Kaby Lake Intel Core processor 7th Genaration

7th Generation Intel® Core™ i7 Processors

Kaby Lake is the next generation of CPUs from Intel. Right now we're in the Skylake generation. You'll still see quite a few laptops from the previousBroadwell and Haswell series on sale, but they are officially past-it.

Here are all the details you need to know on the upcoming Intel Kaby Lake CPU revolution.

Cut to the chase

• What is it? Intel's 7th-generation Core processor
• When is it out? Before the end of 2016
• What will it cost? Likely similar to Intel's current Skylake processors

Kaby Lake revealed CPUs

Three Kaby Lake CPU models have already been leaked, though a handful of laptop-grade parts were officially revealed at the IFA trade show in Berlin, Germany.

The Core i7-7700K is the leaked desktop CPU, unlocked for overclocking as indicated by the discrete "K" moniker. This tells us the Kaby Lake naming convention will remain similar: they are "7" series CPUs, to Skylake's gen 6, Broadwell's gen 5 and so on.

The i7-7700K is a quad-core hyper-threaded CPU, and benchmarks leaked all the way back in March suggest it's clocked at 3.6GHz with a 4.2GHz turbo boost. Of course, that may change by the time the chipset is actually used.

The CPU was leaked in the SiSoft benchmark result database, but unfortunately the results published are actually significantly worse than those of the i7-6700K, so don't tell us anything about Kaby Lake's performance. A downgrade upgrade? Let's hope not.

Next up is the Core i7-7500U, leaked alongside the i7-7700K. This is the sort of CPU we might end up seeing in a high-end ultrabook. It's a relatively high performance chipset, but still belongs to the "U" ultra-low voltage family.

It has two cores, four threads, and is clocked at 2.7GHz with a 2.9GHz turbo. Some of you might turn your noses up at dual-core laptop chipsets, but they're pretty important.

On the mobile front, the higher end Core m5 and m7 mobile chips of yesteryear will be integrated into the Y-series Core i family. These include the Core m3-7Y30, the Core i5-7Y54 and the Core i7-7Y75, which will be used in top-end laptops with fanless and convertible designs to complement the more power-hungry U-series processors.