Kaby Lake preview: architecture and performance expectation of Intel's 7th-gen core

Right now AMD Ryzen may be the epicenter of all hype and enthusiastic excitement, but that doesn’t mean that Intel is sitting idly! Far from that, the company is prepping its new line of Kaby Lake processors for an early 2017 launch. Kaby Lake is the codename of the 7^th generation of Intel’s core-architecture, succeeding the 6^th –gen core known as Skylake. Consistent with Intel’s monolithic and scalable design approach, this new core will cover a broad range of arrangements and power a vast array of devices ranging from 4.5Watt 2-in-1s to 91Watt mainstream desktops. Thankfully, Kaby Lake is much more of a known entity compared to Ryzen. Mobile Kaby Lake parts are already out in the market with a few reviews online and we have a pretty good idea about the desktop side too. Here, we’ll try to highlight the important bits.

Haswell-E: The next big thing?

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One of the more interesting news to reach us here at Technoprozium during this last New Year’s Eve is about Intel’s upcoming HEDT (High End Desktop) Haswell-E processors. Haswell-E is supposed to supplant Ivy Bridge-E at the highest end of Intel’s desktop spectrum. According to reports published by various hardware review sites, we are looking at a third quarter 2014 release which would put it somewhere between July and September. In recent times, Intel has been quite immaculate with its "Tick-tock" execution which dictates that the firm replaces an existing core-architecture with a new one within roughly a one year time frame. If you remember that Ivy Bridge-E was introduced around the same time last year, this news is not that much surprising. However, as always the devil lies in detail!

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.