Kaby Lake (Core i7-7500U) Review: Skylake on Steroids

[Redaktion]

Surprisingly powerful. Not a new architecture and not a new process – but Intel's gently optimized Kaby Lake generation still manages a significant frequency and performance jump. We tested the new Core i7-7500U.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Kaby-Lake-Core-i7-7500U-Review-Skylake-on-Steroids.172692.0.html

[TheTechGuy]

Is the i7 7500u better than the i7 6560u? I am asking this because I just got a Yoga 900 with the i7 6560u, but with the Yoga 910 coming out and it shipping with the i7 7500u, I wonder if it is really any better. I have looked at a few benchmarks, but I don't understand how some of them work exactly, and if the Yoga 910 is just going to be the same speed as the Yoga 900, I probably won't upgrade considering I don't care that much about fewer bezels or making things prettier

[danwat1234]

So you don't think the CPU performance has really increased at all? That is disappointing. People were expecting more CPU (x86 computational) performance with Skylake but were disappointed. So Kaby Lake is mostly integrated graphics performance increase, and higher CPU core clocks and more power efficiency?

Not bad at all, I am impressed by the power consumption. But surprised no core architecture improvement.
Hopefully they'll have some really fast clocked 35w and 45w and 55w quad core full voltage laptop CPUs. Maybe above 3.2GHZ base 4GHZ turbo? 6 cores eventually?

[Paul Ston]

Sounds as though the performance is about 10% faster but more importantly, power draw is 25% lower.  This could result in better batter life of an hour or more.

[Jeffrey Newton]

NON-GEEK HERE!  Considering buying HP Spectre - 15", which has either i7 6500OU @ 2.5 GHz or i7 6560u @ 2.2 GHz but with IRIS graphics.  My current, 4 year old Lenovo G780 has 2l.5GHz, and it ws only $600!  New HP Spectre has the reviewed i7 7500 chip, but ONLY in 13" (too small for me with Sibelius, Abelton music applications; as well as reading sheet music), no 4K graphics, and no active pen, all of which I need/want (pen = need)..  Can't get my head around lack of performance upgrades over entry level, 4 year old laptop.  Does the reviewed 15% increase really mean anything, given what I have to give up?  What about the sixth gen 6500 / 2.5 versus the 6560 / 2.2?  I'd like the better graphcis of IRIS, for Sibelius.  THANKS!

[Alan]

How can we tell which that a Kaby Lake system comes with the new revision with HDMI 2.0 and HDCP 2.2 support?

[DavidC1]

Jeffrey, what are you talking about? The 7500U Kabylake chip is 50-60% faster than the i5 2.5 in your Lenovo. It's not all about clocks you know.

I know, it's been 4 years and I think it should have been 2.5x the speed, but I wouldn't call 50 plus percentage "lack of improvements".

[Brandon Bridges]

Looks more like a 20-30% increase in speed actually from those benchmarks, specifically the SuperPI times listed.

Only 23% faster on that specific benchmark. It's a single-threaded benchmark which would perhaps be misleading, except both processors being compared are dual-cores with 4 threads so that is likely to hold roughly true in something like WPrime as well which is multi-threaded.

[Brandon Bridges]

Looks more like a 20-30% increase in speed actually from those benchmarks, specifically the SuperPI times listed.

Only 23% faster on that specific benchmark. It's a single-threaded benchmark which would perhaps be misleading, except both processors being compared are dual-cores with 4 threads so that is likely to hold roughly true in something like WPrime as well which is multi-threaded.

I think the real discussion here is that he's comparing the wrong processors.

His current laptop has an i5, he's comparing it to ultra-low-voltage i7's. I'm personally not a fan of the naming scheme involved, but ULV i7's perform more closely to i3's than i5's or i7's. This processor uses 15 watts under maxload, his i5 uses 35 watts. This processor isn't intended to be "powerful", it's intended to be power-efficient.

My current laptops i7 is more what I'd call a "real" i7. 47 watts, quad-core, 8 threads. Puts this i7-7500u to complete shame despite being 26 months old.

My i7-4720HQ is 1.7% faster in single-threaded benchmarks, and 105% faster in multi-threaded benchmarks.

[systemBuilder]

The insanity at Intel is that they've been trying for 4 years to beat the IRIS Pro Graphics HD 5200 and just about NONE of the skylake GPUs can beat it (not the 620, not the 550, etc).  Only the HD 6200 beats it.  The Intel Marketing machine puts out a gazillion 'graphics cores' with an insane number of never-ending marketing names to hide the fact that the company is doing nothing - nothing at all - to improve graphics performance.