[Updated, confirmed] Intel Coffee Lake CPUs will NOT be compatible with Z270 chipset motherboards

[mr moose]

6 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

It's not a crystal ball, using a heuristic technique it's just an educated guess - AMD had a history of keeping their sockets/platforms alive in recent years and I don't see why it would be opposite now, especially that AMD themselves said that AM4 will be a long-lasting platform. It's not the end of the world that Intel changes socket every 2 years but it's a nice to have that AMD doesn't.

 

Also, comparing performance of Ryzen CPUs to Vishera is not a good indication of anything, Vishera at launch was already outdated and outperformed by Intel's competition in most tasks, Ryzen isn't. That's the point, it's not a failed architecture.

Keeping the socket alive is fine, but having something to show for it that is worth buying 3 years later remains to be seen.  And as I have pointed out before, regardless of how good AM4 CPU's are in 3 years time,  people generally don't upgrade their CPU until the 4-5 year mark, and when they do you can bet your arse even if they stick with AMD they'll still replace the motherboard because if you don't think in 5 years memory won't change along with PCIe lanes and SSD configurations, then you aren't paying much attention to the speed of development. 

 

EDIT: btw heuristics is just a fancy way to say discovering.   Heuristic math usually requires a historical or observable component to make judgements on.  I think that fits my argument better. 

[Morgan MLGman]

11 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Keeping the socket alive is fine, but having something to show for it that is worth buying 3 years later remains to be seen.  And as I have pointed out before, regardless of how good AM4 CPU's are in 3 years time,  people generally don't upgrade their CPU until the 4-5 year mark, and when they do you can bet your arse even if they stick with AMD they'll still replace the motherboard because if you don't think in 5 years memory won't change along with PCIe lanes and SSD configurations, then you aren't paying much attention to the speed of development. 

 

EDIT: btw heuristics is just a fancy way to say discovering.   Heuristic math usually requires a historical or observable component to make judgements on.  I think that fits my argument better. 

The main problem is, how long has it been since Kaby Lake and Z270 launched? Not long-enough, less than a year... People used the "Coffee Lake upgrade path" argument when recommending Z270 & as an argument against Ryzen and the chipset was pretty much EOL at launch... Kaby Lake should have never existed in the first place IMO, that would make the Coffee Lake Mobo-CPU incompatibility justified as Skylake has been around for a while now.

 

Heuristics is a specific way of problem solving, it also helps making accurate predictions

[mr moose]

Just now, Morgan MLGman said:

People used the "Coffee Lake upgrade path" argument when recommending Z270 & as an argument against Ryzen and the chipset was pretty much EOL at launch...

snip...

Heuristics is a specific way of problem solving, it also helps making accurate predictions

 

To me that is just as stupid.  Anyone who users the projected longevity of a platform to recommend on not recommend a build is being disingenuous.

 

It's the old "future proofing" issue that people are now taking to a stupid new level.  Forget that.  Buy the best you can afford now and enjoy it.  Chances are you'll skip a whole generation (if not 2 or 3) before your next upgrade.

 

[Morgan MLGman]

Just now, mr moose said:

 

To me that is just as stupid.  Anyone who users the projected longevity of a platform to recommend on not recommend a build is being disingenuous.

 

It's the old "future proofing" issue that people are now taking to a stupid new level.  Forget that.  Buy the best you can afford now and enjoy it.  Chances are you'll skip a whole generation (if not 2 or 3) before your next upgrade.

