A screenshot of what seems to be a higher core-count CPU from Intel has been doing the rounds, brought to us by the usual suspects. This supposedly marks the first appearance of Intel's new Coffee Lake-S processors, which should feature increased core-counts - gearing them towards stealing some of AMD's initiative. If you'll remember, the red team regained it in explosive fashion with their first generation Ryzen CPUs - and AMD is looking to double down on with the launch of their updated, 12 nm refresh Ryzen 2000 series just next month.

The new CPUs should be delivered alongside a new platform, Z390 - at the moment, a mirage that's been referenced here and there, but still has no concrete evidence towards its existence. However, it's expected that Z390 as a platform will be what Intel's Z370 was supposed to be from the very beginning - but never could. The idea that's been circulating, and which has some credit (though it should still be taken with a salty disposition), is that due to Intel's need to rush Coffee Lake out the door - so as not to compete against AMD's 8-core Zen-based CPUs with their usual cadre of 4-core, 8-thread processors - led the company to rush out the Z370 release. The idea for Z370 was simply for it to deliver, at all points in the minimum requirements, the correct power delivery hardware and mechanisms for the increased power draw that comes with the added cores. But it was, as such, absent of any real improvements - it can be interpreted, basically, as a re-branded Z270 chipset platform - and there's something to that claim, definitely. Thus Z390 will be the actual, originally planned platform for Intel's Coffee Lake CPUs, with all features - however fair that is for buyers of Intel's Z370.That introduction serves as a context-necessary entry point for the title of this story, though - Intel's upcoming 8-core mainstream CPUs. The screenshot in question shows a genuine Intel 8-core CPU running at 2.2 GHz base clocks (remember, this isn't released, final silicon, so that's always up for a change). There are some clear errors in reading the CPU's identity - not at all uncommon at this stage of the process. The readouts of 0 nm and 0 W power, while amazingly interesting in a "what if" scenario, don't ring out true just yet. The testing platform is recognized as Intel Corporation Coffee Lake S82 UDIMM RVP - whose identification scheme is consistent with Intel engineering boards. We're here, as always, to wait and see how this all pans out - both hardware and consumer-wise.