Intel Coffee Lake-U 15W CPUs Detailed – Core i7-8650U, Core i7-8550U Performance and Specifications Unveiled in Multiple Leaks

Hassan Mujtaba

Intel will officially be announcing their 8th generation Coffee Lake processors tomorrow but there have been multiple leaks prior to that. While the desktop lineup has been caught up in the rumor mill for a while, we are now looking at notebook chips which will come under a 15W TDP package.

Intel Coffee Lake-U Notebook Processors Detailed - First Performance Benchmarks Show Big Gain Over Predecessors

A total of four Coffee Lake-U series have been confirmed directly by Intel. These include the Intel Core i5-8250U, Core i5-8350U, Core i7-8550U and Core i7-8650U. All of these are 15W processors but the most interesting thing that consumers will be looking forward to is the higher core count. All processors mentioned in this article feature 4 cores and 8 threads.

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That's a nice jump when we compare it to Kaby Lake-U and the predecessors that came before it. Those processors featured just 2 cores and 4 threads. What this means is that consumers can enjoy higher performance in productivity and general applications without sacrificing on power.

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When it comes to SKU specific specifications, the Core i7-8650U seems to be the fastest of the four with 4 cores and 8 threads. The chip has a clock speed of 1.90 GHz (base) and is said to boost up to 4.0 GHz. The chip will feature 8 MB of L3 cache which is twice that of its predecessor and the TDP will remain set at 15W however, the CPU can automatically configure the TDP when boosting to a higher frequency on single and dual operational cores.

The chip will be a great and much needed boost on the notebook (low power) side of things which have not seen a core and drastic jump in CPU performance for a while. The chip will be priced at $409 US compared to $393 US of the Core i7-7600U which is a small bump. Specifications for other processors are listed in the table below.

Intel 8th Generation Kaby Lake-U (R) Processors:

CPU NameCoresThreadsBase ClockBoost ClockL3 CacheiGPUiGPU Base / Boost ClockTDPPrice
Intel Core i7-8559U482.7 GHzTBD8 MB L3Iris Plus 650 (with 64 MB eDRAM cache)300 / 1100 MHz28W?TBD
Intel Core i7-8650U481.9 GHz4.2 GHz8 MB L3UHD 620300 / 1150 MHz15W$409 US
Intel Core i7-8550U481.8 GHz4.0 GHz8 MB L3UHD 620300 / 1150 MHz15W$409 US
Intel Core i5-8350U481.7 GHz3.6 GHz6 MB L3UHD 620300 / 1100 MHz15W$297 US
Intel Core i5-8250U481.6 GHz3.4 GHz6 MB L3UHD 620300 / 1100 MHz15W$297 US
Intel Core i3-8130U242.2 GHz3.4 GHz4 MB L3UHD 620300 / 1000 MHz15WTBD

For those interested, there are multiple ACER Aspire and ACER Swift series notebooks listed on the official ACER webpage that feature Coffee Lake processors. You can find them in the links below:

Intel Core i7-8550U CPU Performance Shows Impressive Jump - 50% Increase Over Predecessor All Thanks To Higher Core Count

Performance results of the Intel Core i7-8550U have also been posted by LaptopMedia. The guys managed to get their hands on a brand new 8th generation notebook. Now we have seen a Core i7-8550U based notebook before but didn't get to see any performance metrics.

The benchmarks on LaptopMedia show a 50% performance jump with the Core i7-8550U over the Core i7-7500U. This chip also shows very good performance against the Core i5-7300HQ with just 5-7% lower processor performance in a 15W package (Core i5-7300HQ features a TDP of 45W).

Intel Coffee Lake Core i7 U-Series Comparison:

CPU NameIntel Core i7-5550UIntel Core i7-6560UIntel Core i7-7660UIntel Core i7-8550U
Family NameBroadwellSkylakeKaby LakeCoffee Lake
Process Node14nm14nm14nm14nm
Cores2224
Threads4448
Clock Speed (Base)2.40 GHz2.20 GHz2.50 GHz1.80 GHz
Cache L34 MB4 MB4 MB8 MB
TDP15W15W15W15W
LaunchQ1 2015Q3 2015Q1 2017Q3 2017

The processor also features the Intel HD Graphics 620 which is said to be good for gaming at HD (1080p) resolution on modern esport titles. When paired with a good dGPU, we can expect better performance. In CPU intensive tasks such as Adobe Photoshop, the chip performs much closer to a Core i7-7700HQ processor which is impressive. We can expect more information from Intel regarding their 8th Gen Coffee lake-U tomorrow when the processors are officially announced to consumers.

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