 

Oh, I did just that I didn't wait for Kaby Lake and I didn't wait for Ryzen, I bought my 6700K + Z170 Extreme4 like 2 months before Kaby as it was already known it's going to bring nothing to the table over Skylake. I didn't wait for Ryzen because I didn't believe it to be as competitive as it turned out to be, but I'm happy with the 6700K as at 4,7GHz, it's a monster for gaming and great for everything else

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, Morgan MLGman said:

Oh, I did just that I didn't wait for Kaby Lake and I didn't wait for Ryzen, I bought my 6700K + Z170 Extreme4 like 2 months before Kaby as it was already known it's going to bring nothing to the table over Skylake. I didn't wait for Ryzen because I didn't believe it to be as competitive as it turned out to be, but I'm happy with the 6700K as at 4,7GHz, it's a monster for gaming and great for everything else

 

Not knowing how good ryzen was going to be is different.    Besides, you'll probably be ready for an upgrade after the coffee lake thing has settled and AMD has a new socket anyway.

[TheLaserCucumber]

18 hours ago, Morgan MLGman said:

This is true, I'm not glad either At the time of making my CPU & Mobo purchase (2-3 months before Kaby Lake & Z270 launch) I thought that Coffee Lake CPUs will be a possible upgrade path with my motherboard, seems I was wrong

I had to RMA my Z170 Board. I intentionally chose a Z270 board to replace it, in hope that it would support covfefe lake. Because if it would have been how it was with broadwell, (only Z97 boards supported broadwell) I would have been ready.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

Coffee Lake not being compatible with Z170 does upset me at least a little bit.  I was hoping to be able to upgrade the i7-6700K in my laptop (Clevo P750DM-G) to a 6-core in the future.  I wouldn't have bought it at launch, though, but would have waited (pending an available bios update) for

1. The next generation AFTER to be released, that wasn't compatible, &
2. The 8700K (or whatever) to go on sale for ~$250 on Black Friday at Micro Center.

I actually started with the i3-6100 in it, but upgraded to the 6700K last year (2016) around Black Friday when it went on sale ($260), and rumors were flying pretty high that the 7700K wasn't going to be all that big of an improvement.  Also I was hitting the limit of 2 cores, 4 threads, prompting me to expedite the upgrade.  I'm glad I did.  (Also Kaby Lake would have needed a new bios update anyway, something I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get.)

 

 

As for my desktop, I have an i7-4790K in there.  I have no upgrade path to speak of - the i7-5775C only has better iGPU, but then I now have a (3GB) GTX 1060.  I'm running at stock, though, since my max OC would be 4.7 GHz, or maybe 4.8 if I push it a bit, which is too small an OC to be worth it for me.  (I'm considering trying undervolting instead to save on power consumption.)  I can't get the same % OC the Celeron 300A could get, or some other older Intel CPUs that I've heard could OC to 200% over stock on air.  My preferred next $300-400 upgrade would be able to live-encode-and-stream 4K 30fps H.265 lossless video while multitasking at minimum, and preferably keep up with 8K 120fps if decent ~$800-1200 cameras that do it are available (or whatever cameras can do a few years later.)

 

 

For my next upgrade, though, I'd really like the motherboard to last a long time, and have a long upgrade path for the CPU.  Barring financial hardship, I don't mind spending like $150-200 to replace a motherboard every 4-5 years or so.  Although, if I was to drop like $400-500+ on one, I don't want to have to replace it until a SeaSonic Prime 1000W, EVGA T2 1600W, or Corsair AX1500i bought at the same time (hooked up to a different mobo, with a G3930T underclocked/volted to 0.8GHz 0.7V, and low-end SATA SSD, no GPU, used lightly by office standards) dies of old age.

That's with my current budget.  If i had a better job, I might be willing to spend ~$200-250 every 3 years, or $500 every 5.

At any rate, I'm skipping Ryzen and Threadripper, and pretty much all Intel through Tiger Lake, and waiting for PCI Express 5 and DDR5.  (Last I checked, rumors point to around 2020 or 2021 or so for general availability, iirc.)

