The Intel Core i7-8086K Review
by Ian Cutress on June 11, 2018 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Core i7
- Anniversary
- Coffee Lake
- i7-8086K
- 5 GHz
- 8086K
- 5.0 GHz
Civilization 6
First up in our CPU gaming tests is Civilization 6. Originally penned by Sid Meier and his team, the Civ series of turn-based strategy games are a cult classic, and many an excuse for an all-nighter trying to get Gandhi to declare war on you due to an integer overflow. Truth be told I never actually played the first version, but every edition from the second to the sixth, including the fourth as voiced by the late Leonard Nimoy, it a game that is easy to pick up, but hard to master.
Benchmarking Civilization has always been somewhat of an oxymoron – for a turn based strategy game, the frame rate is not necessarily the important thing here and even in the right mood, something as low as 5 frames per second can be enough. With Civilization 6 however, Firaxis went hardcore on visual fidelity, trying to pull you into the game. As a result, Civilization can taxing on graphics and CPUs as we crank up the details, especially in DirectX 12.
Perhaps a more poignant benchmark would be during the late game, when in the older versions of Civilization it could take 20 minutes to cycle around the AI players before the human regained control. The new version of Civilization has an integrated ‘AI Benchmark’, although it is not currently part of our benchmark portfolio yet, due to technical reasons which we are trying to solve. Instead, we run the graphics test, which provides an example of a mid-game setup at our settings.
At both 1920x1080 and 4K resolutions, we run the same settings. Civilization 6 has sliders for MSAA, Performance Impact and Memory Impact. The latter two refer to detail and texture size respectively, and are rated between 0 (lowest) to 5 (extreme). We run our Civ6 benchmark in position four for performance (ultra) and 0 on memory, with MSAA set to 2x.
For reviews where we include 8K and 16K benchmarks (Civ6 allows us to benchmark extreme resolutions on any monitor) on our GTX 1080, we run the 8K tests similar to the 4K tests, but the 16K tests are set to the lowest option for Performance.
As a reminder, ASRock were not able to loan us the exact GPU that I normally use for our gaming testing. Instead we were able to source an RX 580, so this means that our gaming testing data will only have two data points: a Core i7-8700K and a Core i7-8086K. We will get some more data next week when we are back in the office.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
ASRock RX 580 Performance
Almost zero difference for Civilization between the two. The 8086K is never in a situation to fire up to 5.0 GHz.
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rocky12345 - Monday, June 11, 2018 - link
They used to but Intel coolers are so bad that no one used them so instead of making one that was usable for the k CPU's they just stopped including them. At least the other guys include them still and 2 of the 3 are actually usable as coolers. Personally I would rather have some sort of cooler included so at least would be up and running if the high end air or water cooler was om back order or waiting on shipping at least can get the system built and running.Flunk - Monday, June 11, 2018 - link
The ones they sent out with the older -K series processors were a joke. My i5-2500K came with a cooler that couldn't even cool it within Intel's specs running stock in a cold room.mkaibear - Tuesday, June 12, 2018 - link
I'm still using the one which came with my 4790K and it works fine, and the one my 2500K came with also worked fine when I had it, even at 30C ambient temps in the middle of summer.Probably an installation error there Flunk.
(yes, I bought K series processors and never overclocked them, for both of these my intention was to downclock them for reduced heat and noise but never got round to it with the 2500K and the 4790K didn't really downclock very well so I couldn't be bothered!)
jimmysmitty - Friday, June 15, 2018 - link
Absolutely incorrect. I installed tons of the stock Intel coolers on i5s and i7s and they work as specified for the stock settings of the CPUs plus were normally very quiet.SirMaster - Monday, June 11, 2018 - link
"K" CPUs con't come with heatsinks or fans... Neither does the 8700K or 8600K or 7700K, etc.Matthmaroo - Monday, June 11, 2018 - link
It’s been a while for you , I see - K series cpus have no coolerMemo.Ray - Monday, June 11, 2018 - link
Memo.Ray - Monday, June 11, 2018 - linkAs I mentioned in my comment in the other article a couple of days ago:
Intel managed to give away 8086 "binned" 8700K (AKA 8086K) and still make some money on top of it. win-win situation :D
https://www.anandtech.com/comments/12940/intels-co...
jimmysmitty - Friday, June 15, 2018 - link
And you miscalculated because you used the i7 8700 cost not the 8700K cost. They made maybe $300K on them.You know I have never seen anyone complain about say a 40th anniversary version of a car.
just4U - Wednesday, June 13, 2018 - link
If it were more similar to the 4790K with a better thermal design (think devils canyon..) it's something I'd be interested in over the 8700K. It's not tho… and doesn't even come with a specialty cooler that might peak interest.. but rather "NO COOLER" at all.. I dunno..I think Intel missed the boat with this one.
MDD1963 - Tuesday, June 26, 2018 - link
Who *actually* thought, after so many years of Intel not giving coolers with it's "K" model variants, that this one might come with a bundled cooler? :)