Intel Announces First Low-Power 'Kaby Lake' Mobile Processors

[Mal67]

^ I would be very surprised if the Macbook stays around in its current form or price for much longer.

 

[LordVic]

By measurably you mean "an hour" it's good progress, but its really not going to change anyones productivity - people obsess over the CPU as if its the only important part of the machine here - in the last 10 years its become the least important part for me, retina display, thunderbolt 2, USB 3, new trackpad and keyboards, gigabit wifi, faster and large amounts of ram in the jump to 64bit and more importantly SSD's getting up to speeds of 2000MB/s in the latest MB's are the important pieces of technology which affect my day to day life far far more than CPU speed which is rarely maxed out.

Everything you've named that you care about is directly related to the CPU or it's performance 😛

1. Retina Displays require enough graphical display power. in most Apple computers, this is powered by the IGP which is built into the CPU package. A new CPU will = better graphical display performance for that retina screen.

2. Thunderbolt controllers are moving to the package too. And to use thunderbolt 3, (or even 2?) new CPU's are required.

3. USB runs better with a better CPU since USB has CPU overhead. Kaby Lake will eve ncome with support for USB3.1

4. More ram is a by product of newer CPU packages that support higher ram amounts.

the list can go on. There's a reason why it's called CENTRAL processing unit. your CPU controls everything your computer does. Getting faster isn't the only thing new CPU's bring. You get better power usage. Better battery saving tech. better thermals for heat dissapation, more controller support, such as Thunderbolt or native HVEC h265 decoding.

so while overall the CPU speed change alone isn't going to be the biggest change from updating the CPU's, there are far more benefits than just that.
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^ I would be very surprised if the Macbook stays around in its current form or price for much longer.

Same. I can see the MacBook air being cancelled soon. The rMB will likely take its spot in the lineup as the thin and light. And the MacBook pro gets a refresh.

 

[jnpy!$4g3cwk]

Same. I can see the MacBook air being cancelled soon. The rMB will likely take its spot in the lineup as the thin and light. And the MacBook pro gets a refresh.

I hope not. I actually like to use laptops in my lap, leave them sitting around on the coffee table, etc. Then, plug them in to a power supply, keyboard, mouse, and monitor later.

Inexpensive, light, cool, well-balanced, quiet, long battery life. "Thin" doesn't matter in the lap as much as well-balanced-- there is a tendency towards top-heavy with too-thin systems.

 

[Made In Machines]

I just assumed you could already easily do 4K ultra-HD video streaming and 360-videos on the current generation of skylake procressors. Am I wrong?

 

[jnpy!$4g3cwk]

I just assumed you could already easily do 4K ultra-HD video streaming and 360-videos on the current generation of skylake procressors. Am I wrong?

With the 4.5W Core M chips? I'm not sure. They can drive 4K displays, but, I'm not sure about streaming/video decoding.

 

[Made In Machines]

With the 4.5W Core M chips? I'm not sure. They can drive 4K displays, but, I'm not sure about streaming/video decoding.

Not with core M, i5 and i7 is what I'm looking to get. I'm wondering what benefits Kaby Lake will bring for i5 and i7 users apart from a tiny bit more power/efficiency? Not that i'm going to wait.

 

[dannys1]

😳 The current MacBook irritates me so much I cancel it out of my consciousness. For what it is, it should cost half that much and have ports like the Air. Time for a nap.

I don't agree with either of those assumptions to be honest.
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Everything you've named that you care about is directly related to the CPU or it's performance 😛

1. Retina Displays require enough graphical display power. in most Apple computers, this is powered by the IGP which is built into the CPU package. A new CPU will = better graphical display performance for that retina screen.

2. Thunderbolt controllers are moving to the package too. And to use thunderbolt 3, (or even 2?) new CPU's are required.

3. USB runs better with a better CPU since USB has CPU overhead. Kaby Lake will eve ncome with support for USB3.1

4. More ram is a by product of newer CPU packages that support higher ram amounts.

the list can go on. There's a reason why it's called CENTRAL processing unit. your CPU controls everything your computer does. Getting faster isn't the only thing new CPU's bring. You get better power usage. Better battery saving tech. better thermals for heat dissapation, more controller support, such as Thunderbolt or native HVEC h265 decoding.

so while overall the CPU speed change alone isn't going to be the biggest change from updating the CPU's, there are far more benefits than just that.
[doublepost=1472821634][/doublepost]

Same. I can see the MacBook air being cancelled soon. The rMB will likely take its spot in the lineup as the thin and light. And the MacBook pro gets a refresh.

I do agree with you, although there's a bit of exaggeration in your post (you said everything, the conveniently ignored numerous things from the list 😛)

Sure a better graphics card will handle more pixels, but the retina screen itself is nothing to do with CPU - and since the 2nd gen MBP the GPU has been plenty powerful to push the pixels with ease (even the MacBook GPU is fine for perfect retina support in OS X that i'm typing this on)

You are right about connections like Thunderbolt and USB, except USB overhead really is tiny and hasn't been an issue since Core2 Duo days - and Skylake supports both Thunderbolt 3 and USB3.1 too. And the more ram thing came about from 64bit chips ages ago.

I'm not saying CPU's are not important but people are far too obsessed with them on here and totally ignore than Apple have been using the fastest PCI-E flash cards in every update (even silently updating them in the iMacs) to get us up to 2000MB/s speeds which are insane. Given the choice of Skylake + 2000+ MB/s flash SSD, or Kaby Lake and a Samsung Evo 850 I'd definitely choose the former, yet I get the idea on this forum most people wouldn't know the difference.

In summary, Kaby Lake is a nice improvement, as every new edition of a processor is - but its not worth delaying the MBP for or avoiding purchasing for another year until it has Kaby Lake in (at which point the new Intel processor will be announced and everyone will be banging on about that)