Dell will start taking orders for the first laptop running Intel's long-awaited 10-nanometer processor, Ice Lake, on Thursday at 9 a.m. ET.

The XPS 13 convertible laptop built with the 10th-generation Intel Core chips will start at $999. And you'll be able to configure it with Core i3, i5, or i7 variants of the 10nm processors.

PCMag had a chance to check out the laptop in May, and in terms of looks, we found it to be pretty similar to the previous model. One minor change is the screen; it's slightly bigger at 13.4 inches, versus the previous 13.3 inches, and now comes with a 16:10 aspect ratio.

Dell also says the laptop convertible can run for up to nearly 17 hours on a single charge when it's equipped with the standard 1,920-by-1,200 touch screen. Consumers will also have the choice to swap in an Ultra HD 3,840-by-2,400 touch screen, though that one is more power-hungry and drops battery life to 10 hours.

According to Intel, the new XPS 13 2-in-1 has also been vetted as a "Project Athena" laptop. This essentially means it has many of the latest features in PC hardware tech and is certified to perform well in real-world environments.

Of course, the big selling point is the adoption of Intel's Ice Lake processors. And according to our early benchmarks, we've found the silicon excels when it comes to running games. The integrated graphics on board can manage some pretty respectable frame rates on par with some lower-end dedicated graphics cards.

The Ice Lake chips have also been optimized to handle workloads that use AI-powered algorithms (think image editing or language-translation software.) For these programs, the chips promise to offer up to a 2.5 times performance boost over older Intel chips.

But in terms of raw CPU performance, don't expect anything game-changing. Our benchmarks showed only minor improvements when it comes to running CPU-based tasks, making the silicon on par with Intel's last generation processors. Still, we'll need to test more Ice Lake chips to get a complete picture of their capabilities.

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