 

Actually, though, the labor involved with replacing a motherboard, and unplugging & replugging all the other components, is I think the main reason I don't like to upgrade very often.  When major things change, like going from the old AT power connector to ATX, or when going from ISA to PCI, and then to PCI Express, sure, it'd be time to upgrade.  Also of course when there's a gigantic performance improvement, or we've hit a wall that had been set a long way off early on.  (For example, hitting the 7.02 zettabyte GPT disk limit, or the 16-exbibyte RAM limit for 64-bit CPUs.)

 

Like someone said earlier in the thread, if I want to add a feature my motherboard didn't come with, isn't that why there are PCI Express slots?  They're not just for video cards, you know.

 

 

Back to that long upgrade path I mentioned earlier.  I'll briefly touch on RAM.  I'd prefer different generations of DDR to be compatible, like PCI Express is compatible.  If I get a board with, say, 512 MB of SDR or DDR, I want to eventually be able to upgrade to like 4 TB of DDR5 Reg ECC or whatever, as the need arises.  (Or maybe DDR7 or DDR8 by the time I need that much.)

 

Look at PCI Express for an example of upgrade path.  I looked up a few of the first PCI-E video cards, and compared them to the prices of current ones, and came up with:

• GeForce GTX 1080 (11Gbps) vs. GeForce PCX 5950 (both launched MSRP ~ $500)
• GeForce GTX 1070 vs. GeForce PCX 5900 (~ $400)
• GeForce GTX 1060 (3GB) vs. GeForce PCX 5750 (~ $200)
• GeForce GTX 1050 Ti vs. GeForce PCX 5300 (~ $140)

Look up the benchmarks on 3DMark03/05/06, and PassMark (UserBenchmark doesn't have FX/PCX cards other than Quadros), to see how much of a difference there is between them.  (You may need to substitute FX 5950 Ultra, FX 5900, FX 5700 Ultra, FX 5200/Ultra, or similar, for some of the PCX cards.)  Also I went with Nvidia instead of AMD, since they were slower in the benchmarks I was finding, and I wanted to show a larger performance improvement.

 

You could pull a PCX 5950 or PCX 5300 out of an old PCI-E 1.0 x16 slot, and jump straight to a GTX 1080 or GTX 1050 Ti respectively.  Although, how much would that interface bottleneck the newer cards?  Would the 1060 or 1070 be the best you could get on PCI-E 1.0 x16?

 

I'd REALLY love to be able to upgrade CPUs and get as big a price/performance and performance/watt improvement as the above GPU examples, WITHOUT having to replace my motherboard.  And of course, same idea for upgrading the other parts.

 

Generally, the more parts I have to unplug or uninstall to replace one part, the longer I prefer to keep it.  (Motherboard, PSU and Case stand out as examples to me.)

 

Oh, and speaking of benchmarks ... anyone know of a better site that accurately lets me compare really old parts vs current?  (For example an MFM hard drive vs NVMe, an 8086 CPU vs Threadripper, an ATI CGA Wonder GPU vs. Vega 64.)  I'd prefer an all-uses-covered benchmark, not one specializing in just high refresh gaming, or content creation, or office work, or any one thing.

 

Glancing through the thread, someone mentioned future-proofing, and people upgrading every few generations.  I already touched on the upgrade labor aspect re: future proofing in my post.  I would upgrade every few generations of CPU, provided that I'm getting a several times (not percent) performance per $ and performance per watt improvement.  I would prefer to wait several UPGRADES before replacing my motherboard.

 

That reminded me of another thing.  I also hate segmenting different types of CPUs.  I want to be able to get like a $30 hyper-threaded dual-core CPU to start with, then upgrade to a $200 or so 8-core/16-thread CPU, or whatever is the norm then, when I've saved up the $.  Then, after I've bought the last $300-400 CPU to be compatible, a few years later I'd want to pop in a used $10K many-core server CPU bought off eBay or wherever for ~$200. Then when THAT gets too slow (like a Core 2 Duo or Pentium D or Athlon 64 X2 would be today), it's maybe time to replace the board.

