Intel promised us more chips based on the new Broadwell architecture in early 2015, and today it's delivering on that promise. Today at CES in Las Vegas the company announced a total of 17 new dual-core processors across most of its consumer product lines—from Core i7 at the high end all the way down to Pentium and Celeron at the low end.

Intel usually starts with high-end CPUs and rolls out low-end ones later, once demand for the high-end chips falls a bit and manufacturing costs have come down. Broadwell's strange rollout means we're getting mainstream and low-end mobile CPUs dropped on us all at once, but faster, more power-hungry quad-core chips destined for mobile and laptop workstations still aren't available.

Today we'll walk you through all of the products Intel is announcing and what kind of performance and feature improvements you can expect. As CES rolls on, we'll hopefully get a chance to go hands-on with some new Broadwell systems and provide some hands-on impressions. These systems should begin shipping to the public at some point in the next month or two.

What we're getting today, and what we'll see it in

The first Broadwell chip to make it to market was Core M, also known as the Y series. Y-series chips are the slowest and least power-hungry chip based on Intel's flagship architecture—go any lower and you get into Atom territory. Today we're moving one more rung up the ladder to the U series, mainstream dual-core chips that use more power but introduce significantly faster CPU clock speeds and larger, faster GPUs.

Most of the new chips have a TDP of 15W, though there are some faster versions that go up to 28W—these are the same numbers that Haswell chips hit, and Intel stressed that OEMs will be able to drop Broadwell CPUs into existing Haswell designs if they don't want to design all-new systems. The most common versions of the chips will be the 15W Core i3, i5, and i7 chips, which will appear the most frequently in mid- to high-end Ultrabooks and other thin-and-light laptops. Pentium and Celeron versions will be more common in budget systems—one Broadwell Celeron has already popped up in Acer's 15-inch Chromebook.

These chips will also show up in some desktop systems, particularly ones that are small or tightly integrated—this means mini desktops like Intel's own NUC (we should see Broadwell versions of these any day now) as well as some all-in-ones, but probably not traditional run-of-the-mill mini-tower desktops. For those (and for faster quad-core laptop workstations), the wait continues—chips at and above a 45W TDP will arrive no sooner than "mid 2015" as of this writing.

Compared to a similar Haswell system, Intel says that Broadwell should boost your battery life by around an hour and a half—OEMs can either stick with the same sized battery and get an improvement or shrink the battery a bit without negatively impacting battery life. Performance is supposed to improve too, of course—let's take a closer look.

CPU performance: Definitely a "tick"

Broadwell is a "tick" on Intel's roadmap—the same basic architecture as Haswell, but built on a different manufacturing process. Our last tick, Ivy Bridge, provided unusually large improvements in CPU performance; Broadwell does not. The number of instructions-per-clock is up by around five percent according to Intel, but peak Turbo Boost clock speeds don't move much. We'll need to run some benchmarks before we draw final conclusions, but in regular "bursty" usage a Broadwell system is going to feel pretty much like a Haswell system.

Know your codenames Codename and year Process Prominent consumer CPU branding Tick/tock Westmere (2010) 32nm Core i3/i5/i7 Tick (new process) Sandy Bridge (2011) 32nm Second-generation Core i3/i5/i7 Tock (new architecture) Ivy Bridge (2012) 22nm Third-generation Core i3/i5/i7 Tick Haswell (2013) 22nm Fourth-generation Core i3/i5/i7 Tock Broadwell (2014/2015) 14nm Fifth-generation Core i3/i5/i7, Core M Tick Skylake (2015?) 14nm TBA Tock

That said, you may encounter better performance if you're doing things that use 100 percent of your CPU for an extended period of time. Base clock speeds are up quite a bit compared to equivalent Haswell CPUs (2.4GHz for an i7-5600U, for example, compared to 1.8GHz for an i7-4600U and 2.0GHz for an i7-4610U). This implies that, once you've run out of thermal headroom to Turbo Boost, the speed that the CPU falls back to will be higher than it would be in an equivalent Haswell system. It's a small change, but there you go.

Most of Intel's CPU performance comparisons assume that you're looking to replace a four-year-old laptop with a new Broadwell one—it's not unreasonable, since this is how most people are actually going to purchase PCs. Saying your new chips improve "office productivity" by "up to 2.5x" sure sounds a lot more impressive than the "up to 4%" figure you get when you only jump one generation.

If you've got a laptop you bought in 2010 or before with a first-generation Core iSomething or even a Core 2 Duo in it, upgrading to Broadwell is going to give you a big CPU boost while delivering lots of other benefits besides. That's just the state of the PC industry right now—you need to stack up a few years of improvements before you've got enough compelling reasons to upgrade.

