Wednesday, April 11th 2018
Intel's Core i7-8700K Generational Successor Could be 8-core
BTO notebooks and portable workstation maker Eurocom is rather liberal at sharing confidential information on support forums. It was one of the first sources that foretold Intel developing the Z390 Express chipset, and that Intel is preparing to increase CPU core-counts on its MSDT (mainstream desktop) platform once again, in 2019.
Apparently, the 300-series chipset, led by the Z390 Express, will support Intel's 9th generation, 10 nanometer "Ice Lake" silicon with 8 physical cores. The generational successor to the i7-8700K will hence be an 8-core/16-thread chip. This also presents Intel with an opportunity to make its next Core i5 parts either 8-core/8-thread or 6-core/12-thread, and Core i3 either 6-core/6-thread or 4-core/8-thread.
Source:
LinusTechTips (forums)
Apparently, the 300-series chipset, led by the Z390 Express, will support Intel's 9th generation, 10 nanometer "Ice Lake" silicon with 8 physical cores. The generational successor to the i7-8700K will hence be an 8-core/16-thread chip. This also presents Intel with an opportunity to make its next Core i5 parts either 8-core/8-thread or 6-core/12-thread, and Core i3 either 6-core/6-thread or 4-core/8-thread.
108 Comments on Intel's Core i7-8700K Generational Successor Could be 8-core
The zen gens will provide small and not wholly significant improvements over 3-4 generations, just like intel did with their core family leading to coffee lake.
New memory controller here, a slight OC increase there, some lithography movements here and there. Some very small things to add to the user experience.
Credit goes where it is due, AMD did gave the average user more options now, but where innovation peaks, it slows down a lot for a while.
Core i9 8C/16T
Core i8 8C/8T
Core i7 6C/12T
Core i6 6C/6T
Core i5 4C/8T
Core i4 4C/4T
Core i3 2C/4T
Core i2 2C/2T
and as for the numbers #### first two for generation, second two gurantied frequency when all cores+threads are utilized(AVX-512).
Nobody "needs" anything right now, at least until intel makes it clear.
We have Core i7 with 2(4) , 4(8) , 6(12) , 8(16) including laptop CPUs that is...
Since you missed what I was actually saying and decided to just tunnel vision, I will explain. Remember when Coffeelake came out, and there was a lot of controversy around why a new chipset was needed for a a CPU in the same 1151 socket. Then ASUS even explained that via BIOS it could work with CPU's available currently on the market on existing platforms (Z270 example), meaning up to 8700K. My point being that with the Z390 coming out now, that will effectively mark the end point of Z370 for new chips. So no, Z370 was NOT needed for the launch CPU's of coffeelake, it was just a "combo" deal, new chip new chipset. Only they are getting super aggressive lately with requiring new chipsets for every launch, when obviously Z270 (and hell Z170) would have sufficed for coffeelake, up to 8700k's.
fin
Still we know relatively little about what Ice Lake will bring, but it might be something like this:
- Node shrink (obviously)
- Another bump in core count
- There will probably be improvements to the front end/prefetcher, possibly further extension of the instruction window.
- Cache hierarchy change? Will Intel bring the innovations from Skylake-X to the mainstream?
Skylake-X changed the L2 cache from 256 kB to 1 MB while reducing the L3 cache and making it non-inclusive. The old structure with inclusive L3 included a duplication of L2 cache, effectively wasting a lot of capacity. The cache hierarchy is basically just a streaming buffer for RAM, with most of it being replaced many times every microsecond. The cache may consist of either data or code, data is nearly never shared between cores, so the old cache hierarchy is simply inefficient. Intel probably had to increase the L2 cache to fully saturate the new AVX512 units.
- Ice Lake will add more AVX512 features to HEDT or Xeon versions, but will it bring some of it to the mainstream?
- Hopefully add at least one more ALU, combined with more execution ports.
There ARE technical difficulties in operating CPUs that can reach 50%+ power consumption for an array of boards that was not designed to support it.
And yes, what i said is still 100% justified regardless :)
Can we then have 8 cores that can oc op to a round 5 ghz.
Maybe 2019 is the yeah to say goodbey to my beloved X58/i7 980X setup cause yeah in 2019 i have been on x58 for 10 great years.
Get a 8 core cpu and second used gtx 1080 ti for sli sounds to my like a nice setup. But as all ways with the small socket i am concerned about how many pci lanes intel will cramp in it or i still will be forced to move to intels big socket platform.
Only time can tell what my move for 2019 will be.
Half of you mouth-breathers won't even use those cores. It reminds me of an old man buying a Corvette to drive it the speed limit. Remember that more cores is more power draw and more heat... it was never the design intent because the typical PC user wants (see: actually needs) low power draw and clock speed.
Also, no, these processors becoming more available to consumers will not lead to video games making use of more threads. If they could, they would-- it's not that simple.
On the other side of the story, for average consumer, this new "trend" on intel side allows average user to buy MUCH cheaper i3, that should now be 4C/8T and have i3 9300(k - hopefully) variant of processor for fraction of the price of new i7, that outperforms (much) more expensive i7 6700k with much less power draw... in theory.
And YES! it is THANKS TO AMD, cause w/o AMD intel would just keep pushing 2C and 4C processors to mainstream with or withought HT for growing prices and not much gain except for 5-10% increased performans between generations.
It's what's happening on GPU market atm where we don't have any clear threat to Nvidia on high-end GPU scale, and less and less on low-mid, so there is no real reason to give better GPUs for lower prices, even though they do work on them, have designs etc.
All of you that say "Ice lake was planned 10 years ago, supposed to be released 3 years ago" and similar theories, while all of that IS true, there is NOTHING that supports the fact that same ice lake CPU could have been released in 2C4T, 4C4T and 4C8T variants instead, plus mobile.
If you see 2 generations behind, i9 7x00 was released for almost triple the price of i7 8700k with higher core count that "regular" i7 7700k, that draws less power, and actually outperforms the said i9 in many cases (even the one with 10C20T) - i think this was actually planned by Intel as super high-end solution for extreme gamers/enthusiasts, before AMD demolished their plans with those of their own. I was hugely surprised by seing that product getting released at a time we knew about new 8700K, I was actually even more surprised that people actually bought them.
2Y later, 1-2 generations later (depending on count of actual generations and filler ones) we have i7 with 8C16T as mainstream for "normal" prices, and possibly 4C8T in form of a (highly probably) cheap i3 for regular games looking for affordable solutions with HUGE leap from their i3 with 2C4T in terms of in-game performanse.
Someone still thinks that intels move has NOTHING to do with AMD? lol, rofl, sure, they thougth of it on their own out of the goodness of their heart.
P.S. Is your wife hot? Tell her I said hi.