[JoostinOnline]

5 hours ago, Cookybiscuit said:

I think if you're surprised you were probably in the wishful thinking camp. I'm not going to pretend I know anything about the logistics of making CPU's with different core counts works on motherboards that weren't intended for it (because I have no clue), but even if it could have worked, this is Intel and they are about to push what is easily the biggest generation to generation jump in performance since Sandy Bridge. There's no way they were going to let people just hop on the new mainstream 6 core platform without making them spend a bit of extra cash on a new motherboard.

It's not that I really care (I'm still on Haswell, and will be for a long time), I just think it's weird that they'd make a socket compatible when the chipset isn't. 

 

I don't know why you think Intel gets tons of money from people buying new boards. The manufacturers of the boards are the ones who make money. Intel would make way more money by letting people only buy the CPU. 

[goodtofufriday]

8 hours ago, Zodiark1593 said:

There was a forumer or two that asked about upgrading their Haswell platform or upgrading to Kaby for the "upgrade path". Considering top end Kaby isn't much faster than the best Haswell chip, and considering Intel's prior history, I've disregarded the upgrade path argument (on Intel platforms at least)and would recommend the 4790K or Ryzen. Odds are strong that I'm correct.

Heck i tell some people on a budget to just stick with an i5 4670 with a h87 chipset board. 

[Brooksie359]

6 hours ago, mr moose said:

Keeping the socket alive is fine, but having something to show for it that is worth buying 3 years later remains to be seen.  And as I have pointed out before, regardless of how good AM4 CPU's are in 3 years time,  people generally don't upgrade their CPU until the 4-5 year mark, and when they do you can bet your arse even if they stick with AMD they'll still replace the motherboard because if you don't think in 5 years memory won't change along with PCIe lanes and SSD configurations, then you aren't paying much attention to the speed of development. 

 

EDIT: btw heuristics is just a fancy way to say discovering.   Heuristic math usually requires a historical or observable component to make judgements on.  I think that fits my argument better. 

You say the average user buys a new cpu every 4-5 years but that is not a good representation of how people upgrade but just an average. If someone builds an entry level gaming pc they often do so with the intention of upgrading it much sooner than the average 4-5 years. 

[Zodiark1593]

6 hours ago, mr moose said:

 

Not knowing how good ryzen was going to be is different.    Besides, you'll probably be ready for an upgrade after the coffee lake thing has settled and AMD has a new socket anyway.

Had I known how good Ryzen would be, I wonder if I'd have waited a year and a half before my own build?

[lsstefan]

What's the deal with red camp and blue camp, fanboys and their mothers?

Don't people just buy the competitor's products to "I'll show you" the other company?

I mean I mainly got z270 because of a good price and I hoped I could upgrade to CFL sometime, but Intel is greedy so I can't. I'll just keep my 7600k and in 2 years sell everything and go to Ryzen IF it's good. That will show Intel !

And then, when Intel loses me as a client and they feel bad, they will launch a good CPU with a more lasting mobo and I will switch back to Intel.

 

It's called best bang for the buck or being a whore actually, but not a fanboy....

[Jito463]

3 hours ago, JoostinOnline said:

I don't know why you think Intel gets tons of money from people buying new boards. The manufacturers of the boards are the ones who make money. Intel would make way more money by letting people only buy the CPU. 

Intel does make some money from the sale of boards, due to the chipset and the licensing.

[mr moose]

4 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

You say the average user buys a new cpu every 4-5 years but that is not a good representation of how people upgrade but just an average. If someone builds an entry level gaming pc they often do so with the intention of upgrading it much sooner than the average 4-5 years. 

 

That 4-5 year figur includes everyone.  Alas, as has been pointed out already,  if you buy a pc with intention to only upgrade the cpu later then you are taking chances and not necessarily spending wisely to begin with. 

3 hours ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Had I known how good Ryzen would be, I wonder if I'd have waited a year and a half before my own build?

I would never recommend waiting that long.  My motivation has always been,  buy the best you can afford now and enjoy it.  

