Intel Coffee Lake Core i5-8600K vs 7600K at 5GHz Review @ [H]

Like many others this is pretty much what I always expected out of it. Same IPC with a bit more clockspeed headroom and more cores. The extra cores actually still make it a bigger upgrade than the past few generations of Intel CPUs assuming you can use them. As always I'd expect people with Sandy/Ivy/Haswell to be a lot more likely to buy these than people who already have Kaby/Skylake. 1-2 years of Intel improvements is almost never worth it now.

The biggest difference now is that they finally have some competition from AMD, whereas the past few years it was very hard to make a case for any AMD processors (particularly for gaming)

Intels own slides call it next gen, irrespective of whether it is just another process on the same node it is still next gen.

People call new consoles/games "next gen" for a few years every time new consoles are released too. I'm still not sure how a current game (or even PAST games) can be considered "NEXT gen" either unless you work in marketing.
 
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With the Ryzen 7 being within $35 of the Core i5-8600K I thought that it made a compelling argument to be included here today.

And was appreciated.
 
Friggin i7 8700K has been put on backorder!

Now, I need to reconsider my options.

  1. Wait, cause it will be worth it!
  2. Don't wait:
    1. By the time it arrives, new chipset will be better, i.e. wait for Z390 chipset
    2. Just get a Threadripper 1900X, 8x4GHz > 6x5GHz, and NVME raid boot makes for a snappy windows experience
    3. Buy a 2nd hand i7 7700K, mobo, and save.

WWJD?

Well the 8700K new ETA is Nov 1st.

So I might just add a new option, get an i3 8350K and call it a day since it is all I need.

Specially since gaming at 4960x1600 I will be mostly GPU limited anyways (see 8350K review and summary below).
UK Price: i3 $220.00USD vs i7 $474.34USD, which = decent GPU upgrade.

And my other wants are:
So the i7 will be:
  1. Fast for gaming
  2. Fast all the standard productivity work (office, browser, and dev stuff)
  3. Fast for ProTools, and Lightroom
  4. Able to handle 1 or 2 VMs
  5. Able to handle a few Remote Desktop Clients
  6. Able to tickle my e-peen
Anyone have any objections? Is this a mistake?

Then my setup would become:
- i7-3960X: DAW (ProTools)
- E5-2699v3 x 2: Server and Workstation
- i3-8350K: Gaming, RDC Client, Lightroom, and Office/productivity

perfrel_3840_2160.png
 
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Well the 8700K new ETA is Nov 1st.

So I might just add a new option, get an i3 8350K and call it a day since it is all I need.

Specially since gaming at 4960x1600 I will be mostly GPU limited anyways (see 8350K review and summary below).
UK Price: i3 $220.00USD vs i7 $474.34USD, which = decent GPU upgrade.

And my other wants are:
So the i7 will be:
  1. Fast for gaming
  2. Fast all the standard productivity work (office, browser, and dev stuff)
  3. Fast for ProTools, and Lightroom
  4. Able to handle 1 or 2 VMs
  5. Able to handle a few Remote Desktop Clients
  6. Able to tickle my e-peen
Anyone have any objections? Is this a mistake?

Then my setup would become:
- i7-3960X: DAW (ProTools)
- E5-2699v3 x 2: Server and Workstation
- i3-8350K: Gaming, RDC Client, Lightroom, and Office/productivity

perfrel_3840_2160.png

Considering that the 8350K *is* a 7600K for all intents and purposes, it should work fairly well for you.
 
Thanks for the suggestions about M.2 drive. I prefer to put it in PCIE3 platform. What can we expect from Cannon Lake? Same overclockability or worse due the new process (like Ivy Bridge vs Sandy Bridge)?
 
can any of the new i7s get 5ghz+ on air or water?

Air? no.

Water? Most likely. And unlike the 7900 series, AIOs might be sufficient again.

It's pretty decent overall, but no air cooling for a 5 GHz OC.
 
Thanks for the suggestions about M.2 drive. I prefer to put it in PCIE3 platform. What can we expect from Cannon Lake? Same overclockability or worse due the new process (like Ivy Bridge vs Sandy Bridge)?


Not going to gainsay you on this one, but I would offer that there is no real advantage to going PCIe v3 for this. There isn't a single SSD out there that can even come close to saturating PCIe v2 att this time (Now RAIDing a bunch of 'em together, on the other hand... :)) Not to mention that you could easily reuse the SSD on your new platform when you do eventually upgrade. No need to deprive yourself of that sweet, sweet NVMe SSD performance right now.


