Intel Core i7-8500Y vs Intel Core i3-2377M

Intel Core i7-8500Y

The Intel Core i7-8500Y is a very efficient dual-core SoC for tablets and passively cooled notebooks based on the Amber Lake generation and will be announced around August 2018. It is the fastest Amber Lake-Y CPU at the time of announcement and consists of two processor cores clocked at 1.5 - 4.2 GHz. Thanks to Hyper Threading, the processor can execute up to four threads simultaneously. The chips also includes the Intel HD Graphics 615 GPU, a dual-channel memory controller (DDR3L/LPDDR3) as well as VP9 and H.265 video de- and encoder. Compared to the Kaby Lake-Y predecessors (e.g. Core i7-7Y75), Amber Lake uses the same architecture produced in the improved 14nm+ FinFET process (no 14nm++) but offers higher clock speeds at an increased TDP rating.

Architecture

Intel basically used the familiar micro architecture from the Skylake / Kaby Lake generation, so the per-MHz performance is identical.

Performance

The performance of the Y series is highly depending on the cooling solution of the laptop / tablet and the TDP settings for sustained load. Therefore, the differences between a Core m3 and a i7 may be rather slim, if the thermals are very limited. The high Turbo clock speeds in Amber Lake should however lead to a very good single thread performance for short bursts.

Graphics

The integrated Intel HD Graphics 615 GPU has 24 Execution Units (EUs) like the old HD Graphics 515 and runs with clocks between 300 and 950 MHz in combination with this processor. The performance heavily depends on the TDP limit as well as the memory configuration; with fast LPDDR3-1866 RAM in dual-channel mode, the GPU should sometimes be able to compete with the HD Graphics 520, but can also be much slower in other scenarios. Modern games from 2016 will, if at all, only run smoothly in the lowest settings.

Contrary to Skylake, Kaby Lake and Amber Lake now also supports hardware decoding for H.265/HEVC Main10 with a 10-bit color depth as well as Google's VP9 codec.

Power Consumption

The chip is manufactured in the second generation 14 nm+ process with FinFET transistors. The typical TDP for the Amber Lake Y-series is specified at 5 Watts (previous generations were 4.5 Watt), and can be adjusted in both directions depending on the usage scenario.

Intel Core i3-2377M

The Intel Core i3-2377M is a power efficient ULV (Ultra Low Voltage) processor for thin and light laptops. The base frequency of 1.5 GHz is relatively low and the CPU does not support Turbo Boost for automatic overclocking. Due to HyperThreading, the i7-2377M is able to handle 4 threads in parallel. Compared to similar clocked Celeron and Pentium models, the i3 features the faster HD 3000 graphics card and offers more enabled features (like Quick Sync). However, compared to the expensive i7 CPUs, the i3 lacks VT-d, Trusted Execution and VPro support.

Sandy Bridge is the evolutionary successor of the Arrandale architecture. The most notable improvements is the improved Turbo 2.0 (not used for the processing cores in the i3-2377M) and the integration of the graphics card into the 32nm CPU core.

The integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000 clocked at 350 or 1000 MHz (Turbo Boost). Due to the slower clock rate without the Turbo, compared to HD Graphics 3000 in 35W and 45W processors (usually clocked at 650 MHz base speed in non LV processors), the performance should be noticeable lower.

The performance of the CPU should be a bit higher than a similar clocked Arrandale Core i3 ULV and therefore noticeably faster than the 1.33 GHz Core i3-380UM. The average performance of the CPU part should therefore be similar to the AMD A4-3320M or Turion II M500.

The TDP of 17W (includes the integrated GPU and memory controller) allows the use of the 2377M CPU in small subnotebooks.