Intel and AMD have been long time competitors in semiconductor manufacturing. But times have changed now and the two rival companies are collaborating on something that can be truly helpful for both the companies. At the ongoing Consumers Electronics Show (CES) 2018 in Las Vegas, Intel announced a new series of 8th generation Core processors with AMD Radeon RX Vega M Graphics. The announcement surprised everyone as no one saw Intel and AMD joining hands for a product, at least not now.
The new product combines Intel’s fastest CPU with AMD’s fastest mobile GPU, giving out the best possible performance. The processor is designed for use within integrated systems such as AIOs, notebooks and NUCs.
The new processor consists of three parts, the Intel Core Kaby Lake-G CPU, the AMD GPU and 4GB HBM2 VRAM. Intel and AMD worked on a custom GPU, specifically for this processor, that significantly reduces the size and power consumption of motherboard. Intel’s own Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB), a high-speed interface again specifically designed for this processor, makes all this possible. The EMIB technology creates a high-high-speed bandwidth connection between the GPU and VRAM, which then communicate with CPU over an x8 PCIe 3.0 data link. All of this is packed into a 1.7mm chip, less than the width of a credit card. These optimizations and tight integrations mean the chip can deliver the same performance at 17.5W less power.
Intel is offering this processor in five different SKUs – the i7-8809G, i7-8709G, i7-8706G, i7-8705G and the i5-8305G. The clock speed varies from 4.2 GHz to 3.8 GHz, but all of them sport 4 cores and 8 threads. All the i7 models have a cache size of 8MB, whereas the i5 model has a cache of 6MB. The 8809G and 8709G have the faster Radeon RX Vega M GH graphics. The other three models have the Radeon RX Vega M GL graphics. The 8809G also has a fully unlocked CPU, GPU and VRAM for overclocking.
The Intel 8th generation Core processor with Radeon RX Vega M Graphics will have enough performance to meet both Oculus Rift and Microsoft Mixed Reality performance requirements. This means bringing VR to a broader audience and doing so in a sleeker and slimmer form factor.
Intel also announced its VR capable NUC in two variants – the i7-8809G based NUC8i7HVK and i7-8705G based NUC8i7HNK. Dell and HP have also announced new 2 in 1 notebooks based on these processors. Come the end of this year, we will see many more products with these processors.
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