And all indications are that Coffee is consistently and easily hitting 5GHz+ on water, at least from what I have read, though temps can be a big problem.
 
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To me, the "yet another increment of the same architecture" isn't the news. The news is "2 more cores at the same price point" nearly across the board.

For many workloads, that isn't a big deal at the i5 / i7 arena. But for the low-end, getting 4 cores instead of 2 on the i3 is huge. And for workloads that DO take advantage of extra cores well, having that extra 50% is *HUGE*.

Yeah, Ryzen is still better in many instances, but for "never AMD" people, or people whose workloads run better on Intel, this really is a huge boost. No "15% on single-thread" boost, but "50% on multi-thread" boost is huge.

Almost certainly not worth upgrading form any of the *Lake systems (unless maybe you have a Skylake i3 and were wanting to upgrade to an i5 anyway,) but for Haswell or older, if you do anything that benefits from more cores, this isn't a bad upgrade choice.
 
So far it seems around 4.8 (bad) ~ 5.0 (good) GHz is possible with air, 4.9 ~ 5.2GHz on water cooling (depending on luck and kit). Talking reasonable 24/7 settings, not just barely benchstable.

Very similar to Kaby Lake but now with 2 additional cores although CL is more heat dependant scaling-wise and scales better with cooling performance (as we've seen 7.4GHz LN2 clock and 6GHz Cascade OC).
 
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Well the 8700K new ETA is Nov 1st.

So I might just add a new option, get an i3 8350K and call it a day since it is all I need.

Specially since gaming at 4960x1600 I will be mostly GPU limited anyways (see 8350K review and summary below).
UK Price: i3 $220.00USD vs i7 $474.34USD, which = decent GPU upgrade.

And my other wants are:
So the i7 will be:
  1. Fast for gaming
  2. Fast all the standard productivity work (office, browser, and dev stuff)
  3. Fast for ProTools, and Lightroom
  4. Able to handle 1 or 2 VMs
  5. Able to handle a few Remote Desktop Clients
  6. Able to tickle my e-peen
Anyone have any objections? Is this a mistake?

Then my setup would become:
- i7-3960X: DAW (ProTools)
- E5-2699v3 x 2: Server and Workstation
- i3-8350K: Gaming, RDC Client, Lightroom, and Office/productivity

perfrel_3840_2160.png
Why not grab a closeout 7700k since the platform will be cheaper overall.. At this point the only sensible options are 8400, 8600k, 8700 and 8700k. All others can likely get a discount on 7600k or 7700k instead of new i3
 
Why not grab a closeout 7700k since the platform will be cheaper overall.. At this point the only sensible options are 8400, 8600k, 8700 and 8700k. All others can likely get a discount on 7600k or 7700k instead of new i3

I need a new build for gaming, video editing (1080p) and web/productivity stuff - and it needs to be done now b/c I've already relinquished my old 2500k system to wife and kids. Due to the CL shortages I was considering the 7700k. But the 8350k is available and I'm definitely leaning that way. With likely oc to 4.6-4.7 (or higher) and paired with a 1080, it will be a very similar rig for my purposes at only ~1/2 the current cost of the 7700k ($170 vs $330).

Another obvious benefit would be the upgrade path to a 8700k sometime early next year, once it's actually in stock places. We'd like to think November 2017 but I'm not holding my breath. But the z170/270 platform is now a dead end, so I can't see buying into that anymore.
 
I need a new build for gaming, video editing (1080p) and web/productivity stuff - and it needs to be done now b/c I've already relinquished my old 2500k system to wife and kids. Due to the CL shortages I was considering the 7700k. But the 8350k is available and I'm definitely leaning that way. With likely oc to 4.6-4.7 (or higher) and paired with a 1080, it will be a very similar rig for my purposes at only ~1/2 the current cost of the 7700k ($170 vs $330).

Another obvious benefit would be the upgrade path to a 8700k sometime early next year, once it's actually in stock places. We'd like to think November 2017 but I'm not holding my breath. But the z170/270 platform is now a dead end, so I can't see buying into that anymore.

Lately it seems that every Intel platform is a dead end ~6 months after you buy it... :(
 
I need a new build for gaming, video editing (1080p) and web/productivity stuff - and it needs to be done now b/c I've already relinquished my old 2500k system to wife and kids. Due to the CL shortages I was considering the 7700k. But the 8350k is available and I'm definitely leaning that way. With likely oc to 4.6-4.7 (or higher) and paired with a 1080, it will be a very similar rig for my purposes at only ~1/2 the current cost of the 7700k ($170 vs $330).

