Intel Coffee Lake Review Thread

[porina]

16 minutes ago, MageTank said:

Anyone remember Broadwell's 5775C and 5675C? Broadwell was a smash hit in the mobile markets, but did not sell well in the desktop market, nor did Intel put a lot of effort into trying to sell it in the desktop market either, so he is not entirely unfounded with his opinion.

Broadwell on desktop was a bit of an odd situation. It was only released very late in the cycle, and there was hardly a gap before Skylake came along. It was speculated they had problems producing it for desktops. It was notorious as a bad clocking CPU compared to Haswell or Skylake either side of it. Not so much a problem for mobile where power is limited. In the end they only did a launch to say they did it, before moving on. The 128MB eDRAM as L4 was also unusual, and I wish there was more of it as it essentially eliminated ram bandwidth limitation for some compute use cases.

[Dabombinable]

12 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Considering all other alternatives get much more expensive rather fast it's still mostly sufficient. However once we get the cheap mobos he might be better suited updating to h310 (or whatever the lower end mobo ends up being) and the i3 8100 but that's still several months away afaik.

Considering that a 4.7/4.8GHz overclock will be possible on this board https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-Z87P-D3-rev-1x#ov (which replaces a now deceased H87M Pro), as well as using high speed DDR3, an i3 8100 platform upgrade would be more costly and pointless. Especially considering that the i3 8100...is only going to be a tad faster than the current i5 4440 as it will be run at 3.5GHz (maybe 3.6/3.7GHz if I can get the BCLK past 105MHz)

Edit: Comparing the i3 8100 to a 4790K 
http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare_CPUs/Intel_CM8064601464800,Intel_CM8064601710501,Intel_CM8068403377308/
The i3 8100 is pointless.

[Misanthrope]

1 hour ago, Dabombinable said:

Considering that a 4.7/4.8GHz overclock will be possible on this board https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-Z87P-D3-rev-1x#ov (which replaces a now deceased H87M Pro), as well as using high speed DDR3, an i3 8100 platform upgrade would be more costly and pointless. Especially considering that the i3 8100...is only going to be a tad faster than the current i5 4440 as it will be run at 3.5GHz (maybe 3.6/3.7GHz if I can get the BCLK past 105MHz)

Edit: Comparing the i3 8100 to a 4790K 
http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare_CPUs/Intel_CM8064601464800,Intel_CM8064601710501,Intel_CM8068403377308/
The i3 8100 is pointless.

The comparison is meaningless without the IPC increases. I agree it might not be a much but then again you can get ddr4 and the 4.7/4.8 overclock on a used chip implies quite solid cooling for a haswell.

 

The main thing though is that this will be able to drop an 8400 or a 8700 or whatever later on and you're not on a dead platform: mobo issues will become a big issue for 1150 people at this point since it's just not as easy or cheap to get replacement motherboards and such (i.e. try finding 1155 motherboards today, that's gonna become the same for 1150 fairly quickly).

 

So while I'm not inherently against buying old hardware this is at the threshold imo: if there's a reasonable chance to get newer part even if there's a slight performance hit I'd still take it over staying on something that's becoming too old in terms of pc tech. 

[Dabombinable]

15 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

The comparison is meaningless without the IPC increases. I agree it might not be a much but then again you can get ddr4 and the 4.7/4.8 overclock on a used chip implies quite solid cooling for a haswell.

 

The main thing though is that this will be able to drop an 8400 or a 8700 or whatever later on and you're not on a dead platform: mobo issues will become a big issue for 1150 people at this point since it's just not as easy or cheap to get replacement motherboards and such (i.e. try finding 1155 motherboards today, that's gonna become the same for 1150 fairly quickly).

 

 

Why spend money on a 3.6GHz uad core+a new motherboard that'd cost over $100+ 16GB DDR4 ( since that is necessary for the workloads-which would cost a lot ATM), when it would cost less to to go to a 4790K. Which flogs the shit out of the i3 8100 (which is also barely better than the current i5 due to the lack of IPC improvements). And for gaming a 4790K is still perfect, especially with fast DDR3+an overclock to around 4.7GHz (and the platform might not have any future CPU...but you can still get all of the modern features such as NVME and USB 3.1 Type C).
 

 

20 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

So while I'm not inherently against buying old hardware this is at the threshold imo: if there's a reasonable chance to get newer part even if there's a slight performance hit I'd still take it over staying on something that's becoming too old in terms of pc tech. 

A 4790K is only 3 years old. And its still one of the best gaming CPU, with the i3 8100 giving more than a slight performance hit compared to a 4790K (especially with the minimum frame rate+frame times)

Oh and BTW brand new LGA1150 motherboards are still readily available. My friend only spent $100 on the replacement Z87 board (whilst the dead/faulty H87M Pro cost $180 at the start of 2014). Its still got at least another year or 2 before it becomes more like LGA1155.

