Coffee Lake CPUs without processor graphics: No IGP, same price

Intel’s CES campaign this year didn’t bring much joy to the average desktop users/gamers. AMD had Ryzen 3rd gen and Radeon VII up its sleeves, Nvidia released RTX 2060; meanwhile the only “new” processor Intel came up with during the show was a locked Core i5-9400. However, the silicon giant disclosed plans for releasing some Coffee Lake refresh chips with their integrated graphics chips disabled. Those versions will come with an “F” moniker suffixed with the original model name (i7 9700KF for example). Other than the disabled graphics, everything else i.e. frequency, no. Of cores, amount of cache etc. remain identical. Have a look.

Processor model	core/thread	Base/Boost clock	IGP	Memory	Cache	TDP
Core i9-9900K	8 / 16	3.6 / 5.0	UHD 630	DDR4-2666	16MB	95W
Core i9-9900KF	8 / 16	3.6 / 5.0	No	DDR4-2666	16MB	95W
Core i7-9700K	8 / 8	3.6 / 4.9	UHD 630	DDR4-2666	12MB	95W
Core i7-9700KF	8 / 8	3.6 / 4.9	No	DDR4-2666	12MB	95W
Core i5-9600K	6 / 6	3.7 / 4.6	UHD 630	DDR4-2666	9MB	95W
Core i5-9600KF	6 / 6	3.7 / 4.6	No	DDR4-2666	9MB	95W
Core i3-8100	4 / 4	3.6/ -	UHD 630	DDR4-2400	6MB	65W
Core i3-8100F	4 / 4	3.6/ -	No	DDR4-2400	6MB	65W

AMD launches A10-6790K: A new APU for socket FM2

While we are all waiting for Kaveri - the core-architecture that will drive AMD’s next-gen APUs, it seems that the firm isn’t quite done with its current line-up. So here comes A10-6790K – the newest member in AMD’s Richland family of APUs. Designated for socket FM2, this new model comes with a base clock frequency of 4.0GHz that can reach up to 4.3GHz in turbo mode.

Lucid's new DynamiX software: Striking a balance on the fly?

LucidLogix may not be one of those household names in the industry, but for those among us with a keen interest in computer graphics and gaming, it certainly has earned a reputation of being an innovative and improvising entity. It's not like that there is any shortage in the numbers of companies or outfits providing graphics solutions, on the contrary - it's a very competitive market. There is a good number of graphics chip designers and manufacturers, AIB partners, OEMs and system builders competing for market share; Lucid, however, doesn't fit to any of these categories and yet delivers novel and elegant (at least theoretically) solutions for practical problems. So, when I read about Lucid laying its Hydra engine to an untimely rest - it felt kind of disappointing and anticlimactic since the concept behind Hydra was quite revolutionary. But it seems like Lucid is back once again with another impressive concept, which, just like Hydra, has the potential to shake things up quite a bit. Lucid calls it DynamiX!

Intel's IGP evolution: Ticking and tocking its way to the mainstream

I can still remember the day when I came across the term "bottleneck" for the first time! It was not that long ago- I was stuck with my Pentium IV powered PC which won't run most of my favourite games of that time. Back then I was just a clueless student and thought my CPU was the culprit. But that was not the case as one of my better 'informed' friends rightfully indicated toward my iGPU (Integrated Graphics Processing Unit) which happened to be the lackluster (even by the standards of that time) Intel Extreme graphics. Even though my CPU wasn't the best in class, it still could run those games but my inbuilt graphics was the limiting factor or "bottleneck" as the term implies. Of-course I could've bypassed the whole scenario by simply switching to a separate video card or dGPU (Discrete Graphics Processing Unit) but that would require more space, more power, more hustle and surely more spending which I couldn't afford. This pretty much was the story with most systems back then and while the integrated graphics parts were sufficient to drive the 2D desktop components and images, 3D workloads were beyond both their purpose and capacity. Since then a lot of things have changed in the world of personal computing, but it is only recently that the IGP performance of mainstream PC's has reached a level which is more or less acceptable not only in terms of general computing but also gaming. Today, we'll have a quick look at how Intel's graphics solutions have evolved over time.