Intel's 8th Generation Core Family - Coffee Lake (LGA 1151, 6C/12T)

Where do you expect Core i7-8700K's Turbo to land?

  • 3.8/3.9 GHz

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 4.0/4.1 GHz

    Votes: 3 23.1%
  • 4.2/4.3 GHz

    Votes: 6 46.2%
  • 4.4/4.5 GHz

    Votes: 3 23.1%
  • 4.6/4.7 GHz

    Votes: 1 7.7%

  • Total voters
    13
  • Poll closed .
So due to all the leaks happening now, it's starting to look like a launch in roughly 1 month after all? To me that would be a good indication that there will be backwards compatibility added on Z270 (and maybe Z170).

I'm hoping so. Considering we've been hearing that Z370 is pretty much just a rebrand and the real deal (Z390) won't launch until the rest of the mainstream CPUs do much later down the road, it would be *really* slimy of Intel to require people to basically repurchase their Z270's under a new name just to get earlier access to the 8700k, and then release the real mobos a few months later. On the flip side, it's really unusual for Intel to go this long without requiring a new mobo, so we'll see.
 
z170/270 support updates? Any info on that?

My info on this front is almost 2 months old, but I can say that as of early June 2017 only 300-series motherboards were expected to support CFL. Now, CanardPC hinted Z170/Z270 support is a possibility a few days ago on Twitter, so Intel could have changed their plans. CFL is IMVP8, which means theoretically current MBs could handle it.
 
If we go with the rumors that z270 will support Coffeelake and that z370 will not have new features, with those only to arrive in 2018 with z390, what is their actual planned selling point for z370? z370 boards will presumably be more expensive than z270 boards in the existing channel.
 
CFL supposed to have any new instructions or DRM enhancements over KBL as it relates to UHD/4K playback n compatibility?

Any OTHER reasons to go CFL besides core/thread count? Same lanes, same MoBos etc.
Not that I'm aware of. Coffeelake is just a further optimization of the Skylake microarchitecture.
 
If we go with the rumors that z270 will support Coffeelake and that z370 will not have new features, with those only to arrive in 2018 with z390, what is their actual planned selling point for z370? z370 boards will presumably be more expensive than z270 boards in the existing channel.
i won't say they'll be more expensive if released at all. Maybe some minor updates, but generally we can see that prices between z170 and 270 are not that different.
 
If they were launching Z390 at the same time as 8700k, or if Z370 had any new features, I could see requiring a 300 series board. Since neither is true, not supporting at least Z270 would be gross. Of course, it wouldn't surprise me, it is Intel after all. If Z270 is supported, I'd certainly plop an 8700k in at some point. If I have to get a new board, I'll hold out for something further down the road.
 
i won't say they'll be more expensive if released at all. Maybe some minor updates, but generally we can see that prices between z170 and 270 are not that different.
A new Z370 board is a lot more expensive than the Z270 board I've already got... ;)
 
If we go with the rumors that z270 will support Coffeelake and that z370 will not have new features, with those only to arrive in 2018 with z390, what is their actual planned selling point for z370? z370 boards will presumably be more expensive than z270 boards in the existing channel.

One word for ya: RGB !!! and bundled LED strips!!1!1!!! Because that's what everyone wants right !? :D

Nah but seriously, IF backwards compatibility is finally happening, then I'm also expecting the next chipset release will have those promissed wifi + usb updates whenever it comes, it may be forwarded a few months and come sometimes early next year as a result too. Sure the scheduling is getting tight *cough X299 cough* and Intel starts finally recieving some good competition thanks to AMD stepping up their game. I genuinly believe this time around, Intel has decided to change plans very last minute and initial plan was to bring out Coffee Lake Q4 2017 together with a nonsense Z370 release and that's why there's this confusing info coming left and right. AMD Ryzen has built up quite some hype around it and even among the gaming nerd crowd who are more on a budget seems to have picked up on the hype and know Kaby Lake has temperature issues, for me this would be the biggest reason to bring out Coffee Lake this early, to avoid loosing too many customers to Ryzen 1600/1700.

