Intel’s latest 11th generation H-series chips promise the fastest ultra-portable laptops yet

After Intel released its first series of 11th Tiger Lake processors last year, Intel is kicking things off at CES 2021 with its first H-series 11th Gen Core chips, offering the benefits of Tiger Lake (such as the 10 nm process and the Xe upgraded integrated graphics) to even more powerful machines.

However, there is a catch: the first wave of the 11th generation H-series chips will be the bottom end of the bracket, with a maximum of 35 W processors – instead of the more powerful 45 W chips that top Intel ‘s laptop range. (The company is still working on the models, promising to provide more details in the near future.)

Although the new chips of the 35W H series will not be the processors found in the nicest and best gaming computers that money can buy, they will work quite impressively, meaning that smaller or lighter laptops can start beating above their weight class, even with smaller core counts and less thermal headroom.

Specifically, Intel claims that its new i7-11375H – the top model in the H35 series, with four cores, eight wires and an increased clock speed of up to 5 GHz – offers the fastest single-wire performance of any laptop, just matching with Intel’s best 45W H-series chip from last year. This is impressive, especially if the new model has less raw power to work with here.

The new chips also support Intel Killer Wi-Fi 6 or 6E, with integrated Thunderbolt 4 support, DDR4 memory up to 3,200 MHz and LPDDR4 / x up to 4,266 MHz and PCIe Gen 4.0. When it comes to graphics, hardware companies can rely on the already impressive integrated Xe-LP graphics or add additional discrete options from companies like Nvidia.

And while the lack of even more powerful 11th-generation chips can be disappointing for some people, Intel has begun to tease what to expect: an 8-core processor that will begin shipping “later this quarter” at speeds up to 5 GHz , although details on what is still sparse.

The first laptops powered by the new 11th Gen H35 chips are expected to be announced at CES 2021, including models from Acer, Asus, MSI and Vaio, with Intel expecting more than 40 designs in the first half of the year. year has been released.