Having said that,  if something as big as ryzen is just around the corner and you can wait,  then that's worth waiting for,  Because at the worst you have just delayed your purchase,, but best case is you get a better system. 

[JoostinOnline]

4 hours ago, Jito463 said:

Intel does make some money from the sale of boards, due to the chipset and the licensing.

I know that, but not as much as from a CPU.  By requiring a new board, they are essentially discouraging people from upgrading.  I don't like a lot of Intel's practices, but I don't think they're switching chipsets to make money off of motherboards.

[Jito463]

1 minute ago, JoostinOnline said:

but I don't think they're switching chipsets to make money off of motherboards.

Gotcha, I didn't realize that was what you were talking about.  I agree, I don't see that being the driving force.

[MidnightBanshi]

*sigh*.....built my first gaming/editing computer, thinking it was going to last a while............NOPE!

Looks like it'll be either Ryzen 7 or ThreadRipper 1900X for me after this one.  So long Intel.  It was a short ride with a jolt near the end.

[Drak3]

At the end of the day, it is what it is. Be it actual technical reason, or arbitrary lock, one will get a new board when they upgrade. And let's not all collectively kid ourselves here, if we have a 4770K+, we're not hurting that bad for an upgrade to our personal systems if getting a new mainboard is such a huge burden, if at all.

 

@MageTank I'd imagine the new socket comes down to either a DMI update that opens pins to other things, or an OC socket that has more than 1151 pins on Z series boards and K/X SKU processors. If you hear anything on it, PM me or or share it with the world, if appropriate?

 

Also, I don't see X299's next hexacore and the Coffee Lake hexacore interfering with each other too too much. I doubt CL will be quad channel and have more than 20 PCIe lanes (I can dream of PCIe goodness. Bite me.), whereas I can see quad channel and at least 28 lanes on the next X299 CPU. I see it more taking away from people wanting a Ryzen 5 or 7 that also check benchmarks first, at least a tad.

[MoonSpot]

On 08/02/2017 at 0:09 PM, M.Yurizaki said:

Let me know when any of those new features actually mean anything to the average user. Because so far:

• It took a few years for SATA 6Gbps to be useful, and even I'd argue it's really not considering I haven't seen any storage device saturate SATA 3Gbps for loading performance
• NVMe isn't worth it. (M.2 itself though is great)
• USB 3.0/3.1 Gen 1 only sees a benefit with external drives
• USB 3.1 Gen 2 has no real benefit for the average consumer
• Thunderbolt is a high-end interface (i.e, you have to actively look for it and it's usually only on higher end systems) and at the moment only gets noticed when someone wants to do an eGPU on their laptop

I mean, sure, maybe these interfaces will finally have their payday, but by the time they do, they're pretty much going to be ubiquitous.

Oiy!  WTH dude?  1 how am I the 1st to give you props for not being an idiot.  And 2, even if an individual suddenly finds a need or desire for a future usb type z 4.0 plasma bolt edition, thats what pcie expansion slot a effing for!

[Drak3]

2 minutes ago, MoonSpot said:

Oiy!  WTH dude?  1 how am I the 1st to give you props for not being an idiot.

Probably because I forgot to.

 

3 minutes ago, MoonSpot said:

And 2, even if an individual suddenly finds a need or desire for a future usb type z 4.0 plasma bolt edition, thats what pcie expansion slot a effing for!

Assuming that your current PCIe revision supports the necessary bandwidth, or if it can be done just with PCIe at all (Thunderbolt requires a dedicated controller that can't be added on with an addon card).

[RxL]

alot of people crying in here about coffee lake not being compatible with z270 so would someone care to explain why you are all crying as since when did intel do 3 cpu families to a socket because i dont remember..

