Intel’s Kaby Lake series of processors have finally been announced, and this new architecture will present a few improvements over Skylake. One of them is the new media engine and thanks to feature a Gen9 graphics architecture, the new iGPU will be able to support hardware based HEVC on 10-bit (4K UHD) and VP9 decoding. While this is impressive, Intel states that you will be able to see a 12 percent improvement in productivity over the previous generation and over 19 percent better performance in web-related tasks.
Intel’s Kaby Lake will be flooding the market with a large number of chips, as it’s been said that there could be up to 100 designs available during Q4, 2016. Here are some of the features that Intel has highlighted with the unveiling of the latest architecture.
- Delivers more than 70 percent faster mobile productivity than a 5-year old PC
- 5 times better 3D graphics performance than a 5-year old PC
- Combine multiple 4K UHD videos into a highlight reel in 4 minutes while shopping and watching a movie
- Play your favorite games, like Overwatch, on-the-go, in HD
- New HEVC 10-bit decode capability delivers smooth premium content playback up to 4K
- New VP9 decode capability allows power efficient smooth 4K UHD, 4K 360-degree playback while multitasking
- Quickly and effortlessly create, edit and share 4K UHD 360° video 8 X 8 faster compared to a 5-year-old PC
- Enjoy up to 9.5 hours of 4K video playback
Future notebooks being shipped out with Kaby Lake processors will be able to provide support for USB-C + Thunderbolt 3 interface. What this means is that laptops will be able to transfer data based on the USB 3.1 Gen 2 standard, which is equal to 10Gbps. What’s more is that the Thunderbolt 3 ports will allow you to connect multiple 4K displays and enjoy content with a huge refresh rate of 60Hz. The lineup of these processors will include:
- Core m3
- Core i3
- Core i5
- Core i7
The mobile versions of Kaby Lake processors are going to start getting shipped out during the month of September, after which their desktop counterparts are going to be officially released. If you were planning to upgrade to a Skylake powered notebook or desktop, hold off your purchase for a little while longer, because you will not regret it.