Month: October 2019

Remember Intel Kaby Lake-G? It was Intel’s line of laptop processors that paired Kaby Lake silicon with AMD Vega graphics for gaming laptops. And, well, it’s been discontinued.

This all comes via a Product Change Notice, spotted by our friends at Tom’s Hardware. These processors were the product of an unholy union of Intel and AMD, and according to the report “Market demand for the products listed in the “Products Affected/Intel Ordering Codes” table below have shifted to other Intel products.” Intel is on the cusp of releasing its own dedicated graphics architecture for both consumers an

Don’t forget about Intel Ice Lake either. Intel’s 10th-generation “Project Athena” processors for Ultrabooks are packing the latest Gen11 graphics, which should be capable of powering some light gaming workloads. Even if they’re really designed to allow the laptops to run Photoshop and other similar apps somewhat efficiently.

This might also indicate when we can expect a followup to this team-up platform. Intel G-series processors will be discontinued after January 31, 2020, and while we don’t think Intel will team up with AMD again – especially now that Intel Xe is a thing – we might see some H-series processors with Intel Gen11 graphics. Intel is really trying to push its integrated graphics as discrete-class.

Either way, you probably won’t find many gaming laptops with these Intel G-series processors in them after January – not that there were many to begin with. As for what Intel will replace them with, we’ll just have to wait and see what Intel has in store. 

Dell’s sleek XPS 13 2-in-1 uses the second highest-end 10th Gen Ice Lake processor currently available – the Intel Core i7-1065G7. That G7 suffix signifies the use of Intel’s highest-end, 64 EU Iris Plus Gen 11 graphics in the quad-core CPU. On paper, the i7-1065G7 is a four-core, eight-thread 10th Gen processor built on Intel 10nm process architecture. The clock speeds are 3.9GHz for maximum Turbo Boost speed, with a 1.50GHz base clock in the 25W configurable TDP-up implementation.

We ran Cinebench R20’s all-core benchmark to see how the i7-1065G7 scored, and also to track its operating clock speeds throughout the benchmark. Of course, the clock speeds that we observed are heavily influenced by the design of Dell’s XPS 13 2-in-1 laptop and the power budget, boost durations, and cooling configuration provided.

It was, however, interesting to see the turbo clock running at close to 3.4GHz for the initial seconds of the all-core benchmark. We would expect to see this level of frequency, but it is still impressive to see the processor maintaining this despite the limited thermal capacity available in Dell’s ultra-thin chassis. The clock speed dropped down to 2.85GHz after a few seconds of run time and then 2.6GHz for the steady state period.

The final Cinebench R20 score was 1612, though this was influenced by background tasks and us messing with the system while the run was in progress. With that said, the score is an indication of Ice Lake’s compute performance uplift versus Whiskey Lake (and perhaps 10th Gen Comet Lake, core-for-core) especially in tasks that heavily leverage newer AVX instruction sets.

The new Wi-Fi 6 standard is here in a pre-release form, replacing the older 802.11ac Wi-Fi found on many recent laptops, desktops, and mobile devices with 802.11ax.

But, just because the standard is available for manufacturers doesn’t mean devices are getting hardware to support it. It’s still new, and even some of the best laptops come without it. But, we’ve got good news: In many cases, you can add Wi-Fi 6 to your device after you’ve bought it.

How you get Wi-Fi 6 support on your device will depend on the type of device you have. Right now, there are few Wi-Fi 6 modules, and support for AMD systems doesn’t appear available just yet. But, if you have a device powered by a 64-bit Intel processor, you can likely make the upgrade. Intel and Killer Networking have cards available, and more options will surely be coming in time.

If you have a desktop computer, you can use PCIe connections to add in networking cards, while laptops can use an M.2 slot to fit in the necessary module. We’ll go into a bit more detail below.

Adding Wi-Fi 6 to a desktop

The currently available Wi-Fi 6 modules from Killer Networking and Intel are M.2 cards targeted at laptops, and they won’t work in desktop M.2 slots as is. But, that doesn’t stop them from working in desktops. You can add in one of these cards by using a PCIe adapter like this one.