 

Example 

using 2011-v3 haswell-e / broadwell-e

x99

 

Both using 1150 haswell and devils canyon ( haswell refresh )

Z87

Z97

 

Both using 1151 skylake / kaby lake

z170

z270

 

so please can somebody inform why any of you are even mad / upset about this news of coffee lake not being compatible with z270

[Drak3]

3 minutes ago, RxL said:

so please can somebody inform why any of you are even mad / upset about this news of coffee lake not being compatible on z170

Same socket. No one here knows why either. They only have speculation. We haven't seen anything that should suggest that a new chipset and pin layout is actually required in any capacity either.

4 minutes ago, RxL said:

Both using 1150 haswell and devils canyon ( haswell refresh )

Z87

Z97

Z97 had Haswell and Broadwell, and if we're being honest, Devil's Canyon should not be considered anything more that a mid product fix, as Intel doesn't consider it enough to be a different generation than Haswell, even with their minimal requirements.

[RxL]

3 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Same socket. No one here knows why either. They only have speculation. We haven't seen anything that should suggest that a new chipset and pin layout is actually required in any capacity either.

Z97 had Haswell and Broadwell, and if we're being honest, Devil's Canyon should not be considered anything more that a mid product fix, as Intel doesn't consider it enough to be a different generation than Haswell, even with their minimal requirements.

Part 1 still doesnt answer my point about why people are mad since like i said still 2 cpu families to the platforms as i pointed out haswell / haswell refresh or skylake and kabylake regardless of minimal info on this i find it amusing that people havnt picked up on this

 

Part 2 regardless of saying deveils canyon shouldnt be considered anything more than a mid product fix it still shows what i said about being 2 rounds to any platform for intel as stated in my post

 

but good for the info from you tho 

[Drak3]

2 minutes ago, RxL said:

Part 1 still doesnt answer my point about why people are mad since like i said still 2 cpu families to the platforms as i pointed out haswell / haswell refresh or skylake and kabylake regardless of minimal info on this i find it amusing that people havnt picked up on this

No one can see a reason behind it, and Intel initially, supposedly, said that CL would be compatible. I don't care to verify if that was a rumor or not.

 

3 minutes ago, RxL said:

Part 2 regardless of saying deveils canyon shouldnt be considered anything more than a mid product fix it still shows what i said about being 2 rounds to any platform for intel as stated in my post

Arches, including DC, available to Z87 and 97:

1. Haswell
2. Devils Canyon
3. Broadwell (on Z87 after BIOS update)

LGA1150 saw '3' product lines, with one being a direct refresh of the other, and none of them changed anything that would require a new chipset explicitly.

We've got the same thing happening (seemingly), Coffeelake and Skylake Refresh Refresh are both as to Sky/Kaby as Devil's Canyon and Broadwell were to Haswell (except the node change and additonal cores on package) {Going with what little we know now. I'm still willing to bet that there is some subsystem update or OC socket in the cards for series 300}.

No one else sees a reason for the new 1151 variation. I stand by my notion of DMI/PCIe update and/or OC Socket.

[2FA]

16 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

No one can see a reason behind it, and Intel initially, supposedly, said that CL would be compatible. I don't care to verify if that was a rumor or not.

 

Arches, including DC, available to Z87 and 97:

1. Haswell
2. Devils Canyon
3. Broadwell (on Z87 after BIOS update)

LGA1150 saw '3' product lines, with one being a direct refresh of the other, and none of them changed anything that would require a new chipset explicitly.

We've got the same thing happening (seemingly), Coffeelake and Skylake Refresh Refresh are both as to Sky/Kaby as Devil's Canyon and Broadwell were to Haswell (except the node change and additonal cores on package) {Going with what little we know now. I'm still willing to bet that there is some subsystem update or OC socket in the cards for series 300}.

No one else sees a reason for the new 1151 variation. I stand by my notion of DMI/PCIe update and/or OC Socket.

Devil's Canyon was not a new architecture. It's literally just like 2600K and 2700K, just they gave it a code name.