The AnandTech Coffee Lake Review: Initial Numbers on the Core i7-8700K and Core i5-8400
by Ian Cutress on October 5, 2017 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Core i5
- Core i7
- Core i3
- 14nm
- Coffee Lake
- 14++
- Hex-Core
- Hyperthreading
Shadow of Mordor
The next title in our testing is a battle of system performance with the open world action-adventure title, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor (SoM for short). Produced by Monolith and using the LithTech Jupiter EX engine and numerous detail add-ons, SoM goes for detail and complexity. The main story itself was written by the same writer as Red Dead Redemption, and it received Zero Punctuation’s Game of The Year in 2014.
A 2014 game is fairly old to be testing now, however SoM has a stable code and player base, and can still stress a PC down to the ones and zeroes. At the time, SoM was unique, offering a dynamic screen resolution setting allowing users to render at high resolutions that are then scaled down to the monitor. This form of natural oversampling was designed to let the user experience a truer vision of what the developers wanted, assuming you had the graphics hardware to power it but had a sub-4K monitor.
The title has an in-game benchmark, for which we run with an automated script implement the graphics settings, select the benchmark, and parse the frame-time output which is dumped on the drive. The graphics settings include standard options such as Graphical Quality, Lighting, Mesh, Motion Blur, Shadow Quality, Textures, Vegetation Range, Depth of Field, Transparency, and Tessellation. There are standard presets as well.
We run the benchmark at 1080p and a native 4K, using our 4K monitors, at the Ultra preset. Results are averaged across four runs and we report the average frame rate, 99th percentile frame rate, and time under analysis.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
MSI GTX 1080 Gaming 8G Performance
1080p
4K
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DigitalFreak - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
Anyone having an issue with Bench? I'm trying to compare my i7-3770k to the i7-8700k and it comes back with no data. Same with trying the Threadripper 1920xmkaibear - Friday, October 6, 2017 - link
CPU tests changed so benchmarks weren't comparable. Latest processor tested on the old tests was the 7700K iirc, and not everything is tested on the new tests.I'd compare results for the 3770k and the 2600K to get a baseline then you can compare 2600K to the 8700K. It's a bit fiddly, I have to do the same with my 4790K.
Ian Cutress - Saturday, October 7, 2017 - link
We updated our CPU testing suite for Windows 10 in Q1. Regression testing is an on-going process, though it's been slow because of all the CPU launches this year. Normally we have 1/2 a year. We're so far at what, 6 or 7 for 2017?mczak - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
Doesn't look to me like the die size actually increased at all due to the increased gate pitch.The calculations in the article forgot to account for the increase of the unused area (at the bottom left) - this area is tiny with 2c die, but increases with each 2 cores added significantly. By the looks of it, that unused area would have grown by about 2 mm^2 or so going from 4 to 6 cores, albeit I'm too lazy to count the pixels...
jjj - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
Your conclusion is weirdest thing ever, you fully ignore the 8359k and AMD.In retail, the 8350k will do very very well and retail is what matters for most readers
And ignoring AMD is not ok at all, it's like you think that we are all idiots that buy on brand.You do think that, your system guides make that very clear but you should not accept, support and endorse such an idiotic behavior.
AMD got hit hard here, Intel takes back the lead and it's important to state that. Sure they might have Pinnacle Ridge in a few months and take back the lead but buyers that can't wait should go with Intel right now, for the most part. AMD could also adjust prices ofc.
Tigris - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
Really confused why the pricing listed in this review isn't consistent- for Intel you were posting prices you found online, but for Ryzen you appear to be posting MSRP.The truth is- you can find 1700x for $298 right now EASILY (Amazon), yet Microcenter is selling the 8700k for $499.
If you factor this information in, the AMD solutions are still far more valuable per dollar.
wolfemane - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
I really can’t belive the amount of flak Anandtech takes these days. I find it un-earned an unwarrented. Out of all the tech sites and forums I manage to read in a given week, Anandtech is the most often quoted and linked to. Hell I use it as my go to for reference and comparison (and general reading). My only big complaint is your ads, and I’d gladly pay a sub to completely remove that nonsense and directly support the site!Ian, you and your staff deserve far more credit than you get and that’s an injustice. Each piece is pretty thorough and pretty spot on. So for that thank you very much.
This article is no exception to the rule and is superb. Your graph layouts are a welcome feature!!!!! I look forward to your ever expanding tests as new chips roll in. I think the 8600k is going to be a game changer in the i5 vs i7 performance category for these hexacore cpus. I think that’s why almost all the reviews I’m reading today are with the 8700k and 8400.
Agin, thank you and your staff very much for the work you put into publishing amazing articles!!
vanilla_gorilla - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
Personally I buy whatever is best at the time. Right now I'm typing this on a 1700x and I can see a 4770k build on the desk next to me. So it's always funny to see the bias. Intel review gets posted, AMD fanboys come out of the wood works to trash them as paid shills. But it works exactly the same on any positive AMD reviews. Intel fans come in trashing them. It's really odd. Anandtech is one of the most unbiased sites I've found and I trust their reviews implicitly.mkaibear - Saturday, October 7, 2017 - link
> Anandtech is one of the most unbiased sites I've found and I trust their reviews implicitly.Yep. Anyone who looks at AT and sees bias needs to examine their own eyesight.
SeannyB - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
For the H.264 encoding tests, you could consider using the "medium" preset or better. The "very fast" preset has a tendency to use fewer cores.