Looking at base frequencies makes little sense. CPUs boost differently. You should only look at resulting performance.
Base clocks on these CPUs are enough for supporting the OS and showing 2D graphics - like when you code or edit a document or read something on a website. That's why laptops work for 15h today - not because they use less power under heavy load, but because they're more frugal in idle/light usage. But even basic tasks, like opening a new page, will make them shift to a higher state.
That really only flies for a selection of notebooks and often only the better/best/priciest ones. In many cases, what a high turbo means is that it will throttle like nobody's business in any half-serious use case and in all others, its practically idling and you lose any and all performance to do anything. The real question here is whether a baby step (because really, given all those factors that influence performance in a regular use case, that is what this is even with the constant shifting of base/turbo clocks) like this, with respect to the lowered base clocks, is really even worth mentioning.
I mean yes, in their very narrow use case, these 'U' parts shine. But their use case is doing as little as possible. If you're even half serious about even a little productivity, you avoid this line.
So TL DR I don't believe Intel has a very competitive part here because they managed to tweak things a bit. This 'new arch' is only worth a damn if it can scale to high performance parts. And I'm entirely with
@bug in the thought they may scrap it altogether and feel forced to go 7nm after all for anything more than this PoC we've seen right now.
Looking at base frequencies makes little sense. CPUs boost differently. You should only look at resulting performance.
Correct, and the resulting performance really is just more of the same, in the end. So your battery may last 20 minutes longer, wooptiedoo
That's not going to change a thing.