Intel's Core i5-8300H is proving to be a decent upgrade over last year's Core i5-7300HQ

Nearly all gaming laptops in the past two years have been shipping with either quad-core Core i5-7300HQ or quad-core Core i7-7700HQ options. While clock rates are not very different between these two CPUs, the i7-7700HQ is significantly faster since it incorporates Hyper-Threading for a performance boost of about 40 percent over the i5-7300HQ in multi-threaded workloads.

Fast forward to 2018 and the proper successor to the Kaby Lake i5-7300HQ is now available as the Coffee Lake-H i5-8300H. While it doesn't have the additional two cores a la the hexa-core i7-8750H, the quad-core i5-8300H is still notable for finally introducing Hyper-Threading to the Core i5 HQ series. This alone allows the i5-8300H to run 30 to 40 percent faster than the outgoing i5-7300HQ even though the i5-8300H has a slightly lower base clock rate than the i5-7300HQ (2.3 GHz vs. 2.5 GHz).

The results are significant for anyone in the market for a gaming laptop. Most budget laptops of yesteryear were distinguished by their i5-7300HQ CPU while mainstream and higher-end enthusiast laptops would have the faster i7-7700HQ. This distinction is continuing with newer gaming laptops equipped with i5-8300H or i7-8750H options. Since the i5-8300H is significantly faster than the i5-7300HQ, however, users can buy budget Intel 8th gen laptops equipped with the i5-8300H and expect CPU performance to be very close to the pricier i7-7700HQ. In contrast, the i5-7300HQ offers only a marginal 10 percent boost over the Skylake i5-6300HQ.

The Asus TUF FX504 was our first laptop to arrive with the i5-8300H and we are expecting more to come throughout the year as additional Coffee Lake-H laptops become available.

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