Microsoft officially releases Surface Book 2 with Core i5 quadcore
Microsoft has added an additional processor option for its Surface Book 2 laptop. The 13.5″ version of that laptop can now be equipped with a Core i5-8350U, which is a quad-core from Intel’s Kaby Lake R generation.
Microsoft lists the option for the eighth Intel Core generation Core i5 on its Surface Book assembling page. The company does not provide technical details, but it concerns the Core i5-8350U, a quad-core with HyperThreading, a clock speed of 1.7GHz and boost to 3.6GHz.
The Core i5 of the seventh Intel Core generation that Microsoft has supplied the Surface Book 2 with so far is the Core i5-7300U of the Kaby Lake series. That is a dual-core with HyperThreading, a clock speed of 2.6GHz and a Turbo speed of 3.5GHz.
With the arrival of the Kaby Lake-R generation of Intel’s frugal 15W TDP laptop processors in Q3 2017, Core i7s and Core i5s got four physical cores. In previous generations, those processors had two physical cores.
In combination with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD, the Surface Book 2 with Core i5 quadcore costs 1749 euros in the Microsoft Store. That was also the price of the model with Core i5 dual-core, but it has received a price reduction to 1659 euros.
The arrival of the version with Core i5 quad-core is no surprise. At the beginning of March, WinFuture noticed that web stores reported a new type of Surface Book 2 with the relevant processor.
| Processor options for the Microsoft Surface Book 2 |
| Model (8th gen, Kaby Lake-R) | cores/threads | Clock speed | Turbo | L3 cache |
| Core i7-8650U | 4/8 | 1.9GHz | 4.2GHz | 8MB |
| New: Core i5-8350U | 4/8 | 1.7GHz | 3.6GHz | 6MB |
| Model (7th gen, Kaby Lake) | cores/threads | Clock speed | Turbo | L3 cache |
| Core i5-7360U | 2/4 | 2.6GHz | 3.5GHz | 3MB |