The Core i7-8086K Review: 40 Years Of x86

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Office & Productivity

Adobe Creative Cloud

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At stock settings, Core i7-8086K offered minimal improvement over the Core i7-8700K in our overall Adobe Creative Cloud score. Even though this suite has a few parallelized workloads, the final score is heavily influenced by the lightly-threaded tasks common in most desktop applications. So, it wasn't surprising to see the Core i7-8086K's superior overclock beat the tuned -8700K by 6.5%.

Web Browser

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The Krakken suite tests JavaScript performance using several workloads, including audio, imaging, and cryptography. Core i7-8086K trailed the -8700K in stock form, though overclocking changed the story.

The MotionMark benchmarks, which emphasize graphics (rather than JavaScript), are exceedingly sensitive to CPU clock rates. Yet, Intel's stock Core i7-8086K trailed the -8700K again, reinforcing our opinion that some motherboard firmware versions aren't fully optimized to exploit the 5 GHz single-core Turbo Boost bin.

Productivity

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The application start-up metric measures load time snappiness in word processors, GIMP, and Web browsers under warm- and cold-start conditions. Other platform-level considerations affect this test as well, including the storage subsystem. Core i7-8086K exploited its clock rate advantage in stock and overclocked trim to provide snappy performance.

Our video conferencing suite measures performance in single- and multi-user applications that utilize the Windows Media Foundation for playback and encoding. It also performs facial detection to model real-world usage. Core i7-8700 beat the -8086K by a hair; however, its locked multiplier prevents it from vying for chart-topping performance. Core i7-8086K posted a lead at stock frequencies during the writing benchmark, reinforcing that win after overclocking.

The photo editing benchmark measures performance with Futuremark's binaries using the ImageMagick library. Common photo processing workloads also tend to be parallelized, so it's no surprise the tuned Ryzen 7 processors lead by a large margin. The overclocked Core i7-8086K fared best among Intel's CPUs, but there's no substitute for core/thread count in this workload. 


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Paul Alcorn
Paul Alcorn
Managing Editor: News and Emerging Tech

Paul Alcorn is the Managing Editor: News and Emerging Tech for Tom's Hardware US. He also writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage, and enterprise hardware.

41 Comments Comment from the forums
  • AgentLozen
    Cons:
    -No bundled cooler

    You're saying that if Intel paired their little aluminum heatsink with this CPU you would have been more satisfied with this product?

    I've never heard of this silicon lottery place before. That's neat stuff.
    Reply
  • -Fran-
    I'm going to be unfair, but not too much:

    - We doing something for the 40th anniversary? -> Yes.
    - What do we sell for the 40th anniversary? -> A re-branded 8700K.
    - What do we include to make it more expensive? -> A letter from the CEO we most definitely won't be firing in the upcoming weeks! And a weird bottle with coffee beans in it (it seems?).
    - Do we bother in making it special (metal solder, bundled CLC, etc...) or just pick a couple golden sample 8700Ks? -> Don't bother, shrinks our profit; we don't care about the anniversary or making this special, really.

    Too much cynical thought process there?

    Cheers! :P
    Reply
  • PaulAlcorn
    21093123 said:
    Cons:
    -No bundled cooler

    You're saying that if Intel paired their little aluminum heatsink with this CPU you would have been more satisfied with this product?

    I've never heard of this silicon lottery place before. That's neat stuff.

    Touché
    ;)
    Reply
  • mac_angel
    why is it that internet news media no longer uses proof readers or editors?
    Reply
  • ubercake
    I like the article and the page two comparison with the old 8086.
    Reply
  • ingtar33
    so Intel releases 8000 binned cpus for a $100 markup over their basic cpu, plus some crap, however, this release is by lottery only (as in only the lotto winners have permission to buy this chip), and THG does a review?

    seriously?
    Reply
  • mister g
    " But if you go the Silicon Lottery route, expect to pay even more than a brand new Core i7-8086K costs and lose two years of warranty coverage."

    I thought Intel CPUs usually come with a 3 year warranty?
    Reply
  • Math Geek
    21093328 said:
    this release is by lottery only (as in only the lotto winners have permission to buy this chip), and THG does a review?

    seriously?

    think you missed how it went. they did a drawing to give away a bunch of these chips but they also made the rest available for purchase through the normal routs. no lottery there, just have to be quick on the draw and buy one before they sell out. Tom's bought thier's the same way any of us could have since intel did not send out press samples of it. it's a valid product for sale like any other they review.
    Reply
  • g-unit1111
    21093123 said:
    Cons:
    -No bundled cooler

    You're saying that if Intel paired their little aluminum heatsink with this CPU you would have been more satisfied with this product?

    I've never heard of this silicon lottery place before. That's neat stuff.

    Yeah I noticed that too. Intel hasn't been bundling coolers with its' high end CPUs since the X79 days. I honestly wouldn't count this as a hit against it.
    Reply
  • Krazie_Ivan
    and lets check in with Paul on those 8086k temps...

    https://i.pinimg.com/originals/54/23/5a/54235a5fac7cee9c208e0838115f1752.jpg
    Reply