Updated: Intel Kaby Lake-G family goes the way of the dodo

Corrigendum: The original article stated that Intel may end driver support for Kaby Lake-G in 2020. However, Intel has clarified that there will be driver support for at least three more years as detailed here. Readers may kindly note. 

Original article:

We have been expecting this for quite sometime and now it is official. Intel has issued a Product Change Notification (PCN) confirming the discontinuance of all Kaby Lake-G processors right from the Core i5-8305G all the way up to the Core i7-8706G. Intel cites change in market demand as the reason for End of Life (EOL) of the Kaby Lake-G series. 

Market demand for the products listed in the "Products Affected/Intel Ordering Codes" table below have shifted to other Intel products. The products identified in this notification will be discontinued and unavailable for additional orders after the "Last Product Discontinuance Order Date"

The PCN is effective from today, but customers can submit requests to Intel's Corporate Assurance Criticals process till January 17, 2020 and any further orders for Kaby Lake-G processors will be entertained only up to January 31, 2020.

Intel's announcement of the Kaby Lake-G platform back in 2017 took everyone by a pleasant surprise as it brought together rivals Intel and AMD to create a product that would offer a quad-core H-series CPU and dedicated GPU capabilities within the same package. Customers and the media opined that this would be a step-up from the standard anemic integrated graphics solutions and would benefit home users, budget gamers, and content creators. 

But soon, things went down south with signs pointing to NVIDIA's GPP that kept Kaby Lake-G from making real headway. Apart from a total of four major launches that included the Dell XPS 15 9575, HP Spectre x360, Intel Hades Canyon NUC, and the Chuwi HiGame Mini PC, Kaby Lake-G was, for all intents and purposes, dead.

Although we are now seeing better integrated GPUs with Ice Lake and AMD's Zen+ APUs with Vega, Kaby Lake-G offered something truly unique. The power of a Core i7-7820HK and a GTX 1060 Max-Q in a single package (Core i7-8809G) that performed noticeably cooler and quieter was nothing to scoff at, and we are not sure if Intel would continue such a partnership in the future.