Intel Skylake / Kaby Lake

[dullard]

Exactly. PowerPC was the better CPU, but Intel had the better overall platform.

PowerPC traded a lot of blows with Intel in the mid 1990s. But often PowerPC won only in highly specific, highly tuned benchmarks. PowerPC wasn't much behind though either on more general benchmarks. The problem more was that PowerPC was too small of a market so the costs to keep improving it were adding more and more to the costs of each chip.

By the time Apple switched, PowerPC was a power consuming beast, couldn't hit 3 GHz, had a half-assed approach to multiple cores, and cost far more per chip. That wasn't where Apple saw the market going. Apple wanted lower power laptops and to stop subsidizing PowerPC that just was getting too old for its own good.

 

[TheF34RChannel]

If someone leaked the specs of the (remaining) Coffee Lake-S family tonight, what do you guys expect from the Core i5 (65W and 95W) models and the locked Core i7 (65W)? Let's see who's closer to the truth.

I'm too tired to guess anything - even 3 cups of actual coffee did not help. I couldn't even guess my own name right.

 

[Sweepr]

Really curious to see what people expect from Core i5-8400. I want core count, base clocks and Turbo clocks. One hint, it's 65W TDP as expected.

 

[jpiniero]

Really curious to see what people expect from Core i5-8400. I want core count, base clocks and Turbo clocks. One hint, it's 65W TDP as expected.

So why 8400 and not 8500/8600? Maybe later?

 

[PeterScott]

Really curious to see what people expect from Core i5-8400. I want core count, base clocks and Turbo clocks. One hint, it's 65W TDP as expected.

I only care about the 6 core variants. The pricing and timeline for them.

 

[Sweepr]

So why 8400 and not 8500/8600? Maybe later?

Looks like Core i5-8400 and Core i5-8600K are the initial models. I'm impressed by Intel's aggressive approach with the new base model, especially if prices remain the same (Core i5-7400 has a $182 MSRP). Now come on, I want some predictions first.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm waiting for the 4C/4T CFL-S i3 CPUs, hopefully they have a 4Ghz model, or unlocked, and hopefully the i3's still start at $120. That would make a sweet, sweet upgrade, for all of those G4560 gaming rigs out there, yearning for a little more CPU grunt to push them over the edge to 60 FPS minimums in AAA games. In fact, that would be a pretty clever little upgrade path for Intel to sell some CFL-S chips on, IF they weren't so stupid with their segmentation to require customers to buy a new motherboard / chipset, just to work with CFL-S. If they're going to do that, then they might as well get a Ryzen CPU and AM4 board.

 

[Bouowmx]

My predictions of Turbo frequencies:
i7-8700: 3.9-4.3 GHz
i5-8600K: 3.8-4.2 (6 cores, no HT, right?)
i5-8400: 3.1-3.5

I'm not really interested in the middle, only the top, i7-8700K, and bottom, i3-8100 and 8100H, the two hopefully having 4 cores; 8100H because of the potential of cheaper entry-level gaming laptops, currently served by i5-7300HQ.

 

[Sweepr]

Intel® Core™ i7-8700K and Core™ i7-8700 Specifications - The Empire Strikes Back

Core i7-8700K
6C/12T
12MB L3
3.7 GHz Base
4.3 GHz 6-core Turbo
4.4 GHz 4-core Turbo
4.6 GHz 2-core Turbo
4.7 GHz 1-core Turbo
95W TDP

Core i7-8700
6C/12T
12MB L3
3.2 GHz Base
4.3 GHz 6-core Turbo
4.3 GHz 4-core Turbo
4.5 GHz 2-core Turbo
4.6 GHz 1-core Turbo
65W TDP

 

[Sweepr]

Intel® Core™ i5-8600K and Core™ i5-8400 Specifications - Intel's Mainstream King

Core i5-8600K
6C/6T
9MB L3
3.6 GHz Base
4.1 GHz 6-core Turbo
4.2 GHz 4-core Turbo
4.2 GHz 2-core Turbo
4.3 GHz 1-core Turbo
95W TDP

Core i5-8400
6C/6T
9MB L3
2.8 GHz Base
3.8 GHz 6-core Turbo
3.9 GHz 4-core Turbo
3.9 GHz 2-core Turbo
4.0 GHz 1-core Turbo
65W TDP

 

[Arachnotronic]

Well, looks like these will be the gaming CPUs to get.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Are we still looking at October for availability?

 

[Shivansps]

Any info on I3s? 4/4 or 4/8?

 

[PeterScott]

Any info on I3s? 4/4 or 4/8?

Yeah, now I am curious. Is Intel finally ditching Dual Cores?

 

[Bouowmx]

Wow, very nice.

Base frequencies are deceptively low. What part of processor runs at base frequency? Looking at HWiNFO sensors on Core i5-7200U (2.5/3.1 GHz): Core frequency is clearly 3.1 GHz, then, ring/LLC frequency is 2.9 GHz, system agent is 0.8 GHz. Idk. I guess base frequency is for those rare customers who disable Turbo Boost?

Apart from Z motherboards, power limit is set to TDP rating. I predict to get full performance, ex. i5-8400 4.0 GHz all 6 cores, power limit will need to be increased, in BIOS or operating system utilities like Intel Extreme Tuning Utility. Unless, the process optimization is that great.

i5-8600K and 8400 are apart by 0.3 GHz: there is no room for 2 more models, 8600 and 8500, in between. A good or bad thing? But, the circle jerk is that Intel's line up is too complicated and has too many models.

