Intel Coffee Lake Coming October 5, Here Are The Details

As if in swift response to AMD's nearly year-long Zen onslaught, Intel will release the desktop parts (S Series) of its 8th Gen Coffee Lake CPU on October 5, a mere 10 months after unsheathing Kaby Lake. The upcoming products include Core i3, i5, and i7 CPUs in both locked and unlocked versions. More importantly, the Core i5 and i7 will feature six cores (a first for the i5 part), and the Core i3 will have four cores (also a first).

As we reported in early August, these CPUs will require a new chipset (Z370) and thus new motherboards. Intel has also confirmed that previous generation CPUs will not work with the new chipset. The company said that there will be more than 50 new Z370 motherboards to support these CPUs. We've reported on other rumors that suggest next year we'll see eight-core parts and yet another (Z390) chipset.

Intel indicated that this 8th-generation part is built on what it calls a 14nm++ process. The company would not comment on the die size or transistor count at this time. However, Intel is promising gamers an approximately 25% improvement in performance over Kaby Lake--this is using a direct comparison of the Core i7-8700K versus i7-7700K in Gears of War. You can bet that we'll provide a thorough set of benchmarks across several taxing games come launch time. 

The company has added a few more knobs for the overclocking crowd to turn, as well. Turbo Boost 2.0 is still supported, but you now get per-core overclocking, a maximum memory ratio up to 8,400 MT/s, memory latency control, and PLM Trim controls.

We've included a slide from Intel's press deck below. It lists some of the key specs and pricing. Notably, the high-end Core i7 part is $20 higher than initial Kaby Lake pricing; the Core i5 sits $15 higher. This move is likely designed to cover the additional costs of the silicon along with avoiding cannibalizing the existing Kaby Lake models. Cache sizes are higher and base clocks are lower, comparatively, but the single-core max frequencies are higher. TDP is also higher, presumably to support the higher core count.

This information was initially under embargo until October 5, but a media leak has convinced Intel to let us run with the information immediately. We'll provide a more detailed breakdown and analysis in the ensuing hours.

Fritz Nelson
Fritz Nelson is Editor-at-Large of Tom's Hardware US.
  • dE_logics
    Additional cores for mulitthreaded anti-virus scanning for today demanding anti-virus owning new impossible-to-defeat 'virus' threats.
    Reply
  • theusual
    Any word on high end mobile?
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    20208066 said:
    RIP 7800x and 1800x. Both of these products shouldn't even exist.
    I don't mind any product existing, as long as they don't outright alienate what the product line is supposed to be about (ex.: i5-7640X and i7-7740X, those two are irredeemable IMO) and is priced right. The 7800X and 1800X would be perfectly fine after pricing adjustments and I do expect AMD to review its MSRPs in response to Coffee Lake.

    I'd like to see Intel have a pricing response of its own even if only to align older products with their standing against Coffee Lake but I won't be holding my breath on Intel having to sanity-check its pricing until Ryzen 2 turns up the heat some more.
    Reply
  • derekullo
    20208030 said:
    Additional cores for mulitthreaded anti-virus scanning for today demanding anti-virus owning new impossible-to-defeat 'virus' threats.

    de logic be lacking from your post, mon

    Reply
  • nitrium
    20208157 said:
    20208030 said:
    Additional cores for mulitthreaded anti-virus scanning for today demanding anti-virus owning new impossible-to-defeat 'virus' threats.
    de logic be lacking from your post, mon
    The implication is that most users are running single (or at best dual) threaded apps/games so these new multi-core CPUs will offer no performance advantage whatsoever for 99+% of users in day to day PC tasks: i.e. "FINALLY we can undertake a virus scan while playing a game without a performance hit! w00t!". He's probably not really that far from the truth, tbh.

    Reply
  • nikoli707
    looks like i will finally be upgrading my 2600k. that 1400 cinebench r15 score is crazy high. ryzen will need to drop in price to keep up on the multi. but that 210 single core score is more than 30% faster than ryzen.
    Reply
  • ibjeepr
    6 cores on a ring bus running 4.3 (4.1 all core) turbo. I expect this to crush games at silky smooth frame variance with my 1080 ti. Very much looking forward to the benchmarks Tom's!
    Glad to see the price is $257. I was expecting around $285.
    Reply
  • artk2219
    Damn its nice to be reminded of the days when new CPU's would actually come out and there would be price drops and actual new products. Things haven't been this exciting since at least the Phenom II / nehalem era, ending roughly at Sandy Bridge.
    Reply
  • hannibal
    That price if for 1000 CPUs. Customers buying only one have to pay more!
    Reply
  • Brian_R170
    @Hannibal, Online prices (Newegg, Amazon, etc.) are usually very close to Intel's 1K-unit pricing.
    Reply