GPU improvements: A bigger boost

Four or five years ago, if you tried to suggest that Intel's integrated GPUs could play games you'd be laughed at so hard that you'd have to pack up your bags and leave town to escape the ridicule. Today, Intel is releasing chips where 50 to 66 percent of the "CPU die" is actually dedicated to the GPU. It hasn't happened overnight, but Intel has put a lot of time and effort into making GPUs that can actually play modern games (or, alternatively, drive 4K displays, if that happens to be your thing).

Broadwell's integrated GPUs (so far) Haswell GPUs EUs and peak clocks Replacement Broadwell GPUs EUs and peak clocks Intel Iris 5100 (28W GT3) 40 @ 1100 to 1200MHz Intel Iris 6100 (28W GT3) 48 @ 1000 to 1100MHz Intel HD 5000 (GT3) 40 @ 1000 to 1100MHz Intel HD 6000 (GT3) 48 @ 950 to 1000MHz Intel HD 4400 (GT2) 20 @ 950 to 1100MHz Intel HD 5500 (GT2) 24 @ 850 to 950MHz Intel HD 4200 (GT2) 20 @ 850MHz Intel HD 5300 (GT2) 24 @ 800 to 850MHz Intel HD Graphics (GT1) 10 @ 1000MHz Intel HD Graphics (GT1) 12 @ 800MHz

Today we're getting a total of four different GPUs, all based on the same architecture but with different levels of performance. At the top of the range are the Iris 6100 and the HD 6000, replacing Haswell's Iris 5100 and HD 5000. Both of these GPUs are referred to internally as "GT3," which denotes a chip 48 of the "execution units" (EUs) that form the building blocks of all the integrated GPUs. The main difference between these two GPUs is that Iris 6100 is clocked higher and is only available in the faster (and rarer, at least among Haswell laptops) 28W chips. These systems also usually have extra thermal headroom that will let the GPU run faster for longer.

One step down from there is the Intel HD 5500 (GT2), which replaces Haswell's HD 4400. It halves the number of EUs to 24 and runs at a slightly lower clock speed than HD 6000. Chips with the HD 5500 top out at 1600MHz LPDDR3 and DDR3L RAM, where chips with the HD 6000 can support 1866MHz LPDDR3 or 1600MHz DDR3L. Integrated GPUs are generally bottlenecked by memory bandwidth, so even though you might not notice the difference between 1866 and 1600MHz RAM for general computing you'll definitely notice a difference while gaming.

Intel

Intel

The GPU at the bottom of the pile is still just called "Intel HD Graphics" (GT1), and it steps down to 12 EUs and lowers the peak clock speed a bit more. Even though the name is the same as it was in low-end Haswell chips, it's based on the same architecture as the rest of the Broadwell GPUs and gets you the same level of API support. Intel also tells us that Wireless Display and Quick Sync are enabled on these low-end GPUs, which hasn't been the case in prior generations.

While the bulk of the GPU improvements are going to come from the higher number of EUs, increased memory bandwidth, and the power consumption improvements that come with the move to 14nm and slightly lower clock speeds, the architecture has been tweaked in a few places, too. For starters, all Broadwell GPUs support DirectX 11.2, OpenGL 4.3, and OpenCL 2.0, and Intel promises support for DirectX 12 when it's ready.

The GPUs should also expand support for 4K displays—some GPUs will apparently be able to drive these high-resolution screens at 60Hz over DisplayPort 1.2, and the Wireless Display (WiDi) feature will be able to supply a 24Hz 4K image to a screen with an HDMI dongle attached. Hardware-accelerated H.265 (HEVC) encoding and decoding will be added to some GPUs, at least according to this slide deck from IDF (PDF)—we've asked Intel to provide more specific information about these capabilities, and we'll report back when we have more specific answers.

Update: Some answers from Intel: GT3 and GT2 can drive a 3840×2160 display at 60Hz over DisplayPort 1.2 where Haswell could only manage 30Hz. GT1 cannot. All Core-branded CPUs should be capable of 4K H.265 encoding and decoding at up to 30 frames per second, and as of Broadwell the low-end Pentium and Celeron SKUs now support the Wireless Display and Quick Sync video features.

Finally, the Quick Sync video encoder has gotten "up to" two times faster, and VP8, JPEG, and MJPEG decoding support has been added. It all adds up to a pile of improvements that should help whether you want to game, build a power-efficient 4K workstation, or make an HTPC.