[i_build_nanosuits]

4 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

 

You seem to change your tone quite a bit depending on who makes the argument. But well the second quoted post is far more reasonable than "I can see the future and know AMD will fail in exactly the same way"

as i said, ''in my experience'' refers to me buying good AND bad CPU's over the years...including the now infamous AMD FX.

[i_build_nanosuits]

1 hour ago, Dabombinable said:

Why spend money on a 3.6GHz uad core+a new motherboard that'd cost over $100+ 16GB DDR4

yeah but check this kit if you're building a new machine for example...this is 6 core CPU, boost clock to 4.0ghz...nice board, fast RAM...it's good price man

good stuff

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i5-8400 2.8GHz 6-Core Processor  ($187.00 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock - Z370 Pro4 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($123.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory  ($148.55 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Total: $459.53
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-10-05 20:18 EDT-0400

[MageTank]

3 hours ago, i_build_nanosuits said:

yeah but check this kit if you're building a new machine for example...this is 6 core CPU, boost clock to 4.0ghz...nice board, fast RAM...it's good price man

good stuff

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i5-8400 2.8GHz 6-Core Processor  ($187.00 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock - Z370 Pro4 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($123.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory  ($148.55 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Total: $459.53
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-10-05 20:18 EDT-0400

I should also point out that you can save like $50 and get 16GB for $100. Any DDR4 kit can be easily OC'd on Intel for free, assuming you have a Z series board. Also, that Pro4 board will cost about $80-$100 after the hype dies down a little, so it will be much cheaper to get into Z370 after a month or two. 

 

4 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

Why spend money on a 3.6GHz uad core+a new motherboard that'd cost over $100+ 16GB DDR4 ( since that is necessary for the workloads-which would cost a lot ATM), when it would cost less to to go to a 4790K. Which flogs the shit out of the i3 8100 (which is also barely better than the current i5 due to the lack of IPC improvements). And for gaming a 4790K is still perfect, especially with fast DDR3+an overclock to around 4.7GHz (and the platform might not have any future CPU...but you can still get all of the modern features such as NVME and USB 3.1 Type C).
 

 

A 4790K is only 3 years old. And its still one of the best gaming CPU, with the i3 8100 giving more than a slight performance hit compared to a 4790K (especially with the minimum frame rate+frame times)

Oh and BTW brand new LGA1150 motherboards are still readily available. My friend only spent $100 on the replacement Z87 board (whilst the dead/faulty H87M Pro cost $180 at the start of 2014). Its still got at least another year or 2 before it becomes more like LGA1155.

It really depends on the type of consumer you are. If you do not upgrade often, or don't see yourself needing to upgrade in the future, then going for a 4790k would be a better idea. If you are uncertain about the future, or feel you may need more threads, then investing in a stronger platform that facilitates those options is a pretty good idea. I personally wouldn't upgrade entire platforms at the moment, do to the absurdly high memory prices (and CFL is still inflated due to it's initial launch), but I do see why someone would want to do that. 

 

It's all a matter of perspective. 

[Brooksie359]

14 hours ago, mynameisjuan said:

MSRP is intels price, what stores mark them up to has nothing to do with intel so dont point your fingers at them. The 8700k can be picked up on newegg for $379 which is a good price. 

Price is determined by supply and demand. Intel choose to paper launch which means prices get gauged. They weren't planning on releasing the 8th gen cpus until next year until they had to in response to ryzen. If they had not released until they had ample supply then the prices would stay near their MSRP

[Bouzoo]

8 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

when it would cost less to to go to a 4790K. 

Not sure how it's in the US, but outside (here as an example) a new 4790K costs more than 7700K, if you can even get it. I'm pretty sure it's gonna go away completely soon. 

[Taf the Ghost]

The i5-8400 is really, really interesting. Specifically it needs a lot more testing, as something is "up" with it. I'd really like to see it compared against a Skylake 6700k (stock) in gaming. And I think I have an idea what might be going on. One of the leaked tests had the L1 & L2 latency the same between Kaby Lake & Coffeelake, but the bandwidth was between 25-60% higher for Coffee Lake. 

 

In gaming, Clocks have diminishing returns after a point (as in most situations with complex interactions, all things eventually reach that point), and I think that Coffeelake might, in gaming tasks, be more efficient at a specific band of clocks before the CPU hits its clock limit. (It's also something that might fall off as a game goes multi-core heavy because it's limiting the all-core turbo compared to single-core.)

