Intel's new 8th-gen Core chips now include six cores on the high end, attacking one of AMD's Ryzen advantages.
[...] Orders for the Intel's new Core desktop chips will begin on Oct. 5, Anand Srivatsa, general manager of the desktop platform group at Intel, said. They will begin shipping later in the fourth quarter. Though Intel executives didn't use the term, the new chips have been referred to as part of the "Coffee Lake" family.
Of the six new desktop chips that Intel announced, the flagship offering is clearly the Core i7-8700K, which Srivatsa touted as its best gaming processor ever. The new Core i7-8700K will offer an additional 25 percent in frames per second running Microsoft's Gears of War 4, versus its 7th-gen Core i7-7700K—a 4-core, 8-thread part. Multitasking, though—such as gaming, streaming, and recording using the popular Player Unknown: Battlegrounds—will be a whopping 45 percent faster than a 7th-gen part, executives said.
Intel indicated that this 8th-generation part is built on what it calls a 14nm++ process. The company would not comment on the die size or transistor count at this time…
The company has added a few more knobs for the overclocking crowd to turn, as well. Turbo Boost 2.0 is still supported, but you now get per-core overclocking, a maximum memory ratio up to 8,400 MT/s, memory latency control, and PLM Trim controls. We've included a slide from Intel's press deck below. It lists some of the key specs and pricing. Notably, the high-end Core i7 part is $20 higher than initial Kaby Lake pricing; the Core i5 sits $15 higher. This move is likely designed to cover the additional costs of the silicon along with avoiding cannibalizing the existing Kaby Lake models. Cache sizes are higher and base clocks are lower, comparatively, but the single-core max frequencies are higher. TDP is also higher, presumably to support the higher core count.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday September 26 2017, @02:04AM
The Core i9 lineup is Skylake based (Skylake-X, the X refers to enthusiast chips). Intel typically releases expensive high-core-count enthusiast chips on an older architecture than what is available for normal desktops and laptops. The normal/mainstream segments make more revenue and the architecture has matured by the time enthusiast chips are made with it. After Skylake came Kaby Lake and now Coffee Lake, specifically Coffee Lake-S.
Although Intel has made 6-core chips before, these are the first "mainstream" 6-cores from the company. $182 for 6 cores, 6 threads, $303 for 6 core, 12 threads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_Lake [wikipedia.org]
We have already talked plenty about Skylake-X/Core i9:
CPU Rumor Mill: Intel Core i9, AMD Ryzen 9, and AMD "Starship" [soylentnews.org]
Intel Announces 4 to 18-Core Skylake-X CPUs [soylentnews.org]
Intel Core i9-7900X Reviewed: Hotter and More Expensive than AMD Ryzen 1800X for Small Gains [soylentnews.org]
Intel's Skylake-X Line-up Finalized: 18-Core i9-7980XE Poised to Sell Well? [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]