The M.2 card will slot into the converter, and then the converter will go into an open PCIe slot on your desktop’s motherboard. The converter should also provide antennae that connect to small slots on the Wi-Fi 6 module. Once that’s slotted into your computer, a quick driver installation will have you up and running on Wi-Fi 6.

Adding Wi-Fi 6 to a laptop

Laptops are becoming less and less upgradeable, with manufacturers soldering on components and sealing up cases. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t make this upgrade happen. All but the thinnest laptops and 2-in-1 tablets, like the Surface Pro X, tend to still have some level of access to the internals. And, even if components like RAM are getting soldered onto motherboards, networking adapters can still often be found as add-in cards.

If you can open up your laptop (it may take a specialized toolkit), there’s a good chance you’ll be able to spot the small M.2 module currently powering your device’s Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections.

You’ll simply unscrew the screw holding the Wi-Fi module in place, and unplug the antenna wires connected to your existing Wi-Fi module. Then, you’ll just do the process in reverse to install your new Wi-Fi module.

Future solutions may get even easier

While the current processes for upgrading are simple, in the near future, it’s likely even simpler solutions will come out. We’d expect PCIe cards with the Wi-Fi module built in to make upgrading desktop Wi-Fi much easier. And, we wouldn’t be surprised to eventually see Wi-Fi 6 USB dongles that add the new connectivity in a simple, plug-and-play device.

So, if you’re on the market for a new computer and can’t wait for models pre-fitted with Wi-Fi 6 support, you take some comfort knowing that simple upgrade solutions are available. You shouldn’t need to upgrade your whole machine just to get a faster, more stable Wi-Fi connection.

Here comes another PCIe 4.0 SSD with a blistering 5,000MB/s read speed.

Yet another SSD leveraging the PCI Express 4.0 bus to deliver insanely fast read and write speeds has emerged. Called the Cardea Zero Z440, it’s one of two new products by Team Group built specifically AMD’s X570 platform, hoping to join the ranks of the Best NVMe SSDs.

The other is a new line of T-Force Dark Z α (Alpha) memory. Granted, RAM kits should work in any supported platform, but some modules are tested and validated for certain AMD and Intel builds.

In this case, Team Group says its T-Force Dark Z Alpha RAM is “tailor made” for AMD’s latest Ryzen 3000 series processors and X570 motherboards. Based on Team Group’s testing in such a platform, these are the timings the company advertises for the three speed tiers it offers:

T-Force Dark Z Alpha DDR4-4000 RAM—CL18-22-22-42, $189 for 32GB, $99 for 16GB

T-Force Dark Z Alpha DDR4-3600 RAM—CL13-22-22-42, $169 for 32GB, $89 for 16GB

T-Force Dark Z Alpha DDR4-3200 RAM—CL16-18-18-38, $154 for 32GB, $79 for 16GB

These are available in 32GB (2x16GB) and 16GB (2x8GB) packages. MSRPs range from $79 for the least expensive kit to $189 for the most expensive one, as outlined above. It remains to be seen how street pricing will shake out (memory prices tend to fluctuate more so than other PC components).

That said, pricing at the top end is fairly aggressive. I took a peek on Newegg and 32GB kits of DDR4-4000 memory sell for around $312 on the low end, with several other kits priced north of $400.

As for the Cardea Zero Z440 SSD, Team Group is offering it in two capacities—2TB for $499 and 1TB for $249. Both capacities are rated to deliver up to 5,000MB/s of sequential read performance and up to 4,400MB/s of sequential write performance, along with up to 750,000 IOPS for random reads and writes.

You’ll need an X570 motherboard to take full advantage of the Z440’s speed capabilities, as that is the only consumer platform that supports PCIe 4.0. Otherwise, you won’t see read and writes scale quite as high.

Team Group did not say when its new RAM and SSDs will be available to purchase.