 

I say this because the i5-8400 might actually be Price/Performance disruptive to AMD, but that's going to take some extensive testing. It also matters, a lot, for that testing at 2666 Mhz RAM, as a 8400 + future non-Z board could be a much better value buy than an associated Ryzen 5 1600. But that only is true with a good understanding of it's real day-to-day capabilities and whether the price holds. (Ryzen likes fast RAM, but it's not terrible at 2666 normal latency. What does the i5-8400 do at that? And will it matter when the mainstream, non-OC boards show up around the same time Ryzen+ launches?) 

[Red Hardware]

17 hours ago, i_build_nanosuits said:

Ryzen had a great run...3 months it was great...now there's this...it's alright, get over it guys...

Anyways there is still threadripper that will sell a few here and there, those still offer better value than intel.

 

Anyways we said it, Ryzen is about as fast as intel's previous generation (haswell), and within a year it will be AMD FX all over again...offering more of them slower cores, for a lower price.

Hi,

Nah I don't think so. 

AMD FX was at a wrong direction from the beginning , It was bad from the start. So they couldn't do much with it other than forgetting about it and making a new architecture from the ground. 

With zen , they are heading to the write direction and if they can improve the ipc and make it run around 4.7 or 4.6 , we can see a good competition again.

Clearly,  they don't need another 5 years to improve what they have and knowing that intel ipc hasn't changed at all since sky lake , they are not that much behind. 

For now , the new i7 and i5 are the gaming kings and they also do really well at light content creation and productivity work loads so if the only thing that you do is gaming , no doubt the i7 kills it for this and if game engine stay optimized for ring bus and don't go for "mesh" (which depends on future intel architecture as well), we can have another Sandy bridge that can last a lot for gamers 

With ryzen,  you have forward compatibility but with coffee lake , you clearly won't have that but the hopes are that you won't need an upgrade soon if future games and programs don't favor "mesh"

[Mr_Troll]

some1 should test if the locked CF chips like the 8400 are able to be OCed on the z370 boards through base clock overclocking feature..... cause some gigabyte and asrock  offer this option ... it was done in the past with the first gen skylake chips.... or just use the multicore enhacement thing that was mentioned in some reviews  and lock all the cores to the turbo boost speed of the cpu.

 

Edit: BCLK overclocking on the locked i5 CF chips might work

 

 

[porina]

1 hour ago, Taf the Ghost said:

The i5-8400 is really, really interesting. Specifically it needs a lot more testing, as something is "up" with it. I'd really like to see it compared against a Skylake 6700k (stock) in gaming. And I think I have an idea what might be going on. One of the leaked tests had the L1 & L2 latency the same between Kaby Lake & Coffeelake, but the bandwidth was between 25-60% higher for Coffee Lake. 

Without looking at the same results, if the software reports the aggregate bandwidth of all cores, you will tend to get much better results with more cores than fewer.

 

 

My new toys arrived this morning. When I'm home from work I'll be comparing it against a 6700k fixed at 4 GHz with HT off to get like for like comparisons. Note I bought this as a pure OC benchmarking toy.

[i_build_nanosuits]

1 hour ago, Red Hardware said:

With zen , they are heading to the write direction and if they can improve the ipc and make it run around 4.7 or 4.6 , we can see a good competition again.

yeah, but that is commending some major changes to the zen architecture at it's core, cause clearly this thing has a hard time to reach even 4.0ghz on most chips...this is not a manufacturing defect, this is a core architecture issue that would likely command major investment in engeniering and time and effort to get ''fixed''...what i mean by that is that zen will not magically ''fix'' itself and suddently accept high clockspeed.

[Majestic]

15 hours ago, AlwaysFSX said:

Whoa, wait a minute. Weren't you an Intel shill like.. two months ago?

Shh, don't tell anyone. This is a super secret experiment.

[MageTank]

1 hour ago, Mr_Troll said:

Edit: BCLK overclocking on the locked i5 CF chips might work

 

 

I am curious. How do you arrive to the conclusion that locked i5's might be overclockable, from them emulating an 8400 with an 8700k? That makes zero sense to me. 

[Taf the Ghost]

1 hour ago, porina said:

Without looking at the same results, if the software reports the aggregate bandwidth of all cores, you will tend to get much better results with more cores than fewer.

 

 

 

My new toys arrived this morning. When I'm home from work I'll be comparing it against a 6700k fixed at 4 GHz with HT off to get like for like comparisons. Note I bought this as a pure OC benchmarking toy.

It's possible, I don't know the deeper details of AIDA64's L1, L2 & L3 cache testing. But, L1 & L2 should, hopefully, not be additive in testing, as they're per-core, but it's wholly possible.

 

As to the purchase, should be fun! Though part of me is curious if it's actually a cut down 6c or just a 7600k rebrand. 

