Intel Kaby Lake Performance: Surprising Jump Over Skylake

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Our friends at PC Perspective got their hands on a Kaby Lake powered laptop and put it to the test against a Skylake version of the same model laptop. To say they were surprised by the performance increase over the Skylake based laptop would be an understatement.

As it turns out, the advantages of the 7th Generation Core processor family and Kaby Lake are more substantial than I expected. I was able to get a hold of two different notebooks from the HP Spectre lineup, as near to identical as I could manage, with the primary difference being the move from the 6th Generation Skylake design to the 7th Generation Kaby Lake. After running both machines through a gamut of tests ranging from productivity to content creation and of course battery life, I can say with authority that Intel’s 7th Gen product deserves more accolades than it is getting.
 
Could be Intel stepping it up to make sure they stay well ahead of AMD's Zen, as they don't know what to expect from it yet.

Bad news for AMD, but goes to show that we get more when there is even the slightest threat of competition.

So, when will we be seeing these in Desktop varieties again?

I'm particularly interested in -E versions.
 
Not that much of a difference, and not really impressed when you consider the clock difference. skylake is 8% slower clock, 13% slower in turbo which means the Kaby Lake is not much faster then the Skylake when you take that into consideration, and some of those differences could very well be due to other hardware design optimizations to the motherboard, etc.
 
Intel probably has 15 years of R&D on ice that they can bring out whenever needed to stay on top. Without competition they'll only do 3-5% of performance increase each refresh, but with competition, we'll get more.
 
EODetroit said:
Intel probably has 15 years of R&D on ice that they can bring out whenever needed to stay on top. Without competition they'll only do 3-5% of performance increase each refresh, but with competition, we'll get more.
Click to expand...

15 years is probably a bit high, but I do feel they have a little bit of a buffer they can pull out in time of need, at least on the CPU layout side.

The process node and manufacturing side is much trickier, as that is getting more and more difficult with every generation. Pretty soon we won't be able to shrink things any further.
 
evilsofa said:
I thought it was general knowledge that Kaby Lake is much more significant for laptop/mobile than it is for desktops.
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I have only just started reading up about Kaby Lake and Skylake enthusiast platforms.

Apparently the -E moniker is dead. Enthusiast platforms will be Skylake-X and Kabylake-X.

Skylake-X will have 6, 8 and 10 cores, just like broadwell-E. Kaby-Lake X will be quad core only.

Interestingly they will all use the same x299 chipset LGA 2066 socket.

Sadly, 10 core Skylake-X will be the only one with 44 PCIe lanes. The six core will only have 28 :(

This leaves me with a dilemma about what to do next. I have no need for 8 or 10 cores. In fact I'd rather have fewer cores as it will leave me more of a thermal envelope for higher clocks/overclocking.

I don't see how I could get away with only 28 PCIe lanes though.

So now I'll have to choose between a lower clocked 10 core chip I don't want that is priced too high with the PCIe lanes I need, or a higher clocked hexacore chip I want, that doesn't have the PCIe lanes I need (I want at least 40, like my 3930k)

This is kind of a major bummer.

Makes me hope that AMD can really pull things off with Zen.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Could be Intel stepping it up to make sure they stay well ahead of AMD's Zen, as they don't know what to expect from it yet.

Bad news for AMD, but goes to show that we get more when there is even the slightest threat of competition.

So, when will we be seeing these in Desktop varieties again?
Click to expand...

I feel like this is a push-push statement. Intel must be already sitting on a mound of chips because they're releasing in the next month or so. They've got to have some stock already piled up so I can't see how this is any response to AMD. I can't also see how this is bad for AMD when we really don't know much about their Zen chip. (Not a fan either way, just making an observation.) Seems to me, price will be a big factor in decisions.

Zarathustra[H] said:
I have only just started reading up about Kaby Lake and Skylake enthusiast platforms.

Skylake-X will have 6, 8 and 10 cores, just like broadwell-E. Kaby-Lake X will be quad core only.

Interestingly they will all use the same x299 chipset LGA 2066 socket.

Sadly, 10 core Skylake-X will be the only one with 44 PCIe lanes. The six core will only have 28 :(

I don't see how I could get away with only 28 PCIe lanes though.

Makes me hope that AMD can really pull things off with Zen.
Click to expand...

Snipped a bit. Not sure I'd read too far in to those rumors. Z270 should be shipping with 30 lanes so I'd have to figure, even if the 6 only has 28 on Sky-X then their 8 core would have to have more lanes. The rumors might not be right on this one.
 
