Dell Updates XPS 13 with Intel 8th Gen Quad Core CPUs

[Drak3]

13 minutes ago, lilbman said:

Most of them can't even keep the processors itself cool, much less with a dGPU in there too.

One can do pretty decent gaming on integrated graphics if they're not trying for 1080p60 in the latest AAA title.

I game on the iGPU of an i5-3230M occationally, and many worth while indie games play really well on it.

[OmJo93]

1 hour ago, lilbman said:

Ultrabook gaming?

 

Sigh.

 

Ultrabooks aren't meant for gaming.  They're meant for web browsing, scrolling through Facebook, and watching cat videos, not playing games.  Most of them can't even keep the processors itself cool, much less with a dGPU in there too.

 

We've seen how thin-and-light gaming laptops usually go down.  Take the Razer Blade-it looks nice, its thin, light, and powerful, but it gets super hot.  Imagine an ultrabook.

They're not meant for gaming but that doesn't mean they can't game a little bit. You won't be playing 2017 AAA titles at all, but they're still capable for less demanding games.

 

I've gamed (older titles like Fallout New Vegas, EU IV, Civ V, GTA San Andreas, and Insurgency) on a Core M Ultrabook with an Intel HD 515 iGPU for hours at a time without it getting super hot, and the laptop still works good as new. There may have been some thermal throttling but with a .900Ghz CPU I couldn't tell the difference lol.

 

They'll never replace a gaming laptop but I think a lot of people underestimate what ultrabooks are capable of, although not necessarily designed to do. 

[JAKEBAB]

3 hours ago, DocSwag said:

Personally I think the main reason this is nice is for ultrabook gaming, potentially with eGPUs. With most games being able to use 4 cores now this could give a nice gaming performance jump with a decent gpu.

Your still going to be limited by thunderbolt being routed through the chipset for PCIe though so idk if its going to make much of a difference except for maybe cities skylines?

[OmJo93]

So if this is a Kaby Lake refresh, does that mean they're essentially just underclocked HQ processors? 

[rattacko123]

3 hours ago, potoooooooo said:

15w quadcore XPS 15/ MBPR 15 with insane battery WHEN

My XPS 15 can barely last 5 hours 
Disappointed a 2017 laptop has worse battery life than a 2012 macbook pro

[JohnnyCorporalTech]

wow, well now the HP Power Pavilion that i just bought with a 7700hq and 1050 now seems really large for a laptop with a Quad-core. Its an awesome laptop by the way, highly recommended. 

[ashypanda]

sick, i was just looking at replacing my T420 with a X240, so might have to have a look at this as that's a lot of poke in a small package.

[DocSwag]

10 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

One they aren't out yet, and two I haven't seen any benchmarks. When I hear that Intel is upping the core count and keeping the wattage the same I do not think highly of the performance of these parts. They have to be significantly more efficient otherwise this is just spreading the workload around to more threads while keeping roughly the same performance. 

Power does not scale linearly with clock speed/voltage. So if you halve the clock speed and lower the voltage by however much the cpu allows you, you're gonna get a lot less than half the power draw.

 

Hence why with moving to quad cores you're getting double the cores but quite a bit more than half the clock speed. As evidenced by the new u series CPUs coming with base clock speeds around 1.7-1.9 ghz compared to the 2.5-2.7 ghz ish base of the previous Kaby Lake CPUs. That's around a 33% clock speed drop for double the cores.

10 hours ago, lilbman said:

Ultrabook gaming?

 

Sigh.

 

Ultrabooks aren't meant for gaming.  They're meant for web browsing, scrolling through Facebook, and watching cat videos, not playing games.  Most of them can't even keep the processors itself cool, much less with a dGPU in there too.

 

We've seen how thin-and-light gaming laptops usually go down.  Take the Razer Blade-it looks nice, its thin, light, and powerful, but it gets super hot.  Imagine an ultrabook.

While they aren't "meant" for gaming that doesn't mean you can't use them for gaming. Surface book performance base comes to mind, if came with a decent gpu yet only 3.3 lb. And there's eGPUs to keep in mind.