Another obvious benefit would be the upgrade path to a 8700k sometime early next year, once it's actually in stock places. We'd like to think November 2017 but I'm not holding my breath. But the z170/270 platform is now a dead end, so I can't see buying into that anymore.

1st point is z270 will be maybe $50 cheaper on clearance then z370...


Z370 is a dead end also and in the states 7700k has been $290 and 7600k $185.

7700k is better in the long run than 8350k period

There is never any gain to be had buying an lower cpu and upgrading later, its always a losing venture. Better off waiting 1 month. Don't know why people want to say this. Buy what you need now, spend the extra $100 and don't worry about it
. Now if you want to buy the i3 and wait 2-3yrs and get an 8700k, in the past when we were stuck on 4 cores I would say go for it, but the Intel 6core mainstream will still be in demand in 3yrs I can guarantee that Soo good luck

Like I said before 8350k shouldn't even be an option, go for 7600k cheap/Z270 or 7700k or go 8600k/8700/8700k
 
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1st point is z270 will be maybe $50 cheaper on clearance then z370...


Z370 is a dead end also and in the states 7700k has been $290 and 7600k $185.

7700k is better in the long run than 8350k period

There is never any gain to be had buying an lower cpu and upgrading later, its always a losing venture. Better off waiting 1 month. Don't know why people want to say this. Buy what you need now, spend the extra $100 and don't worry about it
. Now if you want to buy the i3 and wait 2-3yrs and get an 8700k, in the past when we were stuck on 4 cores I would say go for it, but the Intel 6core mainstream will still be in demand in 3yrs I can guarantee that Soo good luck

Like I said before 8350k shouldn't even be an option, go for 7600k cheap/Z270 or 7700k or go 8600k/8700/8700k

Well I hear what you're saying. But 8600k/8700/8700k isn't actually an option now since they're unavailable pretty much everywhere. If a few do pop up the prices will be inflated beyond what anyone should pay. I am predicting it will be this way through the holidays but could wrong. Still, can't/don't want to sit around waiting.

So then if I go 7700k, it'll be a dead end unless I wanna upgrade mobo later on too in order to join the 6 core bandwagon. Or, I ride the new i3 for a few months give or take, then just pop in the 8600k/8700k when I want (or when I can get one for non-inflated price).

Sure, eventually z370 will be kicked out by the next thing, but I think the 8th gen cpus will still be around for the next 1-2 years. So there's an upgrade path there unlike z270.
 
The only way it makes sense to buy something lower now is on the AM4 platform, then in 2 years flash the mobo bios and put in Zen 2 or whatever.

I second that it's usually best to wait a bit and save a bit more to get what you want and then hold on to it for a while.
 
"You can read reviews from us here and here, that showcase just how well the aged 2600K stands up against today's advanced Intel processors in gaming and IPC."

Who would have thought, 7 years later, that a processor would still be relevant?

feXpPwwh.jpg


I bought my 2600k (and ASUS P8P67 Pro) back during the January 2011 launch and it's still going strong in my primary gaming computer. This is, by far, the longest I've ever owned a processor/mobo and is easily the best money I've ever spent on computer parts.
 
Some of the Intel fanboy types said Ryzen 7 was crappy because it was basically an 8-core Sandy on a modern platform. But that was kind of lol, because even if true (I think it's more Haswell-like than anything, but whatever), that's still pretty good.

It's not like Intel has moved far beyond Sandy either, at least on a per-core basis anyway. I kind of wonder if we're at the end of high IPC and frequency gains anyway... if the near-future isn't just a bolt more cores on and eek out a 3% IPC improvement situation.
 
"You can read reviews from us here and here, that showcase just how well the aged 2600K stands up against today's advanced Intel processors in gaming and IPC."

Who would have thought, 7 years later, that a processor would still be relevant?

feXpPwwh.jpg


I bought my 2600k (and ASUS P8P67 Pro) back during the January 2011 launch and it's still going strong in my primary gaming computer. This is, by far, the longest I've ever owned a processor/mobo and is easily the best money I've ever spent on computer parts.

maxresdefault.jpg


GODS we had value then!
 
Some of the Intel fanboy types said Ryzen 7 was crappy because it was basically an 8-core Sandy on a modern platform.

On latency-sensisitve workloads RyZen has about Sandy Bridge level IPC, and that is the reason why RyZen 3 play games like SB i5.

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It's not like Intel has moved far beyond Sandy either, at least on a per-core basis anyway.

