We've known that Intel's eight-generation core processor family is slated for release this year--the company teased the Coffee Lake processors at Computex--but the timeline has remain unconfirmed. Now, Intel has announced that it will hold a Facebook Live webcast on August 21 to officially debut the new processors.
Gregory Bryant, senior vice president of the Client Computing Group at Intel, will man the helm. He also made the initial Computex presentation (with his own personal butler, pictured above) that featured claims of 30% more performance over the seventh-generation Kaby Lake processors.
Unfortunately, all vendor-run benchmarks come with some caveat or another, and the original presentation was no exception. Intel derived its performance metrics from pre-silicon benchmarks, which means the margin of error is substantial. The company also compared the eighth-generation processor to a previous-generation model with fewer threads, so most of the improvement likely doesn't stem from significant IPC/architectural enhancements.
In either case, that's the promise of Coffee Lake--more cores and more threads than Intel's previous models--which should help the company fend off the resurgent AMD's Ryzen processors. Unlike AMD's Ryzen, though, it appears that Intel will continue to offer integrated graphics with its latest models.
Intel has given vague timelines for the Coffee Lake release of either late this year or early next year. However, the news release appears to portend an early launch, which lines up with the common speculation that Intel will paddle into Coffee Lake early:
Start planning for what new 8th Gen Intel Core processor-based device to purchase in the holiday season and even before.
Isn't competition wonderful? Hopefully Intel will also treat us to more competitive price points, much like we've already seen with Skylake-X's lower pricing. Unfortunately, all signs indicate Intel's forthcoming Coffee Lake processors will not work with existing 200-series motherboards. We'll know for sure after the announcement, so mark your calendars and stay tuned.
