Intel 'Gemini Lake' Pentium Silver and Celeron CPUs now official, come with support for Gigabit WiFi

Intel has finally taken wraps off its 'Gemini Lake' series of CPUs. Christened the Pentium Silver and Celeron, the 'Gemini Lake' CPUs aim to provide value-for-money performance at entry level price points. 'Gemini Lake' family will include the following CPUs —

• Intel Pentium Silver N5000 (for mobile) and J5000 (for desktop)
• Intel Celeron N4100/N4000 (for mobile) and J4105/J4005 (for desktop)

All CPUs come with 4MB cache along with integrated Intel UHD graphics and have support for DDR4-2400 and LPDDR4-2400 dual channel memory.

Intel says that the new Pentium Silver processor provides up to a 58% higher performance compared to a similarly specced 4-year old PC. The Pentium Silver joins the Pentium Gold (re-branded Pentium Kaby Lake) in offering cost-effective alternatives, with the Pentium Silver at the lower end of the performance spectrum.

The Pentium Silver and Celeron CPUs come with support for Gigabit WiFi using 2x2 802.11AC with 160 MHz channels for fast networking performance. Intel claims that Gigabit WiFi is up to 2x faster than 802.11AC, 12x faster than 802.11BGN, and also faster than a Gigabit Ethernet connection. Apart from support for Gigabit WiFi, these CPUs will also come with support for Local Adaptive Contrast Enhancement (LACE) that enables clear visuals in glare and bright light.

We've been knowing for quite for sometime about the possible arrival of 'Gemini Lake' CPUs towards the end of 2017, courtesy of an unnamed notebook unveiled at a Hong Kong trade show a few months ago. We've also seen some leaked roadmaps confirming launch of 'Gemini Lake'-based notebooks and NUCs sometime in Q1 2018. It is good to see Intel finally unveiling these low-cost CPUs. The enhanced integrated GPU, support for Gigabit WiFi, and possibly longer battery life should make these CPUs a worthy upgrade for those using earlier Pentium and Celeron-based PCs.

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