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.