Today Intel announced its new lineup of 10th generation U- and Y-series CPUs. Wait. Didn’t Intel already announce its new lineup of 10th generation U- and Y-series CPUs in May? Yes, it did. But it also announced a second lineup of 10th generation of U- and Y-series CPUs today, and you are totally welcome to be confused by that and what it all means, as I’ve been.
To understand what exactly is happening and why it is confusing and why you’re going to have a miserable time buying a laptop later this year you, unfortunately, need to know a little about CPU architecture.
Typically CPU makers like Intel operate on what’s called a tick-tock timeline. The tick is a new microarchitecture which usually includes cool new goodies to make computers faster and smarter. The tock is the refinement of that architecture and a new generation. It usually means a boost in performance from the tick, as well as improved battery life, and fewer chances of bugs and other ugly technical glitches.
In 2015 Intel moved away from the tick-tock timeline. And, until this year with the Ice Lake CPUs based on the Sunny Cove architecture, it’s been all tocks. Kaby Lake, Kaby Lake R, Coffee Lake, Whiskey Lake, and the Comet Lake series of CPUs announced today are all tocks based one the tick in 2015, Skylake.
The many refinements of a single microarchitecture have been an issue for Intel. Analysts and competitors alike have teased, mocked, and chastised Intel for its failure to get Ice Lake out the door sooner. In meetings, manufacturers privately confessed to me their annoyance with Ice Lake’s repeated delays. With rumors that, even now, Intel is struggling to make enough Ice Lake chips to meet demands, it’s a brewing PR mess for the company.
Comet Lake is intended to help with that. For laptop makers who need the absolute best, there will be a small supply of Ice Lake CPUs. For everything else, there will be Comet Lake.
Now Intel would note that Comet Lake is an incredibly efficient Skylake-based processor. According to Intel, the new Comet Lake CPUs announced today are, on average, 16-percent faster than the 8th generation CPUs that were made up of a mix of Coffee Lake and Whiskey Lake. There are some outliers, though. For example, Intel claims a whopping 41 percent speed improvement in Microsoft Office 365.
Comet Lake will also have built-in Wi-Fi 6, which means improved wifi speeds in some contexts. It will have Thunderbolt 3 incorporated onto the chip too, with Intel claiming that a file transfer to a TB3 drive will take just 40 seconds, versus over three minutes for the same file on a standard USB-C port.
As I noted above, earlier this year Intel launched a new “tick” in the form of the Ice Lake CPUs based on the Sunny Cove microarchitecture. We briefly tested a laptop with an Ice Lake CPU a few weeks ago and were impressed by its performance. In particular, the integrated GPU performance was stellar. Intel told us that the quality of that integrated GPU would be denoted in the SKU for the chips, so you would know how good the graphics were on the CPU in your new laptop.
The other set of 10th generation CPUs based on an older microarchitecture doesn’t have the same quality of graphics or any signifier of the type of integrated GPU inside. (More on that in a second.)
So here is what you need to know, as I’ve interpreted information from my briefings with Intel.
The Ice Lake and Comet Lake CPUs will all be priced similarly and are expected to be found on a wide range of devices from laptop makers. We do not know how they compare on battery life, but Intel has made no significant claims on battery life improvement for Comet Lake over 8th-gen mobile processors. It did claim Ice Lake is significantly more efficient than the 8th generation. So it is safe to assume that you want Ice Lake if battery life matters.
You will also want Ice Lake if GPU performance matters. Intel has made no major changes to the integrated CPU found in Comet Lake versus the 8th generation. As noted, we’ve already tested an Ice Lake CPU and saw a huge improvement in GPU performance.
In fact, the only time you’ll want Comet Lake instead of Ice Lake is when you just need something faster than whatever you have. If you don’t have concerns about battery life or GPU performance, you’ll be fine. Comet Lake sounds speedy enough—even if it’s wild that Intel claims it will be found in laptops priced similarly to Ice Lake devices.
To tell the processors apart, you’ll have to look for that G3, G5, or G7 at the end of the SKU. Ice Lake parts will always end with the GPU type. Comet Lake ones will always end with the series type. For example, i7-1065G7 is an Ice Lake part. The i7-10710U is a Comet Lake part. You will just have to memorize the processor numbers if you want to tell a U-series and Y-series Ice Lake CPU apart.
Is it still confusing? That’s okay. It’s not your fault. Intel has made an absolute mess of this lineup, and unless you’re armed with the charts found here, or just really, really obsessed with CPUs, this is going to be a very rough year for making an informed laptop buying decision. Hopefully, the 11th generation is a little easier to parse.