14 DAY TRIAL // It appears that the six entry-level and mainstream LGA 1150 Haswell CPUs released the other day were just a small hint at what was to come, as the real news seems to be the launch of newer and faster Core i5 and i7 High-End processors.
Intel does this fairly periodically in fact, releasing a collection of central processing units every three months or five-six. Not a new architecture, just better versions of existing chips. The goal is to keep things fresh while coaxing consumers, retailers and business partners to order new shipments from it.
This week has brought about the launch of four Haswell high-end central processing units and three Haswell SoCs (system-on-chip devices) for ultrathin laptops, including ultrabooks.
In fact, Chipzilla also revealed four Bay Trail SoCs for small-price notebooks and tablets, but we will take a look at those chips separately.
At any rate, the high-end CPUs are advertised as the “H” line and come in both dual-core and quad-core configurations. The strongest of them is the Core i7-4980HQ.
Its four cores have a base clock of 2.8 GHz, but can go to 4 GHz if the situation calls for it, thanks to Turbo Boost technology. The cache memory (L3) is of 6 MB, while the integrated graphics processor (iGP) is an Iris Pro 5200 with 1.3 GHz top clock.
All in all, the TDP is quite reasonable at 47W, and the price of $623 is to be expected (€460 according to exchange rates at the time of this article's writing).
The Core i7-4980HQ is meant to be used in the Apple MacBook Pro. In fact, all the “H” Series chips are supposed to be a good fit for the Mac-loaded laptop.
Speaking of which, the Core i7-4770HQ and Core i7-4870HQ are quad-core units as well, with the same specs as above, only with 2.2 / 2.4 GHz and 2.5 / 3.7 GHz clocks. They each cost $434 / €320.
The last processor in the “H” line is the dual-core Core i7-4578U, with 4 MB cache and Iris 5100 graphics. It may seem weak, but has a TDP of 28W, making it good for ultrathin laptops / ultrabooks. Its price is of $426 / €315.
Indeed, this “H” CPU will probably be competing more with the Core i5 ULV units than the other “H” chips. The ULV processors (3 MB cache each) are the dual-core Core i5-4278U, i5-4308U and i7-4578U, with clocks of 2.6 to 3 GHz and Iris 5100 graphics of their own, plus prices of $225 to $315 / €166 to €232. The Core i5-4210H is the oddball of the line, like the Core i7-4578U is for the “H,” as the TDP is of 47W, not 28W.
All new CPUs have Hyper-Threading support (show twice the number of logical cores in the OS compared to physical ones).
