Intel To Unveil 8th Generation Core Processor 'Coffee Lake' Family August 21
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.
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Paul Alcorn is the Editor-in-Chief for Tom's Hardware US. He also writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage, and enterprise hardware.
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iPanda wow... um... i guess we'll have to wait for the full reveal to see if there is anything worthwhile added for a move to a new motherboard. geez.Reply -
MCMunroe .... And I just ordered my new Kaby Lake Laptop.Reply
TBH given that to get More than 4C8T intel makes you buy a server based mother board, I don't see Intel suddenly offering consumer laptops with i7 branded 45W chips with 8C16T. -
the nerd 389 Oh boy. This is the second time they've rushed a product release this year. Hopefully they won't screw it up nearly as badly this time around.Reply
Then again, even if they did, AMD will be there to save the day. Hopefully. -
rush21hit It stated in the article that the improvements are not from better IPC/arch, but simply from more core count. This led me to believe that Intel doesn't really need new chipset for Coffee Lake. Further, I believe this move would upset a lot of people that bought Kaby Lake lineup.Reply -
JamesSneed I'm happy Intel feels like it needs to increase core counts which it could have done a very long time ago. Thanks AMD for making Intel pick up the pace. Got to love competition coming back to CPU's again.Reply
Anyone else find a 30% increase in performance by adding 50% more cores(4 to 6) a little weird to boast about? -
therogerwilco Real tired of buying new mobo's because the sockets change. I think this may push me to a Threadripper setup and I won't buy a new cpu for the next 10 years.Reply -
JamesSneed Reply20038561 said:Real tired of buying new mobo's because the sockets change. I think this may push me to a Threadripper setup and I won't buy a new cpu for the next 10 years.
I get it, some people like to upgrade often but I must admit my 2500k prior lasted me 6 years before it was becoming a bottleneck. It seems by the time I want to upgrade, the entire platform is better and I don't want my old motherboard anyhow. I realize that is not everyone but I tend not care so much about socket changes. Although I do have a Ryzen r7 now which I will be eyeballing the Zen2 chips when they land on that 7nm process, if its a huge bump I may do a CPU only upgrade so I do see the upside of reusing sockets just not typically a factor for me. -
turkey3_scratch Reply20038549 said:I'm happy Intel feels like it needs to increase core counts which it could have done a very long time ago. Thanks AMD for making Intel pick up the pace. Got to love competition coming back to CPU's again.
Anyone else find a 30% increase in performance by adding 50% more cores(4 to 6) a little weird to boast about?
Intel definitely did the right thing by waiting, though. They always have had this buffer where, when this situation would finally come, they can just add more cores and call it a day. -
sfcampbell "The company also compared the eighth-generation processor to a previous-generation model with fewer threads..." Is anyone else overwhelmed by the stench of desperation?Reply
I could wait to find out how close they get to their 30% PI target -- and how many PCI-E lanes they lock out, and that they will recycle the same garbage thermal paste that have been hamstringing their processors for five generations... But I won't.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osSMJRyxG0k -
i3 having 4 Cores and no HT with base clock speed of 4.0Ghz is enough to tear down entire Ryzen lineup <$170. Good enough for me.Reply