Monday, July 17th 2017
Intel to Launch Multiple Six-core CPUs on Coffee Lake Architecture, i5 Lineup
In what could be a decisive response from Intel towards AMD's recent Ryzen success and core count democratization, reports are making the rounds that Intel is preparing for a shakedown of sorts of its i7 and i5 CPU line-up under the upcoming Coffee Lake architecture. We recently saw (and continue to see) AMD deliver much more interesting propositions than Intel in a pure power/performance/core ratio. And Intel seems to know that its lineup is in dire need of revision, if it wants to stop its market dominant position from bleeding too much.
A report from Canard PC claims that Intel will thoroughly revise its CPU lineup for the Coffee Lake architecture, with an i7-8700K six-core, 12-thread processor being the top offering. This 8700K is reported to deliver its 12 threads at a 3.7 GHz base clock, and a 95 W TDP. These are comparable to AMD's Ryzen 5 1600X processor, which ships with the same six cores and 12 threads under the same TDP, though it has 100 MHz less in base clock speed. However, AMD's Ryzen 5 1600X does retail for about $249 - and you can go even lower to Ryzen 5 1600's $219 - which probably won't happen with Intel's top of the line i7 offering. A slight mention towards the Ryzen 7's 95 W TDP - the same as this reported i7 8700K - even though it has 2 more physical cores, and 4 extra threads.
The more interesting part of the report, though, is that Intel may be looking to basically dominate its entire i5 line-up with 6-core offerings, from the i5-8600K, towards the (usually lowly) 8400 processor. The main differentiating factor between the i5 and the i7 lineup of 6-core processors would be support for HyperThreading. The i5-8600K processor is said to be clocked at 3.6 GHz with the same TDP as the i7-8700K (95 W), while the i5-8400 would bring about a 2.8 GHz base clock and a 65 W TDP. This lends itself to a natural reasoning regarding the rest of Intel's lineup. Assuming the report is true, Intel's differentiation could go one of two ways: a further extension of its i5 lineup to lower digits (8300, 8200, and so forth) for its 4-core, 8-thread CPUs and pure quad-core processors for the i3 lineup; or, heaven forbid, quad-core, 8-thread processors being available on the top of Intel's i3 product stack. Personally, this editor doesn't see that happening. At least not yet.
The report also goes on to say that Intel is looking to introduce 6-core processors to its mobile lineup as well, although with much lower clock speeds (reportedly around the 2 GHz mark) to allow for the lower TDP platform requirements (at 45 W.) There's also mention of a 28 W quad-core mobile (U) processor.
Sources:
CPC Hardware, via Videocardz
A report from Canard PC claims that Intel will thoroughly revise its CPU lineup for the Coffee Lake architecture, with an i7-8700K six-core, 12-thread processor being the top offering. This 8700K is reported to deliver its 12 threads at a 3.7 GHz base clock, and a 95 W TDP. These are comparable to AMD's Ryzen 5 1600X processor, which ships with the same six cores and 12 threads under the same TDP, though it has 100 MHz less in base clock speed. However, AMD's Ryzen 5 1600X does retail for about $249 - and you can go even lower to Ryzen 5 1600's $219 - which probably won't happen with Intel's top of the line i7 offering. A slight mention towards the Ryzen 7's 95 W TDP - the same as this reported i7 8700K - even though it has 2 more physical cores, and 4 extra threads.
The report also goes on to say that Intel is looking to introduce 6-core processors to its mobile lineup as well, although with much lower clock speeds (reportedly around the 2 GHz mark) to allow for the lower TDP platform requirements (at 45 W.) There's also mention of a 28 W quad-core mobile (U) processor.
60 Comments on Intel to Launch Multiple Six-core CPUs on Coffee Lake Architecture, i5 Lineup
An i5 Coffee Lake of 7700k will be the mainstream champion that's for sure.
Spoiler: the 7800x beats the 1800x in majority of productivity applications.
Dual cores are 'barely' enough for any real excel work.
I'm hoping the core wars spur more multi-threaded software... would be nice to have this CPU last me a few years (unlikely tho).
We make do with old core 2 duo systems at work (except us techs, we get i3s). The users load up tons of office instances as well as chrome. the CPU is never the bottleneck, the 4GB of RAM is. A modern i3 system runs rings around our core 2s. I somehow do not believe that your typical office worker would need that much power for an excel spreadsheet.
I played games like saints row the third and supreme commander on a dual core ivy bridge pentium years ago, and those are far more demanding then your typical excell spreadsheet. I highly doubt that a modern core i3 would be faltering under the stress of office 2016 in any capacity.
Who knows.
Whatever you do, don't dismiss Intel. They have more resources to pour into development and more talent available to them. And while that is not a recipe for success in and of itself, it never hurt anyone.
Something a little more up to date.
I worked on a dual core laptop with an Intel Core I5 U processor, 16 GB of ram and an SSD half a year ago, it was at least fine. Some tasks took longer (compiling), but for browsing and office application, it was more than enough.
It's hard for me to see any usual office workloads where the CPU is the bottleneck.
For the kicks, I just limited my 6700k to 1.2 GHz. That means, best case scenarios, my CPU now has ~65% the performance of a Core i3 7100. Other than gaming, I wonder when will I need to remove this limit, as the only "issue" I had was opening chrome, with all my ~80 tabs, which took a bit longer, but youtube 4k videos play perfectly.