The model names and clock speeds of the new Intel 9th generation laptop CPUs were recently
published and retracted by Intel, so let’s take a look and find out what we can expect
from these new chips and get a rough idea of how they compare against the current 8th
gen models.
First I’ll start off by saying that this information was reported by Tom’s Hardware,
linked in the description, they provided a link to the PDF on Intel’s website which
contained the information on the 9th gen 14nm++ laptop CPUs, however it looks like Intel has
since removed this information and replaced it with an older document, so I’m not sure
if what was published is subject to change. The original document said that it had been
published on the 31st of January 2019, so take this information with a grain of salt.
Anyway, let’s take a look at what's most likely on the way, I’ll be doing some comparisons
between 9th gen CPUs and the current 8th gen models once they’re available, so get subscribed
for that if you’re new here.
This is a list of the newer 9th gen CPUs along with the corresponding 8th gen models. For
the most part the naming scheme is the same, just with the first number now starting with
a 9 for 9th gen. The clock speeds listed are also single core turbo boost speeds, so all
core turbo will be lower than this and I’m not currently sure on what those will be for
9th gen, but overall we do appear to have higher clock speeds for single core turbo
and also more cache for i7 and i9 chips.
With the i5 CPUs we’re looking at just a 100MHz boost to the single core turbo boost
speeds, nothing spectacular. The performance value listed is Composite Theoretical Performance,
Millions of Theoretical Operations Per Second, and was provided by Intel, they don’t seem
that useful but it’s all we’ve got to go by at the moment. The 9300H has a 4.3%
higher value over the 8300H, while the 8400H and 9400H are the same despite the clock speed
boost, an example of why I think this isn’t a very useful indicator of performance, otherwise
the i5’s also have the same cache.
Stepping up to the i7’s the 9750H seems to replace the popular 8750H, with a 33% larger
cache and a 400MHz higher single core turbo speed, getting up to 4.5GHz compared to 4.1.
This will be interesting given the 8750H is always either thermal or power limit throttling
under multicore load from my own testing. In terms of theoretical performance the 9th
gen version is 18% higher than the 8th gen, which seems quite high for a 400MHz boost,
so I’m pretty skeptical about that. I don’t think this indicates that the 9th gen i7’s
have more than 6 cores, as the i7-8850H has the same theoretical performance as the 9th
gen i7 chips, despite the higher clock speeds and cache on the 9th gen chips, so again not
really sure how useful this metric is for comparing performance, it seems pretty useless.
With the i9 CPUs it looks like there will be two different models with the 9th generation,
compared to one model in the 8th gen. The 9th gen chips have 33% more cache like the
i7’s, and the 9880H has the same 4.8GHz single core clock speed as the current 8950HK,
while the new 9980HK steps things up by 200MHz with a crazy 5.0GHz single core turbo speed
and can also be overclocked. It sounds like these may have 8 cores, but it’s hard to
estimate based on the performance values given. There are a few unconfirmed leaks on the Internet
of the 9980HK being an 8 core 16 thread part, which sounds feasible, I mean the top end
9th gen desktop chips are 8 core, and when we got the 8th gen we saw 6 cores both on
the desktop and laptop side, although with 8 cores in a laptop I’d be seriously concerned
about heat.
Overall it seems like we’ll be getting some level of performance boost with these 9th
gen laptop CPUs, as the single core boost speeds are higher across the board. Again
I’m not yet sure what differences we’ll see to multicore speeds, I feel like they
can’t raise them too high though based on the amount of power limit and thermal throttling
I’ve seen with the 8th gen, as the changes to the architecture seem minor. If you’ve
watched any of my laptop reviews over the last 12 months, you’ll have seen that the
8th gen chips get quite hot when under multi core load. So far nothing about the 9th gen
has indicated that this will change, on the PC side we’ve had 9th gen CPUs for months
and they’re still hot, which is what happens when you keep boosting clock speed each generation.
So when will we see these new 9th generation CPUs? My best guess is not too far away now,
maybe a few months, but I’ve got a whole video covering that already, check the card
in the top right corner for more information. Based on what I heard at CES, it sounded like
there might be some new laptop models in time for Computex, which is on late May to early
June, so my guess is before then or around that time. With that in mind, is it worth
buying 8th gen now or should you wait? Honestly even when I was considering 9th gen could
be just around the corner, I was more than happy to pick up an 8750H laptop late last
year, it’s got plenty of power for what I need and I didn’t want to wait. For the
video exporting I do the improvement of going from 4 to 6 cores in a laptop was important,
from the 9th gen it looks like we’re just seeing clock speed boosts except with the
i9’s which may have 8 cores. There wasn’t much improvement seen from the 9th gen desktop
chips so I’m not expecting miracles when it comes to the laptop ones, especially considering
they’re more constrained when it comes to power and thermal limits. None of this information
is official yet though, so take it with a grain of salt, but it looks pretty accurate
and wouldn’t surprise me at all.
Let me know what you guys thought about the new 9th gen Intel laptop CPUs down in the
comments, and if you’re new here get subscribed because I’ll definitely be doing heaps of
reviews on 9th gen laptops and also comparing them with the 8th gen as soon as possible.