At same clocks, per core performance has increased by 22% on average since Sandy Bridge

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with up to 69.3% faster performance (at same clocks) in some special case

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But those numbers are for same clocks. The i7-2600k has maximum clock of 3.8GHz. The new i7-8700k has maximum clock of 4.7GHz. The increase is of 24%. Combining IPC and max frequency, single thread performance has increased by about 50% on average since Sandy Bridge i7.

That 50% increase, per core, is the reason why, despite Zen, AMD continues very far from Intel and 6C CoffeeLake is able to match 8C Zen in multithread performance. FYI, 6C are able to match the performance of 8C because each CoffeeLake core is about 33% faster than one Zen core. That is the reason why you need two extra cores on the Zen side. Funny that you claim "It's not like Intel has moved far beyond Sandy either, at least on a per-core basis anyway"... :whistle:
 
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I bought my 2600k (and ASUS P8P67 Pro) back during the January 2011 launch and it's still going strong in my primary gaming computer. This is, by far, the longest I've ever owned a processor/mobo and is easily the best money I've ever spent on computer parts.

Yeah, to be honest if I didn't need a whole new build I'd probably just slap a 1080 and some new RAM into my current rig and call it good. But it's gotten to the point where I need two desktops at home. I guess there's something to be said for my 2500k system still being good enough for most daily tasks, 6 years after the fact:).

I'm hoping to do some shopping this weekend. I may just go with my original plan of a 7700k system, maybe something along the lines of this:

i7-7700k
corsair H105 240mm cooler
msi z270 gaming pro carbon
evga gtx 1070 FTW
g.skill Ripjaws V (2x8gb) ddr4 3000
samsung 960 evo m.2 500 gb NVMe
seagate barracuda pro 2 tb
corsair obsidian 750D airflow (already have this)

I think something like that will pretty much meet all my needs for the foreseeable future. The only reason I pick 1070 over 1080 is b/c I don't plan to do anything in 4k (1080p and some 1440p games).
 
Some of the Intel fanboy types said Ryzen 7 was crappy because it was basically an 8-core Sandy on a modern platform.

It mostly is, in terms of both IPC and clockspeed. Which means that in thread-limited tasks, which includes many (but not all!) games, Ryzen is at a disadvantage.

Coffee Lake exacerbates this by increasing core counts and clockspeeds, so the top Coffee Lake is now as fast or faster than the top Ryzen in most workloads, while being very close in cost.
 
The only reason I pick 1070 over 1080 is b/c I don't plan to do anything in 4k (1080p and some 1440p games).

Remember, though, that at 1440p you'll be pushing more pixels to the screen and the overall increased memory bandwidth of the 1080 might be significant.
 
Remember, though, that at 1440p you'll be pushing more pixels to the screen and the overall increased memory bandwidth of the 1080 might be significant.

For sure, the 1080 offers more hands down. But it also depends on what you consider acceptable. I'm looking to hit a reliable 60-65 fps in 1440p on max (or near max) settings. The 1070 should deliver that or better in most games and the price point is good. Budget for this system is right about $2k.
 
At 4K 60Hz and even at 1440p 60Hz if I lower resolution out of need Coffee Lake would offer me essentially no advantage over Ryzen for gaming while the later offers me much more for other tasks and that is Intel's problem. That's not the only one their motherboard platform is notoriously dead ended and they do stupid things such this as well.

So you mean to tell me Skylake chips will work with C326 chipset, but Xeon chips won't work with Z170 chipset now wtf!? What gives why is this that seems wrong try to explain it to me? Different pins ala Coffee Lake naw think again cause it's backwards compatible so what's up Intel!? What kind of bs are you trying to pull with consumers?
http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Fatal1ty E3V5 Performance GamingOC/index.us.asp?cat=CPU
 
At 4K 60Hz and even at 1440p 60Hz if I lower resolution out of need Coffee Lake would offer me essentially no advantage over Ryzen for gaming...

So if your video card is too slow, Coffee Lake isn't worth it? Neither is it worth upgrading from Sandy Bridge or newer, really, if it's that slow. Read up the 2600k article here at the [H].

...while the later offers me much more for other tasks and that is Intel's problem.

At what level? At the consumer level, per the topic, Intel is going to offer you more. An 8700k is as fast as a Ryzen 7 with two more cores for highly threaded workloads and faster for gaming, you know, if your video card isn't slow.

That's not the only one their motherboard platform is notoriously dead ended and they do stupid things such this as well.

They both do this as needs arise, and this complaint is a real red herring: most people that build custom systems (which is a tiny fraction of Intel's mainstream CPU customers) will keep their CPU and board for years. By the time most upgrade, memory will likely have changed and possibly PCIe standards such that a platform upgrade would be necessary.

