the company has confirmed.

Its eight-generation CPUs will be manufactured using the same cutting-edge 14-nanometer process it is already using — and it’s great news for future MacBooks.

Intel made today’s announcement after benchmarking a next-generation U-series processor — the kind of chip used in notebooks. It pitted it against a Core i7-7500U clocked at 2.7GHz (up to 3.5GHz with Turbo Boost) with two cores and four threads.

The result was a 30 percent increase in performance, according to SYSmark version 1.5. Intel isn’t naming that new chip yet, but Ars Technica reports that has a 4GHz Turbo Boost speed, four cores, and eight threads. It also uses just 15W of power.

It means future Apple notebooks — and those from rival manufacturers — will be substantially faster than today’s. Of course, we don’t know how long it will take Apple to adopt Coffee Lake chips, but Intel says they’ll be ready sometime during the second half of 2017.

Intel also unveiled its new X-series processors for desktops today, and they’re even more impressive. Replacing X99, the company’s new X299 platform will come with up to 18 cores and a whopping 36 threads.

They’ll be aimed at gamers, content creators, and video producers, with clock speeds up to 4.5GHz and support for DDR4 RAM.

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