Intel's Debut 6-core Core I9 Cpus Could Push Gaming Laptops Past 5GHZ Speeds

Core i9 flagships a full lineup of new H-series chips, and new U-series CPUs were also announced.

- Mark Hachman

For years, PC gamers have needed to pick a poison: Buy a desktop with the most powerful components available, or sacrifice some performance for a laptop they could take on the road. Intel’s new 6-core mobile Core i9 chip, its fastest notebook CPU ever, paves the way for 5GHz gaming laptops, making that decision a little easier.

Using new “thermal velocity boost” technology to propel the new Core i9-8950HK from a base clock rate of 2.9GHz to a whopping 4.8GHz, the new unlocked 8th-generation Core i9 sits atop five new Core i5 and Core i7 high-performance mobile H-series chips, plus four more U-series Core chips aimed at lower-power systems. (All are Coffee Lake 14nm chips.) Intel also launched a new lineup of desktop Core processors (go. pcworld.com/dtpc), plus a new designation (Core i7+; go.pcworld.com/cri7) to indicate the presence of hard-drive–boosting Optane Memory (go.pcworld.com/hdbt) inside notebook PCs.

Compared to a 7th-generation Core processor, Intel says Core i9 is up to 41 percent faster in gaming frame rates and 32 percent faster when streaming and recording your gameplay. Since the new Core i9 is unlocked, expect gaming PC makers to release 5GHz systems, Intel executives said. And if Optane Memory comes bundled, performance could increase further, though the 7th-gen system Intel used for comparison includes a slower mechanical hard drive rather than an SSD.

“It’s the fastest gaming processor we’ve ever launched,” said Fredrik Hamberger, general manager of Intel’s premium and gaming notebooks. “It really is the closest to desktop performance you can get in a notebook.”