I just hope if we could still boot up a Coffee Lake in a Z270 board without the latest UEFI update... I'm not sure how uefi works in this regard if it's more flexible than bios was, but it kinda has to work if they go that route. I already have my mind set on an ASRock Taichi Z270, pls let it work.......
 
Last edited:
I'm in the process of compiling parts for a new build. Will be my main rig and used primarily for gaming. I had been going back and forth between a 7700K build or a Ryzen 1600/1700 build. However, Coffee lake rumors/leaks have me wanting to hold off until official announcements are made. Hoping for something solid soon. Z270 compatibility would be awesome.
 
I'm in the process of compiling parts for a new build. Will be my main rig and used primarily for gaming. I had been going back and forth between a 7700K build or a Ryzen 1600/1700 build. However, Coffee lake rumors/leaks have me wanting to hold off until official announcements are made. Hoping for something solid soon. Z270 compatibility would be awesome.

Personally I'd wait. The 8700k shouldn't be too far off and should be the best of both worlds.
 
With 4.6-4.7 GHz Turbo for 1-2 core operations and 50% extra L3 cache I believe i7-8700K will be the new king for CPU-intensive games and other apps that require stellar performance-per-core.

The entire lineup is aggressively clocked and competitive, people will be positively surprised. :coffee:
Wish the thing would hurry the F up though :/
 
Extreme AMD Fanboys are annoying, yes. But Ryzen is a great option for a lot of builders. A 6 core / 12 thread processor for $219 with a cooler that will allow you to take it to 4GHZ is pretty absurd.

For absolute peak performance, Intel is clearly still the better option though. Which is why im holding off on CoffeeLake. I want 6 cores at 5GHZ.

That's their only exceptional CPU though.
If you're an odd one (me) and still an enthusiast, some of us (and business, LOTS of business) don't give 2 fucks about a video card / games.
I want a machine I can edit pictures on, browse with 250 tabs, run a few VMs, run 2 SSH sessions, play a video on monitor 2, re-encode a video using 1 or 2 cores, RDP in to something else etc - but nice, small, quiet, powerful.

Perfect for me, is a nice little ITX machine (AMD = derp) with an onboard (quiet) GPU and good IPC.

I don't need 8 / 16 threads or 16/ 32, but I would like a bit more than our bog standard 2/4, 4, 4/8.
The 6/12 of coffee with a "free" GPU that accelerates x265 and will run dead silent with graphics, if the CPU cooler is dead silent? Sounds a win win.

The AMD 1600 is the only one I'd consider, but I can't find a _modern_, high quality, silent GPU under $80 US and there's bugger all ITX selection for motherboards. It's an entire lose lose for us small, but powerful non gaming rigs.
Heck, even if I was a gamer - there's so few decent ITX boards.
 
Extreme AMD Fanboys are annoying, yes. But Ryzen is a great option for a lot of builders. A 6 core / 12 thread processor for $219 with a cooler that will allow you to take it to 4GHZ is pretty absurd.

For absolute peak performance, Intel is clearly still the better option though. Which is why im holding off on CoffeeLake. I want 6 cores at 5GHZ.

Yeah CFL is starting to look better than the 8C Skylake-X generally now in context of enthusiasts, just a shame they did not increase the lane count a little for CFL and also lower Skylake-X models (really should had been around 30 lanes on lowest HEDT models).
Personally I think Intel has dropped the ball somewhat with the HEDT product line as it really does not align well with the latest changes introduced for larger core enterprise-server CPUs they are derived from, but then the financial numbers probably would never add up designing and manufacturing the HEDT separately as their sales numbers could be deemed as niche.
That said some factors do seem very off currently with Skylake-X and should be resolved I would expect in future, but I think Intel could have the uncomfortable situation of the 6C/12T CFL outperforming the 8C Skylake-X in various 'prosumer/enthusiast' situations.

Cheers
 
If someone leaked the specs of the (remaining) Coffee Lake-S family tonight, what do you guys expect from the Core i5 and the locked Core i7? Let's see who's closer to the truth. I'm really impressed by Core i5-8400.
 
