Intel Kaby Lake G Core i7-8705G: Why Nvidia should be scared
Kaby Lake G’s marriage of Intel CPU and AMD GPU is an unusual partnership in the spirit of peanut butter and chocolate, R2-D2 and C3PO in Star Wars, and, yes, even Tom Hanks and the dog in Turner and Hooch. People love the unexpected.
Built out of an Intel 8th-generation quad-core CPU and an AMD custom Radeon RX Vega M graphics chips, Kaby Lake G shook the PC industry when Intel announced the chip at CES. After putting Kaby Lake G through the wringer via HP’s Spectre x360 15, it’s now clear to us that this new CPU/GPU combination may very well represent the future of the PC and deserves the fear it’s generating among competitors.
WHAT IS KABY LAKE G?
When Kaby Lake G was first announced, many assumed Intel had contracted with AMD to replace its own graphics cores on the CPU die. In fact, the module houses an Intel CPU with Intel integrated graphics along with an AMD Radeon RX Vega M GL graphics chip and memory.
Rather than connect the chips using traditional methods, Kaby Lake G does it all with Intel’s Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB). Intel says its EMIB costs far less than competing techniques for connecting multiple dies and is far easier to implement as well.
On Kaby Lake G, a conventional x8 PCIe 3.0 connection joins the CPU to the GPU. Intel uses its EMIB to connect the
