Intel's Kaby Lake Disappoints

For the average consumer building or buying a new performance-focused PC, a desktop chip based on 14nm Kaby Lake remains the chip of choice—a total lack of competition at this level makes sure of that.

But for the enthusiast—where the latest and greatest should perform better than what came before—Kaby Lake desktop chips are a disappointment, a stopgap solution that does little more than give OEMs something new to stick on a label in a 2017 product stack.

No wonder Apple wasn't in a rush to put out their new Touch Bar MacBook Pro with "Kaby Lake Inside."

And yes, I'm still waiting for that must have upgrade before pulling the trigger on a $3,500 laptop. Maybe I can settle for even the Lenovo or Dell, but still, Windows.....

Intel Slowing Down CPU Advancement →

Transitioning to 10nm isn't expected to be any better, so Intel is extending the timelines. Cannonlake is being pushed back, from 2016 to the second half of 2017, and in the interim, a third "lake" generation processor will be released in 2016. Like Skylake, this processor will continue to use the 14nm process. News of this processor appeared to leak last month along with its full name: Kaby Lake. Little concrete is known about Kaby Lake, but it's likely to be available in a range of lines from a 4.5W laptop part up to 80W dual-socket server and workstation parts.

Since selling my 2008 MacBook Pro a few years back, I've been patiently waiting for a newer architecture and design replacement to Apple's current 15-inch Retina Display. With Broadwell's deployment stagnant and almost non-existent, I'm hoping they just skip it and go straight to Skylake for a Fall release. I was definitely disappointed with the latest spec bump still on Haswell but at least the change in dedicated graphics cards helped increase processing power by 70%. Maybe I'll "settle" for that!.