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Intel-Core-i7-8700K

Today, Intel is unveiling its new Coffee Lake line of desktop CPU cores and its first mainstream desktop response to AMD's Ryzen compages since that platform launched in March. That's not to say we haven't seen some significant shifts in Intel's desktop parts–in fact, even before today'due south launch, nosotros've seen more price drops and feature improvements from Intel in 2017 than at whatsoever point since at least 2011.

Every bit we've previously discussed, the Cadre i7-8700K isn't a new CPU architecture. Information technology's still based on the same Kaby Lake processors that debuted last January with the Core i7-7700K, which itself was a clock-boosted version of the Skylake architecture that launched with the Core i7-6700K. The new chip is congenital on Intel's 14nm++ procedure, however, which offers a pocket-sized frequency increment and hopefully better ability efficiency than the previous 14nm+. The Z370 chipset is similarly identical to the Z270 chipset, with the exception that it supports the new Coffee Lake CPUs, while the old Z270 hardware doesn't. If you lot're looking for a major architectural update with Coffee Lake, you're going to exist disappointed, but the core clocks take come some despite adding two additional cores.

Intel'southward Vi-Core Evolution

At the aforementioned fourth dimension, even so, Intel'southward decision to bring a vi-core solution to market place is a large deal. For nigh of the past seven years, Intel's six-core processors accept carried a hefty premium. In 2011, Intel released the Core i7-980 and i7-970, which offered half-dozen-core processors in the LGA 1366 form factor and were drop-in compatible with its original LGA1366 chipset, but only the Cadre i7-980 was less than $800, and it ran $583 at launch. Intel'south initial line of six-core chips mail service-Westmere held to this price point. In 2014, Intel introduced a new Haswell-based Core i7-5820K at $400, and information technology launched a six-cadre Broadwell-East at $434 in May, 2016. The visitor's current Skylake-X six-core, the i7-7800X, has an MSRP of just $389, which puts it right in the Core i7-8700K'south price subclass.

Intel-8thGen

This progression makes the Core i7-8700K look a bit pedestrian at first glance, but there are ii distinct differences betwixt this core and the six-core chips Intel has previously launched. Beginning, the Cadre i7-8700K has a much higher base of operations and boost clock. The chart below shows how Intel's lowest-end / cheapest six-core processors have stacked up confronting each other, going back to 2014 and Haswell-E.

Corei7-vs-Corei7

The 3.7GHz base clock is only about six percent college than the 7800X, but the 4.7GHz boost frequency blows every other vi-cadre flake out of the water, including older models non included here from Ivy and Sandy Span. While the all-core heave frequency is below iv.7GHz, that's the case for every other six-cadre bit every bit well.

The 2d deviation between the 8700K and Intel'south previous chips is while Coffee Lake requires a new motherboard, the boards themselves should be cheaper than Intel's HEDT motherboards are. Intel Z270 motherboards starting time around $100 on Newegg, while X299 motherboards that support the full range of Intel'south Ten-Series chips every bit opposed to only the quad-core variants start at $215. The MSRP on our Asus Prime Z370-A is college, at $169.99, but Asus' HEDT-equivalent, the Prime X299-A is a $295 lath. Either way, combine the cheaper motherboard costs with the Core i7-8700K'southward lower price, and this is Intel's cheapest half dozen-cadre platform ever.

AMD: The Fly In Intel's Ointment

If these launches had taken place in 2016 instead of 2017, this would be a straightforward, no-brainer of an article. The 8700K adds more cores and higher clock speeds. Information technology's apparently going to blow the 7700K out of the h2o, and while the 7800X features Intel'southward higher-performing Skylake-SP architecture, loftier clock speeds have a performance advantage of their own. At the very least, we'd expect the Core i7-8700K to compete well against Intel's six-core HEDT processor, provided the benchmark in question isn't memory bandwidth-bound.

AMD's Ryzen family complicates this state of affairs for Intel. First, there's the Ryzen five 1600X, with a iv.1GHz boost clock, six cores, 12 threads, and a new $219 price signal, though it'south not articulate if AMD has cut prices beyond the lath or if the reduction is temporary. Fifty-fifty at the official list cost of $249, the Ryzen 5 1600X packs a serious punch in the functioning-per-dollar category–at $219 it'd be an fifty-fifty stronger cadre. We're assuming Intel has picked turbo clocks for the 8700K that'll sweep the Ryzen five 1600X in benchmarks, merely the AMD chip is $110 to $140 cheaper.

2nd, there'southward an entire sale on AMD'south entire upper-stop Ryzen seven stack. Newegg shows the Ryzen 7 family at significantly lower prices for at least the next six days. Here'due south how the current lineup breaks downward (all prices current every bit of 10/04/2017):

Corei7-vs-AMD

Whether the $100 off the Ryzen 7 1800X is permanent or not, it's the CPU to sentinel when information technology comes to multi-threaded match-ups at the top of the market place. Sixteen threads versus 12 is still a 1.33x boost in total thread count, and while Intel has an border in unmarried-threaded performance, AMD isn't sitting behind the Piledriver 8-ball anymore, and it picks up somewhat more performance from SMT than Intel does in well-threaded scenarios. Intel does, however, accept an boosted ace up its sleeves. Our tests testify the Cadre i7-8700K is much more aggressive when it comes to its all-cadre turbo clocks; the chip holds a steady 4.3GHz all-core frequency. That'southward one.16x college than the Ryzen 7 1800X or Ryzen vii 1600X. Combined with Intel'southward known advantage in single-thread processing, and the Ryzen CPUs will have to hustle to brand upwards the difference.

