Gadgetory

welcome back to hardware unbox today we're looking at one of Intel's brand new six core laptop CPUs that were officially unveiled yesterday the CPU in question is the core i7 8750 h and it's one of seven new coffee-like H series processors designed for performance notebooks workstations and gaming laptops the core i7 8750 H is essentially the successor to the widely popular KB like Core i7 7700 HQ that was used in nearly every gaming laptop to hit the market in the last year or so I expect the AI 78750 H will also be the go-to chip for gaming laptops and other performance mobile devices so this review will be pretty useful to anyone looking to upgrade to one of these new coffee-like H series systems the key improvement to the AI 78750 H is in its core count we're now looking at six cores and twelve threads up from four cores and eight threads in the i7 7700 HQ while keeping to the same 45 watt TDP to fit these extra cores in the same TDP Intel has gone with the same approach they used with the KB leg refresh you serious serious we've already looked at the base clock speed has been reduced from 2.8 gigahertz in the 7700 HQ to just 2.2 gigahertz with the 8750 h however while the base clock has been reduced intel is pushing a single core performance higher with these new 8th gen processes the 8750 h hits a maximum of 4 point 2 gigahertz on a single core up from 3.8 gigahertz on the 7700 HQ it's also capable of the same 4.2 gigahertz clock speed on to course along with 4 gigahertz on up to 4 cores and 3.9 gigahertz on up to 6 cause that's a pretty big jump in clock speed considering the 7700 HQ topped out at just 3 point 4 gigahertz in all core workloads you also see nine megabytes of l3 cache in the 8750 H and it's been manufactured using Intel's of 14 nanometer plus plus process which is the same as desktop coffee lake paths and joining the eye 78758 in the lineup is another six score 12 thread core i7 the i7 8850 h which features increased bass and boost clock speeds the core i5 line with the 8400 H and 8300 H remain for core 8 thread parts well at the top we have the unlocked kora 989 50 HK the coffee-like H series is completed with two Zealand chips for mobile workstations those wanting to buy a gaming laptop won't see these chips inside their systems but they are technically part of the new coffee-like lineup and there will be great options for performance productivity oriented devices hopefully we'll be able to get our hands on devices with the full range of coffee-like H CPUs inside in the next couple of months but for now we're just testing the core i7 8750 H our test system is the new gigabyte Aero 15 which I'll be reviewing in the next week or so fully but for now is our test platform for checking out the first six core laptop CPUs aside from the eye 78750 H inside this laptop also packs an nvidia geforce gtx 1070 max-q GPU 16 gigabytes of ddr4 2666 memory a 512 gig PCIe SSD and a 1080p 144 hertz display and a quick note here before people inevitably talk about this in the comments yes testing laptop hardware can be a bit tricky especially in an apples-to-apples way because we can't just swap out components like the CPU and GPU to remove bottlenecks when necessary but throughout the benchmarks ahead we will be focusing on the closest possible comparisons we can make with the test systems that we have used of course as the aro 15 only has a gtx 1070 max-q inside in some GPU and gaming tests we will be GPU limited however this does present the most real-world results as the vast majority of laptops to use this cpu will have a discrete GPU no faster than a gtx 1070 yeah you can get faster GPUs like the GTX 1018 laptops but they're expensive and typically not the most popular options and I did make one Hardware changed area 15 for this CPU review and that was to swap the memory configuration from single to chilled channel these laptop chips with a single 16 gigabyte stick inside but as most other laptops in our charts use dual channel memory I swap the single 16 gigabyte stick for to 8 gig sticks at the same speeds that's all the riveting backstory and information you need let's get on with some beautiful blue benchmark charts starting with the productivity tests they're moving into gaming later in the video starting with Cinebench and it's good news for the eye 78750 H as it obliterates the 7700 HQ to the tune of 58 percent in the multi-threaded test when you add in 50% more cores and increase the clock speeds of these cause this is the sort of result you can expect in a best-case scenario the 8750 H also provides 9 percent more performance in the single third test which is just shy of the 11 percent single core turbo clock speed increase gains in performance of around 50 percent are typical for a lot of workloads while performing a to pass x264 encode the 8750 h was 46 percent