 

[Sweepr]

Any info on I3s? 4/4 or 4/8?

Probably 4C/4T. We will have to see where 4C/8T fits in this new lineup.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Wow, very nice.

Base frequencies are deceptively low. What part of processor runs at base frequency?

Base frequencies are for extreme scenarios when running heavy AVX loads or CPU + iGPU heavy loads.

AIDA64 L3 is what 110-120GB/s on Skylake-X?

I've seen that data too, but I can only find results in the 500GB-1TB/s range. Could you show me the source? AIDA64 changed the way they do their testing or something.

The bandwidth should be a lot higher. The L3 cache is capable of handling 16B/cycle on single threaded loads. You are talking about 480GB/s with 10 cores at "just" 3GHz. The Sisoft Sandra results are lot higher than that too. They got 280GB/s with 7900X.

 

[Shivansps]

Probably 4C/4T. We will have to see where 4C/8T fits in this new lineup.

I whould have expected 4/4 on i3-8100 and 4/8 on I3-8300 as a worse case escenario considering the i5-8400 is already 6/6. No news on socket compatibility either?

 

[VirtualLarry]

No news on socket compatibility either?

I know, it's almost like Intel wants people to move to the Ryzen platform. Not even a hint that existing Socket 1151 boards will be compatible with new 8th-Gen Core CPUs.

If you have to do a platform swap, why not move to a platform with a real future, rather than Intel's chipset-of-the-week requirement and a new mobo, rather that what could have been a drop-in CPU upgrade for Intel.

 

[Shivansps]

I know, it's almost like Intel wants people to move to the Ryzen platform. Not even a hint that existing Socket 1151 boards will be compatible with new 8th-Gen Core CPUs.

If you have to do a platform swap, why not move to a platform with a real future, rather than Intel's chipset-of-the-week requirement and a new mobo, rather that what could have been a drop-in CPU upgrade for Intel.

I think Intel is targeting SB/Ivy/Haswell and legacy users here before they move to Ryzen, while i do want to know and it will be nice, i dont think it will impact too much anyway.

 

[Bouowmx]

Perhaps a motherboard manufacturer will let us know soon™. ASRock published ASRock--Intel Next Gen Socket 1151 CPU Ready in October 2016. 2016-10-12 as first indexed by Google, and 2016-10-15 as first archived in Wayback Machine.

 

[ELopes580]

Those specs look great. I'm curious about the i7-T model, if they plan to release one.

If Intel, and especially Asus, can allow z170 (ideally the ROG line) to support these CPUs; I have one system that can use the upgrade. Then build a 2nd mITX with my old CPU. If not, I'll just sit on the 6700K for a while. Yes, I am aware of supposedly the z170 will not support it. But one can hope.

 

[formulav8]

Is Intel finally ditching Dual Cores?

If i-3's end up 4/4 or so, then Celeron and Pentium will probably be 2/4 and 2/2. So I would expect there to definitely still be two core cpu's.

I am more interested if it will still have to be K sku's for ocing. Would be sweet if they unlocked, at least all the i3 and higher sku's for ocing like all Ryzens are.

Probably wishful thinking though.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Do you have *actual* examples of AVX-512 giving the purported uplifts over 256b and 128b versions? Or did Intel invent it only to calculate digits of irrational numbers?

Let's say this. It's not zero as you imply. The usage scenarios that benefit are probably a lot less than it used to with AVX and AVX2, but it exists.

If you look at the Xeon Scalable news items from Intel, they point out the general increase is 1.4-1.6x. There are few that reaches in the 1.7-2x range. Those if you look at the presentation are due to AVX-512 optimizations. They were showing DL/AI workloads doing 2-2.2x due to architecture + AVX-512. And then Tencent with video stitching performance improved by 67% using AVX-512 optimizations. Another company was talking about Data Analytics.

So the Flops increase in processors that are limited by memory bandwidth is now more of a architectural checkbox, as improved L3 caches for example are. In processors like Xeon Phi where it has much more BW to work with, it can make a difference.

I wouldn't discount 20% gain for Xeon Phi. 20% for a single feature is actually a lot. Also, the 20% number is on the same core. It still has the 2x64B load + 1x64B store units. It still has MCDRAM. But in the case of Skylake-SP versus Broadwell-EP, you're talking about 2x load/store bandwidth in addition to 2x FP. The gains are incredibly varied depending on code. Real world codes are far more complicated which is why its hard to get across the board large gains. Usually you need to double EVERYTHING to get 2x the performance. General rule of thumb I had for graphics were: 30% for double bandwidth, 30% for doubled texture filtering, 30% for shaders(Flops).

 

[formulav8]

Intel should not shove aside the 1151 owners. KL is only a few months old and what upgrade will there be beyond 7700k? Sad if Intel doesn't provide any 6 core sku's for SL/KL users. Quite a few SB persons has already moved to AM4 and others are still happy with what they have. But there still are quite a few waiting for the full scene to be revealed. My wife's 2500k new upgrade for example.

Unless Intel already planned to have 6 core Sku's on the current mobo's, the pin out may not work out even if a similar socket. With AMD now kicking it, they would be better off with CL compatibility with 170/270 chipsets even if only selling a chip instead of chip and chipset like they're used to plucking from people in the past.