Test Configuration

Nosotros tested all of our systems with 32GB of DDR4-3200 in four sticks of 8GB each, with a GTX 1080 Ti GPU running Nvidia'south 384.94 drivers, with an Asus Prime Z370-A motherboard. There are a few things to be aware of as you page through our examination results. First, while we've largely standardized on the same benchmark fix throughout 2017, we've added three tests recently–a Qt compilation test, PCMark 10, and a dissever physics processing test in Blender–that we don't have earlier data for. Instead of omitting these from our test results, we've included them even though the comparative processors accept many more cores and threads. Consider these three benchmarks an interesting expect at how cores and clock speeds impact test results differently as opposed to a directly apples-to-apples comparing.

Our gaming benchmarks are listed beneath, though nosotros've had to include a somewhat different suite of processors than in our other tests. The Ryzen vii 1800X, Cadre i7-6900K, Core i9-7900X, and Core i7-8700K all striking very different clock speeds and offer different core configurations, ranging from the "archetype" Intel HEDT configuration (represented past the 6900K), the new Skylake-SP compages with its larger L2 and modest L3 (7900X), Intel's latest desktop CPU with its loftier core clocks (8700K), and AMD's Ryzen family unit. The 1800X is a adept stand-in for the 1600X here; the 2 CPUs benchmarked very similarly in the 1600X's game tests. Apologies for an earlier edit that said all game results were literally identical — one championship, Hitman, does prove some variation at 1440p.

AMD'south Ryzen 7 family isn't as strong in 1080p as it is in 1440p and 4K, but 1080p, at this point, is a somewhat artificial test, at least when using a GPU as powerful as the GTX 1080 Ti. While we don't intend to retire information technology entirely, it'southward most useful at present for measuring CPU architectural operation differences when new architectures make their debut. We did a round of 1080p testing when Ryzen seven launched and nosotros'll use information technology again for architectural shifts in the future, but 1440p and 4K better capture where high-stop gamers are likely to spend their performance dollar. Despite hitting a wide variety of L2 enshroud configurations, clock speeds, and core counts, AMD and Intel are well-matched in almost gaming tests (Hitman is a bit of an exception, and the 8700K does particularly well in that exam).

Conclusions

AMD has spent the terminal six months punching holes in Intel's various product lines. While Ryzen vii and v may non have held the single-thread operation crown, their relatively high clock speeds and excellent multi-threaded scaling gave Intel'south Kaby Lake and Broadwell-E a serious beat-down. AMD's Threadripper 1950X is yet far and away the fastest fleck you lot can buy for $1,000, fifty-fifty compared with Intel's Cadre i9-7900X. But every bit of today, there's a new force to exist reckoned with in the $350 to $400 CPU marketplace, and it's wearing Intel bluish.

The Core i7-8700K's combination of high clock speeds and high single-threaded functioning allow information technology to punch well above its weight class. While the Ryzen vii 1800X wins more tests than it loses confronting the 8700K, it wins nearly all of those tests by sparse margins. This isn't unique to AMD; Intel's Core i7-6900K is in almost exactly the same position. In fact, across our entire suite of testing, the gap between the 6900K and the 8700K is even narrower than the gap between Intel's latest half-dozen-core and the Ryzen 7 1800X. Meanwhile, the poor 7700K is completely outclassed by every other CPU in multi-threaded workloads, and 7700K owners who bought that CPU for multi-threaded workloads are probably a flake ticked with Intel correct now, considering their brand-new motherboards won't take a Core i7-8700K. Kaby Lake-X has as well been obviated by these CPUs, losing whatever marginal utility it might accept offered to begin with. The motility never made much sense, because Kaby Lake-X CPUs couldn't utilize the full features of the X299 platform they ran on, and anyone eyeing one of these systems is going to run across better results with an 8700K instead.

Intel's combination of best-in-grade unmarried-threaded performance and near-as-good multi-threaded performance makes the Core i7-8700K a better option than AMD's Ryzen 7 1800X given the current prices for both processors. AMD volition have a chance to flip the tables next yr, assuming its Ryzen+ architecture refresh can hit higher clock speeds than the outset generation Ryzen processors, but Intel has the overall lead today.

The news isn't all bad for AMD, however. The Ryzen 5 1600X isn't as fast equally the Core i7-8700K, tending to lag behind it by xx-25 percentage, thanks in no small function to the clock gap between the two CPUs (3.7GHz for the 1600X, iv.3GHz for the 8700K). What the 1600X has going for it is price.The Core i7-8700K is roughly 1.2x faster than the 1600X, but is 1.44x more than expensive before any difference in motherboard cost is taken into business relationship. At the $219 toll the chip currently lists for on Newegg, the comparison is even more than lopsided–1.64x more money, for roughly 1.2x to i.3x more than performance. We nonetheless expect the 6-core / 12-thread Ryzen 5s to compete well against Intel's Core i5, and if you're trying to maximize performance per dollar, we'd hands recommend the Ryzen five 1600X over the Cadre i7-8700K. In fact, nosotros'd recommend it equally the best overall value AMD offers in the unabridged Ryzen family unit.

The desktop CPU market has been more dynamic in the past x months then the 6 years previous, combined, and we're glad to see it. Intel may accept reclaimed the top position in the desktop CPU market, but the Core i7-8700K is as potent as it is because Intel needed a core that would compete effectively against AMD'southward top-end Ryzen CPUs. Information technology'southward no accident Intel suddenly figured out how to build a vi-core mainstream desktop processor seven months afterwards AMD's Ryzen family started eating its multi-threaded lunch, simply as information technology's no accident Pentium cores came down with a case of Hyper-Threading in January, the cost of a 10-core CPU dropped by ~$800 in June, and Core i3s and Core i5s both packed on more cores as of today. Intel has delivered an exceptional six-cadre CPU in the Cadre i7-8700K, merely AMD deserves a nod for forcing them to practice it.