Discontinuation of 8th Gen Intel chips

[Raina21]

"Intel discontinues 8th Gen Core Coffee Lake 8xxx series processors"

"They had a good run, and it's time to let them go. Intel will be discontinuing (EOL) some Coffee Lake 8xxx in the Celeron, Pentium, Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 ranges.

Intel shares this information in a product notification.Orders are Non-Cancelable and Non-Returnable After December 18, 2020 and the Last Product Discontinuance Shipment Date will be June 4, 2021." 

 

Intel's decision to discontinue its 8th-generation CPUs is hardly surprising. By now, the 9th-generation chips have long-replaced the Coffee Lake parts, and it's no doubt potential buyers will opt for its newly-launched 10th-generation Comet Lake-S processors. Even though Intel says it has discontinued making the 8th gen chips, one can basically find nearly no difference in the 8th and the 9th gen chips. Same sockets, same wattage, same cores, same threads. The 9th gen is nearly an exact copy of the 8th Gen.

For example, let's take two i3's from these generations and compare them. The 9100f and 8100f are nearly the same, with the only difference being a slightly higher memory bandwidth support (38.4 GBps vs 37.5 GBps) https://versus.com/en/intel-core-i3-8100f-vs-intel-core-i3-9100f.

If you want to buy a 8th gen processor (for any reasons) and now are rethinking your decision based on this news, what you can do is basically find an equivalent processor from the 9th generation.(they even cost the same). Still if you have the budget, you should probably go for 10th gen Intel(if you want to only go the Intel way BTW), as the 11th gen processors will also support the LGA1200 socket. BUT if you were thinking of buying a 8th gen XEON, then no need to panic. Intel isn’t yet calling time on its Coffee Lake-based Xeon processors, which are aimed at high-performance data centre workloads.   

 

P.S- Intel has also announced that it will stop selling the Core i9-9900K and Core i9-9900KS in the special edition dodecahedron packaging. Also, as you start going up the hierarchy, (i3,i5,i7) the differences become a little bit more noticable, with one of the greatest exceptions to my "nearly same rant" being the 9700K which abandons hyperthreading.(but still the 9th gen is better in my opinion, because the diffference in prices is very little) 

 

News Source- Guru3D.com 

https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/intel-discontinues-8th-gen-core-coffee-lake-8xxx-series-processors.html

[AlTech]

This is gonna put Apple in an awkward spot considering they're still using 8th gen for Mac Mini 2020.

 

Edit: Oh wait nvm. Saw that it ain't happening anytime soon.

[MyName13]

Why haven't they discontinued them once coffee lake refresh was released?

[RejZoR]

Discontinuation doesn't really mean much. It just means they stopped manufacturing them and support for them has also ceased (in terms of special treatment, they'll probably still fix serious security bugs on them).

[Dabombinable]

5 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Discontinuation doesn't really mean much. It just means they stopped manufacturing them and support for them has also ceased (in terms of special treatment, they'll probably still fix serious security bugs on them).

It's honestly weird seeing a manufacturer of anything simultaneously manufacturing 3 generations of a product when they are having problems just manufacturing enough of 2.

[Bombastinator]

“Good run” seems a bit excessive.  It seemed like a very short run to me.   Might be normal though I guess.

[porina]

1 hour ago, Dabombinable said:

It's honestly weird seeing a manufacturer of anything simultaneously manufacturing 3 generations of a product when they are having problems just manufacturing enough of 2.

Offering a product doesn't necessarily mean they are actively manufacturing it continuously. Manufacturers (not just Intel) will have to decide how much of what to make, and when. In a manufacturing constrained situation like Intel is in, they will want to cover known orders (and warranty replacements) but not have excess inventory spare that could otherwise have gone onto other products that would sell. 

 

In the consumer space, it is unlikely anyone is still buying these outside of some very specific scenarios. Some of the low end CPUs might for example end up in server like usages where performance isn't important. Whoever uses those in their product offerings can keep using them without a product change as long as they're around.

[RejZoR]

1 hour ago, Dabombinable said:

It's honestly weird seeing a manufacturer of anything simultaneously manufacturing 3 generations of a product when they are having problems just manufacturing enough of 2.