 

Ultrabooks aren't meant for gaming but that doesn't mean it's nice if you can do some.

8 hours ago, JAKEBAB said:

Your still going to be limited by thunderbolt being routed through the chipset for PCIe though so idk if its going to make much of a difference except for maybe cities skylines?

Not really limited. CPU still probably makes a difference when you're looking at about a 33% increase in multi core performance with these new CPUs.

[EunSoo]

That's great and all but what are temps going to be like? My XPS 13 w/ i7-6560u (2c/4t) already thermal throttles on stock. 

[Dash Lambda]

That's neat.

Now I just have to wait to see the new Thinkpads. Maybe when my T450s dies (in a couple hundred millennia) I'll have good options.

 

14 hours ago, dizmo said:

Pretty nice, thought TBH I've never found the need for more than the 2c/4t that the U series chips had.

The reason this interests me is that it means we're finally (probably) going to see a good selection of 4-core laptops without the obligatory dGPU.

[Zodiark1593]

There seems to be some underestimation of what modern iGPUs are capable of. This isn't the Intel GMA days.

[rob_ob]

I'm currently running a Sony Vaio S13 with an i5-3230M, 12GB RAM and a 512GB SSD. I've felt for some time that there wasn't anything out there that could really replace it. All I really want is:

• High CPU performance for developing 3 tier applications, some ML/vision work, maybe some light robotics
• 13 or 14 inch, thin and light
• Good battery life (~10 hours, so no GPU, don't really need one)
• Good quality screen and speakers for watching movies
• HDMI, USB types A and C (I don't want to be carrying around dongles)
• Top end build quality

 

After I got my laptop, the market for thin and light with no GPU was completely taken over by ULVs, so I'm really hoping that these quad core ULVs will be the answer to my prayers.

 

I'm really considering buying one of these, but if anyone has suggestions on what else could meet my needs please tell me.

[NumLock21]

Others OEMs are doing silent launches. Acer has this Nitro something 2 in 1 with Kaby Lake R and GTX 1050. The problem with Kaby Lake R is not the cpu itself, but their shipping date. Most laptops ships on the 2nd week or so in September. Worst case scenario, it takes a week or so go get here, by that time September is almost up and OEM will be announcing the true 8th gen Coffee Lake cpus right around the corner. Now you're stuck with this so called "8th Gen" kaby lake r. Only way not to make a huge mess is, if Coffee Lake U does not exist. Those who wants a 2 in 1 will have to settle with Kaby Lake R and Coffee Lake for mobile is only on the high-end with the 6 cores Coffee Lake H.

Here are the list specs from Dell. Not only their XPS are getting Kaby Lake R, so are their Inspiron line up.

 

[dizmo]

1 hour ago, Drak3 said:

Ooh, that's a little sad.

 

I'm holding onto my Acer for as long as I can. The magic that older laptops have just isn't captured in modern devices, and it makes me sad. Makes me extra sad when I look at my S4.

Haha, yeah. It does wonderfully for its age though, and it was never really meant for gaming.

What did you like about older laptops?

I couldn't be happier with my newer phones. The old ones are definitely dated for good reason...though I suppose if you like removable batteries there's much to miss. I never saw the allure there.

[Drak3]

1 hour ago, dizmo said:

What did you like about older laptops?

Overall design. Especially the old, white laptops that predate USB. Something about a thick plastic laptop that can take a drop without fracturing the screen feels like a whole hell of a lot more quality than the all metal MacBook Pro or Surface Pro 4.

 

1 hour ago, dizmo said:

I couldn't be happier with my newer phones. The old ones are definitely dated for good reason...though I suppose if you like removable batteries there's much to miss. I never saw the allure there.

Honestly, my S6 and S8 both feel like they're as thin as my S4. The glass back doesn't feel that much different than the plastic back, other than the plastic back has some grip. As for the whole metal build bullshit, I prefer a plastic that can absorb shock over metal that doesn't. It'd be different if manufacturers found a consistently reliable way to absorb shock with metal bodies, but they haven't. Ironic to move on from plastic phones that could easily take a few drops to a more "premium" metal and glass design, just to put it in plastic, so it can withstand a few drops.

