The branding of new PC hardware is often essential for the average consumer, people who frequently lack the in-depth knowledge of a technology enthusiast. For years Intel has separated their core lineup into i3, i5 and i7 class CPUs, giving customers something to look at to quickly differentiate a company’s “good” and “best” CPUs. Intel has expanded their traditional branding today, not only with the release of a 6-core i9 series mobile processor but also with the release of i5+, i7+ and i9+ branding, signifying the use of Optane storage acceleration.
The new Intel processors are primarily aimed at gamers and content creators, and are claimed to provide a 41% higher frame rates in gaming and 59% speed improvement in heavy 4K video editing tasks. Though we didn’t see any demonstrations of systems launching games with or without Optane, this certainly sounds like technology that PC builders and enthusiasts may want to tap into if they aren’t fully invested into SSDs. We’ll have to see how everything shakes out (and how it’s priced) when Core+ laptops start hitting the market. Intel hasn’t released a formal timetable, but it looks prepared for Optane to take over sooner, rather than later.
The Core i9 processor for laptops comes with Intel’s proprietary Thermal Velocity Boost technology, the normal turbo frequency which allows users to increase the clock frequency by to 200 Mhz frequency when extra performance bump is needed. Intel claims that the technology allows for a turbo clock frequency of up to 4.8 GHz on laptops, and also showcased a Dell Alienware gaming laptop which had an astonishing clock speed of 5GHz on stage.