Not really. It's all about product stack. Maybe they are having problems making brand new top of the line multi core processors, but making those 8700K's now is an established process with all the quirks and issues ironed out. Same reason why Apple could offer iPhone SE 2020 so much cheaper. They used old but highly optimized and established processes and components and smacked a product together. If they custom made anything on it, it would require new tooling, new processes, R&D and QA and it would drive the price up. Those 8700K's might still be a hot stuff in emerging countries and if we're honest, they are still very much capable processors. I'm high demand user and I'm still on ancient 5820K. 8700K is way newer, has new technologies inside, is made with newer process and has way higher clocks. I can still see how it can be relevant to some users or companies.

[Trik'Stari]

Guess it's time for me to retire the 7700k and switch to a Ryzen processor.

[yolosnail]

LOL, they haven't discontinued them, they've just slapped 10th gen on them and gave them a new box!

 

Spoiler

/s, but also kinda true

 

 

[RejZoR]

3 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

Guess it's time for me to retire the 7700k and switch to a Ryzen processor.

Is it really? Sure it sucks a bit on the core count front, but these are notorious to run at stupid high clocks when overclocked manually. If you're a gamer and only do occasional productivity workloads, it can serve you for many more years.

[Trik'Stari]

9 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Is it really? Sure it sucks a bit on the core count front, but these are notorious to run at stupid high clocks when overclocked manually. If you're a gamer and only do occasional productivity workloads, it can serve you for many more years.

Honestly I want to swap it out for Ryzen, and then set it up in another case as a dedicated plex server as well as having it do other things. So not full retirement, just no longer my primary machine.

[Bombastinator]

13 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Is it really? Sure it sucks a bit on the core count front, but these are notorious to run at stupid high clocks when overclocked manually. If you're a gamer and only do occasional productivity workloads, it can serve you for many more years.

I don t know about “many”.  at least The rest of this one though minimum.  Might be many.  It depends on what gets written and how it works. 

[RejZoR]

4 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I don t know about “many”.  at least The rest of this one though minimum.  Might be many.  It depends on what gets written and how it works. 

My old Core i7 920 (4c/8t) didn't get obsolete or useless just because 8 core, 16 thread CPU's already existed back then. And neither is my current 5820 (6c/12t) even though we now have 16c/32t consumer CPU's. It can still eat through games and even encoding tasks without sweating much. Sure newer ones with more cores could do a thing or two slightly faster, but the difference isn't that great to be worthy replacing half of the system for 4 digit figures.

[Bombastinator]

6 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

My old Core i7 920 (4c/8t) didn't get obsolete or useless just because 8 core, 16 thread CPU's already existed back then. And neither is my current 5820 (6c/12t) even though we now have 16c/32t consumer CPU's. It can still eat through games and even encoding tasks without sweating much. Sure newer ones with more cores could do a thing or two slightly faster, but the difference isn't that great to be worthy replacing half of the system for 4 digit figures.

Still yes.  In the future perhaps not so much.  I’ve got a 4770k that is still going strong.  I joined up here getting on to a year ago to follow what would happen and to figure out what I would need to upgrade and when.   A year ago it looked like the time of the 4/8 was nearing its end and the time of the 4/4 was already going.  Hanging out for a year the 4/8 is still holding on.    All the metrics I worried about a year or so ago are still there though, things are moving slower than I thought they might.   Going for more cores is predicting the future. The leopardII APU in the upcoming consoles is already over a year old but the consoles have not yet released.   I do not see a change in gaming until after that release.  When it happens though everything gets thrown in the air.  4/8 might remain viable or it might not.  6/12 is more likely to remain viable but it’s an unknown too.  The consoles are 7/14@3.xghz with big GPUs and black box possibly but not necessarily disruptive storage.

A fast 8/16 can beat anything the consoles can throw.  A 2080ti can beat anything the consoles can throw.  Storage is still up in the air, but PCs are improving while console tech while still unreleased is still aging. 
 

