What’s new in Intel Kaby Lake?

We’re on the cusp of the release of Intel’s seventh-generation desktop processors, dubbed Kaby Lake. Intel announced Kaby Lake mobile processors in August, and here’s a look back on what’s new.

1. Improved 14nm+ process

Kaby Lake is built on a new and slightly tweaked 14nm+ process. Ultimately, Kaby Lake chips can run at higher clock speeds than equivalent Skylake processors, resulting in more performance at the same power envelope. This amounts to up to double-digit performance increases, according to Intel.

2. Native 4K video encoding

The video engine in Kaby Lake features new media blocks for encoding and decoding 10-bit 4K HEVC video codecs and 4K VP9. The upshot is significantly better battery life when playing back a 4K 10-bit HEVC video or watching 4K YouTube videos in Google Chrome. This is because the CPU can sit idle more often, resulting in decreased power consumption.

3. Native support for USB 3.1 (Gen 2)

Skylake machines require third-party controllers for USB 3.1 (Gen 2) 10Gbps connections, but Kaby Lake offers this natively. In theory, this means that more systems may offer these faster ports, because there’s no longer any need to deal with the added cost of an extra controller.

4. Only officially supports Windows 10

This is a bit of a bummer, but Kaby Lake will only officially support Windows 10 and above. Microsoft announced this move at the start of 2016, and is yet another attempt by the company to push users onto its newest OS. So if you’re going to get a Kaby Lake chip, best to get Windows 10 as well.

5. You need it for 4K Netflix

So Netflix announced in November that 4K streaming was finally coming to Windows PCs. The kicker is that you’ll need a new Kaby Lake chip to enjoy it, because of Netflix’s 10-bit HEVC decoding and PlayReady 3.0 – a hardware-based DRM system – requirements.

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