Coffee Lake hexa-core Core i9 mobile options rumored for H1 2018

The mobile Core i9 looks to be essentially the same as the Core i7 in core count, thread count, and cache size but with an unlocked multiplier similar to the Kaby Lake 45 W HK-class.

by Allen Ngo, 2017/11/25

Laptop Gaming

While we know Intel will be launching proper Coffee Lake hexa-core options to supplant the current 45 W HQ-class of Kaby Lake quad-core processors, the exact SKUs and their details remain largely unknown. Intel has yet to officially comment on hexa-core processors for notebooks, but sources close to AnandTech have revealed some unconfirmed key specifications on specific models.

Accordingly, the initial family of mobile 45 W Coffee Lake-H CPUs will consist of the i3-8300H, i5-8400H, i7-8750H, i7-8550H, and i9-8950HK. The series will follow the desktop Coffee Lake-H variants more closely as the i3, i5, and i7 mobile models will be quad-core, hexa-core, and hexa-core with Hyper-Threading, respectively. If true, then the mobile 45 W Core i5 series will continue to lack Hyper-Threading in contrast to the 15 W Core i5 U-class Kaby Lake-R family of processors.

Lastly, the Core i9-8950HK seems be the unlocked version of the mobile H-series similar to the Kaby Lake i7-7820HK or Skylake i7-6820HK. In essentially all of our notebooks equipped with these HK-class of processors, however, the base performance gains over the i7-7700HQ or i7-6700HQ are within just single-digit percentages each time. If the Core i9-8950HK is of any indication - and we believe that it is since it carries the same number of cores and threads as the Core i7 series - then we can probably expect minimal raw performance gains yet again over the i7-8750H and i7-8550H.

The mobile Coffee Lake-H series should be shipping in the next generation of gaming notebooks early next year and it may even have a presence at CES 2018 in January. We recommend checking out the source article for more information on the leaked Coffee Lake desktop processors as well.