If you could OC a skylake laptop to what you could with a desktop then the gain for kaby lake would be zero or negative

It's really just Intel increasing the frequency

So you're telling me the same architecture has increased performance when you apply a boost in clock
In other news: rain is wet, hear it here first


In all honesty hoping for a desktop k part with a load of edram since skylake and newer can actually utilise it a lot better
 
Peter2k said:
If you could OC a skylake laptop to what you could with a desktop then the gain for kaby lake would be zero or negative

It's really just Intel increasing the frequency
Click to expand...
Yes they did increase the clocks 13% or so, but they're staying within the same 15w power envelope and getting 2 hours more battery life to boot.
Try that with skylake and your wattage will go past 15w and your battery life will suffer even more. Intel's mindset seems to be stuck on mobile.
 
PCPer said:
While I have used Blender testing before, I am reintroducing it here to prepare for an onslaught of CPU testing in the near future.
Click to expand...


ZEN CONFIRMED SOON.

lol
 
Great, stick it in a desktop package and you'll have my attention. Bought bloody time we got a decent performance jump to make it worth buying. My ivybridge running @ 4.4 is still fine for most apps. But getting up to 5GHz on a 30% more efficient core might convince me to trade up.
 
Impressive performance boost per watt, pretty close to no IPC improvement. The faster GPU could help if it's used, and the upgraded video engine is probably useful for some people.
 
pxc said:
Impressive performance boost per watt, pretty close to no IPC improvement. The faster GPU could help if it's used, and the upgraded video engine is probably useful for some people.
Click to expand...

Question is if the perf/watt improvement will allow for greater overclocked due to lower temps.
 
What is the estimated timeline for outlets like Sager/XoitcPC/etc to start carrying these chips in their laptops?
 
Peter2k said:
If you could OC a skylake laptop to what you could with a desktop then the gain for kaby lake would be zero or negative

It's really just Intel increasing the frequency

So you're telling me the same architecture has increased performance when you apply a boost in clock
In other news: rain is wet, hear it here first


In all honesty hoping for a desktop k part with a load of edram since skylake and newer can actually utilise it a lot better
Click to expand...

For a mobile part it's pretty cool. It is higher clocked but it can sustain a higher turbo speed at a lower watt on both cores. So the speed increase is pretty cool.

People probably wanna see Hyper duper speed. Funny enough they are getting quite a bit of speed increase here through efficiency but for us desktop people with our 1300 watt psu. I don't think we will give much a rats ass about it.

Though I did just get that Lenovo i7-7500u laptop deal for $500. So I'll leave a note of how Kalby is.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I have only just started reading up about Kaby Lake and Skylake enthusiast platforms.

Apparently the -E moniker is dead. Enthusiast platforms will be Skylake-X and Kabylake-X.

Skylake-X will have 6, 8 and 10 cores, just like broadwell-E. Kaby-Lake X will be quad core only.

Interestingly they will all use the same x299 chipset LGA 2066 socket.

Sadly, 10 core Skylake-X will be the only one with 44 PCIe lanes. The six core will only have 28 :(

This leaves me with a dilemma about what to do next. I have no need for 8 or 10 cores. In fact I'd rather have fewer cores as it will leave me more of a thermal envelope for higher clocks/overclocking.

I don't see how I could get away with only 28 PCIe lanes though.

So now I'll have to choose between a lower clocked 10 core chip I don't want that is priced too high with the PCIe lanes I need, or a higher clocked hexacore chip I want, that doesn't have the PCIe lanes I need (I want at least 40, like my 3930k)

This is kind of a major bummer.

Makes me hope that AMD can really pull things off with Zen.
Click to expand...

Disable cores and OC?
 
Well, this is too late for me. I just bought an i7-6700hq (Skylake) laptop. My purchase will pretty much guarantee that Kaby Lake will be a great laptop cpu. (I do this type of purchase for the good of the community. Sigh. Every tech I buy seems to be outdated a few weeks later...)

;)
 
c3k said:
Well, this is too late for me. I just bought an i7-6700hq (Skylake) laptop. My purchase will pretty much guarantee that Kaby Lake will be a great laptop cpu. (I do this type of purchase for the good of the community. Sigh. Every tech I buy seems to be outdated a few weeks later...)

;)
Click to expand...

Boo... oh well, you had the crown for a while, still. :)
How long do you think it will be before Kaby becomes pretty commonplace on gaming laptops? I'm on the verge of dropping +3k on a gaming laptop, but now I'm totally back on the fence.
 
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