So you mean to tell me Skylake chips will work with C326 chipset, but Xeon chips won't work with Z170 chipset now wtf!? What gives why is this that seems wrong try to explain it to me? Different pins ala Coffee Lake naw think again cause it's backwards compatible so what's up Intel!? What kind of bs are you trying to pull with consumers?
http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Fatal1ty E3V5 Performance GamingOC/index.us.asp?cat=CPU

You're not even talking about HEDT here- you're talking about workstation parts, which are way beyond the purview of this review thread.
 
No coffee lake isn't worth it because at 4K 60Hz it shows virtually no difference so it's a waste of money for me even at 1440p the difference is too marginal for me to care. For my situation with gaming in mind it's not worth it. I can't exactly say Ryzen is any better for gaming, but I consider it the better all around CPU option right now for me. I think at 1440p/4K Ryzen is just overall a more compelling CPU across the board taking everything into account.
 
I'm building a rig for the GF for Destiny 2 so I was pretty excited to see how these stacked up. I was hoping for great performance so I could update my rig and give her my Ryzen 7 rig on the sly. From this though I might go base I3 with a cheapo board and just wait on Zen+/2 for my own rig later. Lets see how benchmarks shake out on the other lower end cpus.

Good luck finding a 'cheapo' motherboard for Coffee Lake. Might be into next year before they're available.
 
Coffee Lake exacerbates this by increasing core counts and clockspeeds, so the top Coffee Lake is now as fast or faster than the top Ryzen in most workloads, while being very close in cost.

The 8700k is a nice looking chip. If I were building today, I'd have to seriously weigh it against an 8 core Ryzen build for my use case.

I just can't help but thinking this would have been a lot better from Intel a couple years ago. If Skylake or Kaby Lake had been the 6 core release, it would have been a lot better.
 
The 8700k is a nice looking chip. If I were building today, I'd have to seriously weigh it against an 8 core Ryzen build for my use case.

I just can't help but thinking this would have been a lot better from Intel a couple years ago. If Skylake or Kaby Lake had been the 6 core release, it would have been a lot better.
I agree in place of kabby with lower clocks then they could have came with coffee and current clocks. People would be happier
 
Good luck finding a 'cheapo' motherboard for Coffee Lake. Might be into next year before they're available.
Probably in part why Asus let the cat out of the bag on CL. I can only presume they'd have just as well assumed selling more z270 boards than investing more R&D costs into unnecessarily at this stage anyway making new z370 boards.

The 8700k is a nice looking chip.

I just can't help but thinking this would have been a lot better from Intel If Skylake or Kaby Lake had been the 6 core release, it would have been a lot better.
You mean it would have been better if Kaby Lake hadn't been more than taking away cheap BCLK overclocking and give consumers a real upgrade path. Intel is well documented for being anti competitive and milking consumers at every twist and turn they aren't much better than Rambus on the ***hole scale at 10 versus 11.
I agree in place of kabby with lower clocks then they could have came with coffee and current clocks. People would be happier
People would have likely been happier if they'd just kept Skylake and cut the costs on the i5's ands i7's, if they'd had consumer variants that had eDRAM in place of worthless iGPU's that they disable, if their heat spreader's weren't a laughing joke, if the bundled coolers weren't anemic and smaller than typical C2Q heat sinks from like 2008, if they hadn't put Nvidia out of the chip set business, if they weren't anti competitive towards AMD & Nvidia, if they weren't in bed RAMBUS, if they didn't try to sell overclocking as a feature and so much more.
 
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People would have likely been happier if they'd just kept Skylake and cut the costs on the i5's ands i7's, if they'd had consumer variants that had eDRAM in place of worthless iGPU's that they disable, if their heat spreader's weren't a laughing joke, if the bundled coolers weren't anemic and smaller than typical C2Q heat sinks from like 2008, if they hadn't put Nvidia out of the chip set business, if they weren't anti competitive towards AMD & Nvidia, if they weren't in bed RAMBUS, if they didn't try to sell overclocking as a feature and so much more.

And with all of your bias and hate, they're still profitable with the fastest product on the market.
 
I like coffee lake. Its great if your not coming from 1 gen before it.

Its a gaming monster and the 2 extra cores is where the punch is.

I run an 7820x and an 8600k now. I had a threadripper and 1700x. The amds are faster in smt all day long but cant come close to coffee lake or skylake x in gaming power.

Well the 1700x is not fadter than thw 7820x by any stretch but the 1950x crushes it with 2x the threads. But I see where Kyle was coming from. His comments should be regarded in the context that he provided.
 
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