Kaby Lake Core i7-7500U Versus Skylake Core i7-6500U on Dell XPS 13
Looking At Intel Kaby Lake Performance
We recently got our hands on the Dell XPS 13 9360 laptop with a 7th Generation Intel Core i7-7500U Kaby Lake processor that is the direct replacement for last years Dell XPS 13 9350 laptop with the 6th Generation Intel Core i7-6500U Skylake processor. Both laptops have 8GB of LPDDR3 1866MHz memory and 256GB PCIe NVMe SSDs, so it gave us a great opportunity to compare the performance of Kaby Lake versus Skylake on a laptop!
The Dell XPS 13 9360 as we have configured is $1,459.99 shipped while you can still buy last years Dell XPS 13 9350 as we have configured for $1,289.98 shipped. We loaded up the latest drivers on both the Dell XPS 13 9360 (BIOS 1.2.3) and the Dell XPS 13 9350 (BIOS 1.4.10) and ran over 15 performance tests on them to see what the performance differences were.
| Core i7-7500U | Core i7-6500U | |
|---|---|---|
| Intel Series | 7th Generation | 6th Generation |
| Architecture | Kaby Lake | Skylake |
| Process Tech | 14nm+ | 14nm |
| Cores/Threads | 2/4 | 2/4 |
| Base Clock | 2.7 GHz | 2.5 GHz |
| Max Turbo Clock | 3.5 GHz | 3.1 GHz |
| Cache | 4MB | 4MB |
| TDP | 15 watt | 15 watt |
| Max. Memory | 32GB | 32GB |
| Graphics | HD Graphics 620 | HD Graphics 520 |
| Graphics Compute Units | 24 | 24 |
| Graphics Clocks | 300 – 1050 MHz | 300 – 1050 MHz |
| Tray Price | $393 | $393 |
The big difference between the on the Intel Core i7-7500U Kaby Lake processor and the Intel Core i7-6500U Skylake processor is that the new Kaby Lake processors are built using the improved 14nm+ FinFET process and that is critical as those process technology refinements have allowed Intel to get higher clock frequencies without increasing power. That has allowed Intel to gain 200MHz on the base clock and an impressive 400MHz max turbo frequency on the Core i7-7500U over the Core i7-6500U.
The other big addition inside Intel’s 7th Generation Core series processors is the addition of a new media engine for HEVC 10-bit (H.265) and VP9 hardware accelerated decoding for improved media performance. Having a dedicated media engine handling video decode is a big deal as it helps ensure media playback is smooth and will improve power efficiency for the latest video formats.
Since that is pretty much the only difference between the Dell XPS 13 9350 and the Dell XPS 13 9360 that we have in-house (other than the 802.11ac wireless card and SSD) it gives us the ability to look the performance differences between the two systems. This makes for a great apples to apples comparison of the processors. And for that reason in this article we’ll be focusing on CPU performance and not the other subsystem components.