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Intel Announces 8th Gen Desktop CPUs: Lower Prices Bad News For AMD?

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Journalists had been waiting patiently for the October 5th launch of Intel's 8th generation 'Coffee Lake' desktop CPUs, but following a series of leaks, it's now removed the NDA allowing me to show you what's in store. There are no official benchmarks yet as I'm still awaiting my review sample, but we can at least see the full specifications, line-up and prices.

Intel

Cheaper K-series quad-core

It's very interesting indeed and for a number of reasons. Firstly, the Core i3-8350K, which is the successor to the ill-fated Core i3-7350K, is turning into a much more potent quad-core. The fact it looks set to retail for just $168 makes this a potentially fantastic budget CPU for those that will be overclocking. It's specifications point at it essentially being similar to the current Core i5-7600K, but costing $50 less.

Super-cheap Core i3-8100 quad-core

At launch there will be three non-K-series CPUs, including a quad-core in the form of the Core i3-8100. This is just as interesting as Intel states a retail price of just $117 - that's a huge amount less than its current cheapest quad-core CPU, the Core i5-7400, which retails for $190.

Six cores for just $182

Meanwhile, the Core i5-8400 will offer six cores - a figure that has only until now been available on Intel's high-end desktop platform with the current six-core Core i7-7800X retailing for $380. Here, though, the Core i5 will cost just $182.

The big guns - Core i5-8600K and Core i7-8700K

Finally, from an enthusiast's point of view, the most interesting items here are the Core i5-8600K and Core i7-8700K. The former will cost around $30 more than the current K-series Core i5 at $257, but will offer six cores and a substantial 9MB of L3 cache. The Core i7-8700K, as well as it's non-overclockable counterpart, the Core i7-8700, will offer six cores, but will also support hyper-threading, offering 12 threads. The price for the flagship? $359, which is $60 more than the Core i7-7700K currently costs.

Intel

AMD under threat?

In my mind, these figures are mightily impressive. The new CPUs either offer substantially better specifications and more cores for a little extra cash, or are substantially more powerful, or both. There will be some very interesting comparisons between these CPUs and AMD's Ryzen CPUs as well. At the low end, Intel seems extremely strong, with a quad-core CPU available for just $117. AMD does have the Ryzen 3 1200 at $110, but it has significantly lower frequencies, although it has more cache.

At the high-end AMD could be under threat too. The Core i5-8600K, for example, retails for only $10 more than the Ryzen 1600X, which also sports six cores. Here, though, the AMD CPU sports AMD's equivalent of hyper-threading, so it has 12 threads compared to the Intel CPU's six. On the flip side, I'm seeing reports that Intel's new CPUs will have significant overclocking headroom, meaning it could easily make up for the lack of hyper-threading here and as both CPUs are within spitting distance price-wise, Intel could be very competitive both in terms of performance and value.

Compatibility, enhanced power delivery and what's new?

There's been a lot of speculation around backward compatibility with both motherboards and CPUs, especially since I spotted a tweet on motherboard manufacturer ASRock's Twitter account back in August, which claimed that the new CPUs will not be compatible with current motherboards. This turned out to be true and Intel went into some detail on the reasons why.

Intel

Coffee Lake CPUs will require an enhanced power delivery due to the fact they require more current at the package level, so there has been a change in the connections on the motherboard to cater for this. As a result, Coffee Lake CPUs will not be compatible with current Z270 motherboards and older CPUs will not work in new Z370 motherboards.

However, Intel did say that the enhanced power delivery should allow for easier and better overclocking. Seeing as this is one area that Intel already has a lead over AMD, it makes sense to maximise is, although I'd still be pretty annoyed if I bought a Z270 motherboard recently, especially as Kaby Lake CPUs and Z270 motherboards only arrived earlier this year.

It will be a fascinating final CPU battle of 2017 -  a fight that started in March with the launch of AMD's Ryzen CPUs and more recently saw Intel reclaim the ultimate performance crown with the Core i9-7980XE and its 18 cores and $2,000 price tag. (see my review here). I'll be back very soon with a full review of Intel's new 8th gen CPUs and what is expected to be a new chipset as well.

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