faster than the 7700 HQ which is a significant difference for a rendering test you won't get quite the same performance uplift when rendering x265 videos in handbrake but we still achieved a 34 percent performance gain here with the 8750 H which is significant in the Excel Monte Carlo workload the 8750 H was almost exactly 50 percent faster than the 7700 HQ which is another strong result for the six core CPU that will please those that work with large calculation heavy spreadsheets compression and decompression is a huge win for the 8750 H in 7-zip d ID 750 H is 55 percent faster than the 7700 HQ in compression and a huge 69 percent fast in decompression it's a similar result in WinRAR where the 8750 h was 53% faster in its compression heavy benchmark daily 750 H even outperformed the 7700 HQ in WinRAR Singles run a test to the tune of 15% moving on to our Adobe benchmarks which utilized both the CPU and GPU with premiere in this test the 8750 h was 25% faster at rendering your video with lumetri effects than the 7700 HQ when using a laptop with the same GPU inside you won't see a significant performance advantage in Photoshop at least while performing an iris blur with the 8750 edge only performing around 9% faster not a terrible result but it's not as strong as many of the other benchmarks we've shown so far the only benchmark that showed effectively no performance difference is MATLAB as a largely single threaded test that favors high memory bandwidth the lack of improvements to the memory controller could have limited any performance gains in this workload most PC mark tests are single threaded so it's no surprise to see single-digit performance gains in this workload in the older PC Mark 8 home test the 8750 H was 8 percent faster than the 7700 HQ in a system with the same GPU that narrowed to 6 percent in the creative workload though it did grow to 12 percent in the werk test and 9 percent in a newer PC market n if you're interested in memory bandwidth there is no real difference between the 8750 H and the 7700 HQ both support up to ddr4 2666 and with the dual channel configuration you'll get around 25 gigabytes per second of bandwidth cache performance however is significantly improved across the board the final test I'll mention before moving to the gaming benchmarks is 3d marks times pi tests while the overall score is just 11 percent higher than a system with the 7700 HQ and an equivalent GPU the cpu score is a good 52 percent high as expected which helps to provide most of the overall score improvement and if you're wondering about the integrated GPU it still uses the same UHD 630 as the previous 7700 HQ so the general consensus is the eye 78750 H provides a significant performance increase over the i7 7700 HQ for productivity workloads particularly those that are multi-threaded and can make good use of the extra to cause but what about gaming especially on a typical gaming laptop that is limited in both CPU and cheap your power let's kick things off with one of the most CPU limited games we test with civilization 6 here the 8750 H provides a decent 29% performance uplift when looking at average frame rates compared to the 7700 HQ in an MSI laptop with the same GPU and memory configuration however 1% lowers don't benefit at all from the extra CPU power so the experience of the game on the newer 8th gen CPU isn't necessarily superior assassin's creed origins is another game that likes a fast CPU and here we're seeing a 12% gain in favor of the a 750 H when looking at average frame rates using the ultra preset at 1080p which extends to 30% in 1% low performance when we're talking about our difference between the 36 and 47 fps in that crucial 1% low figure having that extra CPU power is certainly pretty handy I also tested with the medium preset at 1080p and that margin isn't as large in favor of the 87 50 H at 11% in average frame rates and 24% in 1% lows at least in this game it appears both quality presets have some CPU limitations watchdogs to another Ubisoft title famously punishes the CPU here we're looking at an 8% performance gain in favor of the 87 50 H compared to the 7700 HQ in average frame rates which grows slightly to 11% we're looking at 1% lows this is using the ultra preset so if you want to turn the settings down to the medium preset the margin goes to a 12% on average and 16% in 1% lows surprisingly Mass Effect Andromeda benefits a fair bit from the faster 8750 H using the ultra quality preset at 1080p the game is 17 percent faster on average with the 6 core CPU and 27 percent faster looking at the 1% lower results in some games the quality preset you opt for will determine whether you benefit from the extra CPU horsepower at least with the gtx 1070 max q if you love the ultra preset you'll only see up to an 11 percent performance improvement in rise of the Tomb Raider