Intel’s next Core i7 laptop chip to use AMD Vega graphics in a powerhouse move

Intel Core i7 laptop processor with AMD Vega graphics

Some fresh information has emerged on Intel’s incoming laptop processor that runs with AMD Radeon graphics, confirming that the chip will indeed use AMD Radeon Vega graphics cores – AMD’s current-generation tech rather than last-gen Polaris.

Additionally, we now know what exactly this processor will be called as well as its wattage and clock speed.

As PC World reports, this comes from Intel India – which may even have mistakenly broke this news – and it dispels whispers on the CPU grapevine that AMD might have stuck with a Polaris GPU when it comes to Intel’s now so-called Core i7-8809G notebook chip due to emerge later this quarter.

The Core i7 part will use the Vega in conjunction with HBM2 memory, and it’ll be a quad-core (eight-thread) processor clocked at 3.1GHz with a total TDP – or thermal design power – of 100 watts (W). Theoretically, then, given that this chip has an H-series mobile CPU, which normally uses 45W, the GPU could weigh in around the 50W mark in terms of power consumption – equivalent to a beefy Radeon RX 550.

Promising news

It’s still too early to make any real call on the sort of pixel-pushing power that might be available with this laptop processor, but this is promising news, given that the RX 550 is capable of pushing around 80 frames per second (fps) in Overwatch and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, compared to under 20 fps for Intel’s integrated graphics (according to AMD’s own figures versus an Intel HD 530 integrated solution).

The listing for the Core i7-8809G was found on an Intel India web page detailing overclocked processors, leading to speculation that you may be able to overclock the CPU. Either that or, as mentioned, its inclusion may have simply been a mistake by the Indian arm of Intel.

At any rate, you can color us excited, and it shouldn’t be long before we get some more concrete information on the chip. After all, it should be out in March, or indeed quite possibly earlier than that.

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).