[juretrn]

@Majestic

Boring. Much LOL.

Seriously, this is pretty much the best single launch of something Intel since Sandy Bridge.

Ivy, Haswell, (Should I even count Broadwell?) Skylake, Kaby Lake... all same old, same old, say 5% IPC improvement and perhaps somewhat higher clocks by say 100 MHz each gen.

So you need a new motherboard... cry me a river. When was the last time Intel supported the same chipset for more than 2 generations? Is that a shit thing to do? Yes. Is it unexpected? No. Shitty TIM? Nothing new. However, 6 cores for same $$$ as 4 in Kaby Lake? YES PLEASE.

[porina]

54 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

As to the purchase, should be fun! Though part of me is curious if it's actually a cut down 6c or just a 7600k rebrand. 

I'd be disappointed if it was repackaged KL. I do intend to get the top off at some point (ooer!) so we can see if it is the big die or a smaller one like previous. I need to double check, but I think the quad core parts are a different stepping from 6 core ones, so that could suggest they use a dedicated quad core die than a deactivated 6 core die.

[Taf the Ghost]

6 minutes ago, porina said:

I'd be disappointed if it was repackaged KL. I do intend to get the top off at some point (ooer!) so we can see if it is the big die or a smaller one like previous. I need to double check, but I think the quad core parts are a different stepping from 6 core ones, so that could suggest they use a dedicated quad core die than a deactivated 6 core die.

Also possible. Though when would they be releasing a 4c/8t CPU? Unless they're effectively laptop CPU designs on the same process. (Thus the 8700HQ or whatever it's called is the same CPU at the 8350k.) 

[79wjd]

Can I get a TL;DR? Is an 8700k around a 7820k? Is everything as expected? Is an 8600k around a 6700k (for most tasks)?

[Dylanc1500]

25 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

Can I get a TL;DR? Is an 8700k around a 7820k? Is everything as expected? Is an 8600k around a 6700k (for most tasks)?

Worth it, buy one if you need it.

[Taf the Ghost]

29 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

Can I get a TL;DR? Is an 8700k around a 7820k? Is everything as expected? Is an 8600k around a 6700k (for most tasks)?

Depends on workflow. If you're a heavy Adobe user, the 8700k is a monster there. If you need a lot of AVX, 7820k would still be better. IPC in clock-limited situations would be the same in non-AVX2 or AVX512 situations, so the all-core turbo isn't really very different. Though the 8700k does have a noticeable power draw advantage on the Skylake-X parts. (Even the 7800X.) There's also an interesting much lower idle power draw that's shown up in some testing. Not all. (I'm still not sure why power draw testing ends up so varied across the board. I get the feeling some SSDs & NVMe drives run at different low-state power more than we realize.) 

[Majestic]

1 hour ago, juretrn said:

@Majestic

Boring. Much LOL.

Seriously, this is pretty much the best single launch of something Intel since Sandy Bridge.

Ivy, Haswell, (Should I even count Broadwell?) Skylake, Kaby Lake... all same old, same old, say 5% IPC improvement and perhaps somewhat higher clocks by say 100 MHz each gen.

So you need a new motherboard... cry me a river. When was the last time Intel supported the same chipset for more than 2 generations? Is that a shit thing to do? Yes. Is it unexpected? No. Shitty TIM? Nothing new. However, 6 cores for same $$$ as 4 in Kaby Lake? YES PLEASE.

Yes, because this one has 0% IPC gain. It's just a 7700K with 2 cores slapped to it. We all knew before it released how it was going to perform.

 

Honestly, all you do is mention my arguments for why I think it's poor practice and add your subjective 'reason' as to why I should feel differently about it. That's it.

 

"New motherboard after only 8 months? -> cry me a river" - This is not an argument.

"Shitty TIM? -> It's nothing new." - Meaning it's just as shit as before, my point exactly.

"Intel sandbagged for years and is now throwing us a bone by slapping a larger chip onto a die they've had shelved for a long while? -> Intel is so good to us" - this sounds just as desperate as this paperlaunch.

 

You sound like a zealot, please project more.

 

[mynameisjuan]

33 minutes ago, Majestic said:

"New motherboard after only 8 months? -> cry me a river" - This is not an argument.

It is a valid point. Why the hell would you upgrade after 8 months of use?

 

33 minutes ago, Majestic said:

"Shitty TIM? -> It's nothing new." - Meaning it's just as shit as before, my point exactly.

People are hitting 5.0ghz no problem, so it seems to be doing fine. If you want to go higher then delid it. Why should intel have to cater to OCers just so they can go outside of intels operational ranges?

 

For the most part its running pretty cool