for example but if you switch to high at 10 expects 16 percent better 1% lows several other games at fairly typical quality level showed single-digit or even zero performance improvements with the 8750 H Grand Theft Auto 5 for example performed within the margin of error of a 7700 HQ system using high settings and that's with an average frame rate that exceeded a hundred fps prey which produces a 1% low figure above 60fps using the very high preset also showed no performance gains with the AE 750 H Hitman which can be CPU limited at times surprisingly showed no difference to 1% low performance with the 87 50 H when playing at ultra detail settings Middle Earth shadow of war was around 6% faster with the 87 58 regardless of whether you played using the ultra or high preset the latter of which provides a 1% low above 60 FPS so with a fairly typical if not upper end discrete laptop GPU the eye 78750 H doesn't produce as much of a performance game in gaming as with the productivity workloads in a best-case scenario unless you're using unreasonably low settings for the GPU in your device you can get up to a 30% performance gain in 1% lows now this is far from an insignificant result in fact a 30% getting to these crucial 1 % low figure will produce a noticeably smoother and better experience however the extent to which you'll get a performance uplift depends on the game and the settings you use on the vast majority of gaming laptops you'll be GPU bottleneck in modern titles even at modest quality levels at 1080p with a 10 70 max Q inside our test system performance gains in the 5 to 15% range of most common even in titles that already averaged in 80 to 100 FPS range on a 7700 HQ equipped system again the lower you push quality levels the more CPU bottlenecked you'll become but for a lot of gamers targeting a 60fps 1% low figure and maybe say a hundred FPS average using a medium to high preset the extra CPU power of the 8750 H is only going to make a modest difference relative to the 7700 in laptops with the most popular discrete cheaper use and if you're more of an ultra quality gamer targeting 40 to 60 FPS the benefits are even less the real benefit to the ice of an 80 750 H and having six cores in a laptop form factor productivity workloads performance gains around the 50 percent mark are typical for the 80 758 relative to the 7700 HQ in multi-threaded workloads with gains as high as 69 percent in decompression single funded performance is also up producing gains just shy of 10 percent but if you're mostly interested in this CPU for gaming the eye 78758 isn't going to revolutionize your experience in systems with the same GPU the 8750 H only provides a modest improvement over the last few Intel H Series generations as most gaming laptops are still GPU bottleneck to a varying extent there are performance gains to be had in some situations but if you're in the market for a new gaming laptop your focus should still be on the GPU of course where it makes sense you should always buy a system with the latest generation of CPUs inside but if you do find a good deal on a gaming laptop with a last gen i7 7700 HQ in it you could only be sacrificing a small amount of performance for a decent price saving the one caveat I'll make to that is for those buying laptops with the gtx 1080 or faster the cpu will have more of an influence on gaming performance at 1080p with that level of GPU so keep that in mind most gaming laptops being GPU bottleneck in typical conditions shouldn't take away from what is still a great CPU from Intel and a significant step forward in a 45 watt power envelope like with the 15 watt u series parts that hit the market last year these new 8 Series parts provide a significant performance improvement that should entice anyone who needs high levels of CPU performance on the go whether you have a 3rd gen laptop from years back or a 7th gen laptop from just last year there are plenty of reasons to upgrade to a new machine with an 8th gen part inside like the eye 78758 particularly if your primary focus is productivity apps expect to see a lot of laptops with coffee like CPUs inside hit the market this month so you'll certainly have plenty choices for upgrading over the next couple of months we'll hopefully get our hands on more coffee later laptops not just to check out the rest of the CPU line but also to see what sort of impact these new CPUs have on gaming laptops with different discrete GPUs but that's it for this one though big thanks to gigabyte for providing us with the era of 15x4 our first test of these coffee-like CPUs definitely check that laptop out links in the description below give us a like if you enjoyed this content consider subscribing for more and we also have a patreon at patreon.com slash Hardware unboxed where you can support us directly I'll catch you in the next one