Tag: core i3

Why does Intel need Broadwell H?

12-inch silicon wafer - Wikimedia CommonsThe Dark Satanic Rumour Mill has manufactured a hell on earth yarn which claims that Intel has bumped off its Broadwell H range.

The rumour is based on pure speculation and common sense. Earlier this year Intel told the world that it would be launching its low-power Broadwell processors in “early spring” and Kirk Skaugen, who heads up Intel’s PC Client Group, showed a roadmap to prove it.

Spring was expected to see millions of units in preparation for a very early spring fifth-generation Core launch of our traditional Celeron, Pentium, Core i3, i5, i7 which will be on Broadwell-U and Skylake in the second half of 2015.

But the higher-powered quad-core variants of Broadwell such as the Broadwell-H and Broadwell-M were not mentioned but were expected in “work week 29” and “work week 36” in 2015. That would mean late July to early September.

But if Skylake also appears in the second half of 2015, it seems that Broadwell chips is surplus to requirements. Intel could go traight to Skylake for the higher-performance notebook models  — after all . Skylake has a better CPU core, graphics and media subsystem than Broadwell.

Axing of Broadwell could also be a return to the “tick-tock” method for Intel. Skylake fully ramped in the second half of 2015 means that Intel could conceivably mean that the 10-nanometer Cannonlake product will be ready for deployment for back-to-school in 2016.

Intel goes Pentium, Core i3 nuts

Intel-logoChipzilla has released eight new Pentium and Core i3 desktop microprocessors.

The Pentium G3250, G3460, Core i3-4160 and i3-4370 are being geared for PC’s. Intel also released Pentium G3250T, G3450T, Core i3-4160T and i3-4360T which are low-power models.

According to Tom’s Hardware all processors are 100MHz faster than their predecessors, which is a barely noticeable three to four percent improvement in clock speed.

The prices are pretty much the same for previously released Pentiums and Core i3s, particularly after Intel cut the price of existing Core i3-4360 SKU by 7 per cent, from $149 to $138, and the price of the Pentium G3450 was slashed by 13 per cent from $86 to $75.

The new Pentiums products are produced on 22nm manufacturing process, and they come with two CPU cores, running at 2.8 GHz – 3.5 GHz.

The Pentiums have 3 MB of L3 cache, integrated HD graphics, and provide the basics like VT-x Virtualization and SSE4. The Pentium G3250 and G3460 have 53 Watt TDP, and the G3250T and G3450T are rated at 35 Watt. The official prices of Pentiums range from $64 to $85.

It seems priced to complete with the AMD A6-6400K and A8-5500 APUs.

Core i3 microprocessors have support for Hyper-threading feature which means they can run twice as many threads at once. The i3s are generally clocked higher than the Pentiums, and they have GPU upgraded to HD 4400 on the i3-41xx series, and to HD 4600 on the i3-43xx series.

Low power Core i3-4160T and i3-4360T run at 3.1 GHz and 3.2 GHz, and have 35 Watt TDP. The standard power Core i3-4160 and i3-4370 operate at 3.6 GHz and 3.8 GHz but fit into 54 Watt thermal envelope.

All Core i3 models have the GPU clocked at 1.15 GHz, and they support DDR3-1600 memory. Core i3-4160 and i3-4160T have the official price of $117. The Core i3-4360T and i3-4370 are more expensive, and they are priced at $138 and $149.