 

Though, I don't use cases what so ever. That's just taunting the universe for me.

[dizmo]

19 hours ago, Drak3 said:

Overall design. Especially the old, white laptops that predate USB. Something about a thick plastic laptop that can take a drop without fracturing the screen feels like a whole hell of a lot more quality than the all metal MacBook Pro or Surface Pro 4.

 

Honestly, my S6 and S8 both feel like they're as thin as my S4. The glass back doesn't feel that much different than the plastic back, other than the plastic back has some grip. As for the whole metal build bullshit, I prefer a plastic that can absorb shock over metal that doesn't. It'd be different if manufacturers found a consistently reliable way to absorb shock with metal bodies, but they haven't. Ironic to move on from plastic phones that could easily take a few drops to a more "premium" metal and glass design, just to put it in plastic, so it can withstand a few drops.

 

Though, I don't use cases what so ever. That's just taunting the universe for me.

Haha, really? I'm not a fan of the bulk at all. At least, not like it used to be. I'd much rather have slim bezels and a much smaller package, though I'm also very careful with my possessions so falls and such aren't an issue.

 

It's not so much thinness, or new materials that I like, but improvements in SoCs and display tech allowing for significantly better battery life. Plastics are ok but very, very few companies use them properly. I think Nokia is the only company that actually did poly-carbonate justice. They added ceramic buttons to increase the interactive feel of the device as well. Most just end up feeling cheap.

[Teddy07]

neat but no need so far. 2 cores suck in 2017

[Drak3]

Just now, dizmo said:

Haha, really? I'm not a fan of the bulk at all. At least, not like it used to be. I'd much rather have slim bezels and a much smaller package, though I'm also very careful with my possessions so falls and such aren't an issue

Phones are the only things that I've sent flying. Oddly enough, anything more than an extremely minor (and to other people, unnoticeable) scuff only happens if I have a case on. For laptops, it's more about making the fan work less, or enabling it to not run nearly as much, by adding thermal mass and surface area to the heat sink. Also, (and apparently Dell agrees somewhat enough with me to make a tablet that somewhat lives up to my idea), the battery capacity one could achieve. I know that there is a limitation to the capacity of a built in battery, but imagine having one or two hot swap batteries. Also, the IO, namely a disc drive *gushes.*

9 minutes ago, dizmo said:

It's not so much thinness, or new materials that I like, but improvements in SoCs and display tech allowing for significantly better battery life.

I'd rather have something the size of the Alienware 18 or MSI GT80 Titan, with the internals of the MacBook Pro 15," and the rest of the space used for cooling, batteries, and a freaking type A port, than I would a Razer Blade that was made well.

 

5 minutes ago, Teddy07 said:

2 cores suck in 2017

For certain things, yes. But, like the humble Atom core, dual cores still have uses.

[dizmo]

23 hours ago, Drak3 said:

Phones are the only things that I've sent flying. Oddly enough, anything more than an extremely minor (and to other people, unnoticeable) scuff only happens if I have a case on. For laptops, it's more about making the fan work less, or enabling it to not run nearly as much, by adding thermal mass and surface area to the heat sink. Also, (and apparently Dell agrees somewhat enough with me to make a tablet that somewhat lives up to my idea), the battery capacity one could achieve. I know that there is a limitation to the capacity of a built in battery, but imagine having one or two hot swap batteries. Also, the IO, namely a disc drive *gushes.*

I'd rather have something the size of the Alienware 18 or MSI GT80 Titan, with the internals of the MacBook Pro 15," and the rest of the space used for cooling, batteries, and a freaking type A port, than I would a Razer Blade that was made well.

Really? Interesting. I've only ever broken screens, on 2 devices. The rest of the phone is usually immaculate so that I can sell it for the maximum amount the following year. Haha, a disc drive? For what! Hardly anyone uses those anymore. I do like the hot swappable batteries in the older Lenovos though, it's nice to have the option to build it light or packed with batteries. Though, if they made it properly to begin with...

23 hours ago, Teddy07 said:

neat but no need so far. 2 cores suck in 2017

For a majority of office related tasks there's absolutely no reason to have anything more than a dual core..