My personal move is going to be hold until the console systems are known, and then buy to beat them.  I don’t have to beat them by much.

[SADS]

I'm on a 7700k still and it seems to still be doing fine. I'm basically just gaming on it, so I don't think I'd see a worthwhile leap in performance to change it, especially as it would require new platform as well.

I will likely upgrade once the single core performance is worth the upgrade or when more cores are needed.

 

To be honest, It's nice to have a CPU that has lasted so well or hasn't felt like its been left in the dust for my use case. Though I am surprised that Intel didn't discontinue the 8th gens sooner.

Perhaps because they've changed their platform requirements so much over the last few generations, they've kinda had to keep making them.

[Raina21]

29 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

My old Core i7 920 (4c/8t) didn't get obsolete or useless just because 8 core, 16 thread CPU's already existed back then. And neither is my current 5820 (6c/12t) even though we now have 16c/32t consumer CPU's. It can still eat through games and even encoding tasks without sweating much. Sure newer ones with more cores could do a thing or two slightly faster, but the difference isn't that great to be worthy replacing half of the system for 4 digit figures.

I can run far cry 5 at 1080p (medium-high settings) with my i3-2120(even though it sucks a bit). It's really surprising how much gaming these old Intel processors had in them considering their age now. (the one I Have is almost 7-years old lol.)

[S w a t s o n]

Pour one out for Sir Skylake the Third

[Bombastinator]

19 minutes ago, Raina21 said:

I can run far cry 5 at 1080p (medium-high settings) with my i3-2120(even though it sucks a bit). It's really surprising how much gaming these old Intel processors had in them considering their age now. (the one I Have is almost 7-years old lol.)

My 4770k is still going strong.  Software is still being written for 4 cores.  

[Raina21]

2 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

My 4770k is still going strong.  Software is still being written for 4 cores.  

That is exactly the point I am trying to make. These old Intel processors are just underrated nowadays for gaming(BTW mine has just 2 cores)

[Bombastinator]

5 minutes ago, Raina21 said:

That is exactly the point I am trying to make. These old Intel processors are just underrated nowadays for gaming(BTW mine has just 2 cores)

It’s got 4 threads though yes?  It’s a question not of now but of later.  You run old games it will work fine.  The difficulty is when stuff is written so it won’t even run on 4 threads.  A lot of stuff is written so it won’t run on 2 threads. Intel was apparently pushing 6 thread programming fairly recently, and AMD is effectively pushing 7/14 with their new consoles. PS4 and Xbox1 are six thread.  Do 4 thread machines work at this moment? Sure.  The question is how much longer will they continue to do that?

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

@ every one here arguing about older Intel chips: laughs in 1100T.

[Egg-Roll]

7 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

It's honestly weird seeing a manufacturer of anything simultaneously manufacturing 3 generations of a product when they are having problems just manufacturing enough of 2.

Lets be real here, the differences are minute 

Biggest difference between 8 and 10 is really hyper threading. So all bad 9s are 8s and all bad 10s are 9s with hyper disabled.

 

Note: last line is unlikely true, but based on current state of intels chips, it still could be possible

[Brooksie359]

4 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Is it really? Sure it sucks a bit on the core count front, but these are notorious to run at stupid high clocks when overclocked manually. If you're a gamer and only do occasional productivity workloads, it can serve you for many more years.

It depends what type of gamer you are. In newer AAA games the extra cores means a huge difference in minimums giving you a smoother gaming experience at which point I would say it is worth it. Sure the 7700k does a decent job but not everyone want simply decent. 

[RejZoR]

Just now, Brooksie359 said:

It depends what type of gamer you are. In newer AAA games the extra cores means a huge difference in minimums giving you a smoother gaming experience at which point I would say it is worth it. Sure the 7700k does a decent job but not everyone want simply decent. 

But does 100 or 130 fps really make that much of a difference? I know not all games run at locked 144fps on my 144Hz display, but it's just such smooth experience I just plain don't care. If there was hitching and noticeable pauses, I'd upgrade my system this moment. Or if framerate dips were from 130 fps down to 40 I'd do the same. But framerate floating at 100 region it's just brilliant.