Intel® Core™ i7-8700K and Core™ i7-8700 Specifications - The Empire Strikes Back

5QpkNjW.jpg


Core i7-8700K
6C/12T
12MB L3
3.7 GHz Base
4.3 GHz 6-core Turbo
4.4 GHz 4-core Turbo
4.6 GHz 2-core Turbo
4.7 GHz 1-core Turbo
95W TDP

Core i7-8700
6C/12T
12MB L3
3.2 GHz Base
4.3 GHz 6-core Turbo
4.3 GHz 4-core Turbo
4.5 GHz 2-core Turbo
4.6 GHz 1-core Turbo
65W TDP
 
Intel® Core™ i5-8600K and Core™ i5-8400 Specifications - Intel's Mainstream King

65l33o8.jpg


Core i5-8600K
6C/6T
9MB L3
3.6 GHz Base
4.1 GHz 6-core Turbo
4.2 GHz 4-core Turbo
4.2 GHz 2-core Turbo
4.3 GHz 1-core Turbo
95W TDP

Core i5-8400
6C/6T
9MB L3
2.8 GHz Base
3.8 GHz 6-core Turbo
3.9 GHz 4-core Turbo
3.9 GHz 2-core Turbo
4.0 GHz 1-core Turbo
65W TDP
 
Good... very good :vamp:

Now lets hope Intel isn't greedy and prices 8700K under 7800X to make things more interesting. But this is Intel we are talking about... :cautious:
 
I'm not sure I'll be able to overclock in an ITX rig, so maybe I should just buy the 8700? I dunno :/
Man I wish they'd hurry UP
 
I would be very curiuos to see how a good 4/8t compares to a 6/6t. They have to be very close.
 
Seems like 8600 will be slightly more clock speed crippled this time around so it won't creep too close to 8700.
 
Is it possible to achieve such high clocks with 95W or similar TDP just because they optimised to 14nm++?

And that promised 20-30% whould come through that and with more L3 cache?

I'm talking about i7-8700K...
 
I'm not sure I'll be able to overclock in an ITX rig, so maybe I should just buy the 8700? I dunno :/
Man I wish they'd hurry UP


6700K at 4.6ghz all cores on air 24/7 stable in an NCASE M1. Using a Cryorig cooler with Noctua 120mm fan.

Get the K. ^_~
 
Is it possible to achieve such high clocks with 95W or similar TDP just because they optimised to 14nm++?

And that promised 20-30% whould come through that and with more L3 cache?

I'm talking about i7-8700K...

Maybe..

14nm+ moved the performance per watt needle about 20% around 3-3.5 GHz -- take a look at the ULV Parts (15W), and some 35W parts. 14nm+ chips achieved ~ 3.6 GHz at the same power level as vanilla 14nm at 3.0 GHz. But when up around the higher clock speed desktop chips, it was reduced to about 8-10%.

How well 14nm++ does really depends on it's leakage characteristics.. Intel has shown charts that show it's a noticeable improvement over 14nm+ but the gap doesn't look quite as big as 14nm and 14nm+ gap.
 
Let's hope so :)
Could single core performance benefit from that cache increase? Also, two cores boost at 4.6 should beat i7-7700K's one core at 4.9 in gaming?
 
I'm not sure I'll be able to overclock in an ITX rig, so maybe I should just buy the 8700? I dunno :/
Man I wish they'd hurry UP
Get the K. You don't have to clock very high if you don't want. Very slight voltage bump and a nice little boost on all cores will be fine.
 
Could single core performance benefit from that cache increase?

In memory-bound workloads? Yes, because more information (both instructions and data) can be stored in the cache, reducing the accesses to main memory. The functional relation is no linear, however; as a very general rule of thumb, performance in memory-bound workloads scales as the square root of the size of the cache.
 
Last edited:
What's the estimated price for these monsters?

I'd guess in the same realm as the current chip in their spot. Intel has been pretty consistent in pricing their chips, so I wouldn't expect anything different. So the 8700k will likely be 350 give or take. I know people seem to think Intel will jack the price or something because it's a 6 core, but I really don't think so. For one, they price their chips based on filling market needs and what will maximize sales vs profit margin, not raw performance. Second, the 7800X is already 400 bucks, so I see no reason why the mainstream 6 core would be priced any higher.
 
It's going to have to be around R5 for me to consider it for my build this year. But I'll also look at performance too. Really excited!
 
Back
Top