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
Differences from Coffee Lake to Kaby Lake
Physical Design: Pin Outs
The platform for the new Coffee Lake systems is going to look and feel very similar to the 6th and 7th Generation platform, with some minor differences, but this could lead to a lot of confusion.
Intel has made it very clear that Coffee Lake processors will work only in Z370 motherboards, and not in the previous generation Z270 motherboards. This despite the fact that both generations of boards share the same socket design due to how the pins are used. In Intel’s 8th Gen datasheet posted online, a full pin-out is provided, showing that there is indeed a difference between the new Coffee Lake processors and the older Kaby Lake processors, and what those specific differences are.
Coffee Lake (left), Kaby Lake (right) - not to scale
Image from David Schor, Wikichip
With the new CPUs, more pins are converted from RSVD (reserved) to VCC (power) and VSS (ground), specifically, there are 18 more power pins and 14 more ground pins, with a slight rearrangement in how the pins are provided. Most of the changes can be seen just above the central blank area to the left, where grey RSVD areas are now red.
In any regular generational change, the pin-out adjustment is to be expected. This is usually accompanied by a change in the socket, such as from one flavor of LGA115x to another flavor of LGA115x, in order to avoid any confusion as to what processors work in what motherboards. These sockets might have been physically similar, such as the socket 775 and socket 771 processors, but notched differently to avoid misplacing a CPU into the wrong socket. But this difference does not exist for Coffee Lake.
Physical Design: Notches
So the pin-outs for Coffee Lake and Kaby Lake are different, especially with the support for hex-core processors, but that is not a big story. What is a big story is as the physical socket being identical to the last platform: both use LGA1151. To compound the issue, both sets of processors have the same notches in the same places on their packages, making it very easy to place the wrong CPU in the wrong motherboard. Notches are typically used to physically restrict which processors go into which motherboards. Intel decided there was no need to differentiate this time around.
Whoever at Intel thought this was a good idea needs to reevaluate their decisions. If the new CPU was labelled as LGA1153, still had 1151 pins but slightly different notches, this wouldn’t be an issue because users would not be able to misplace (and potentially damage) their new CPUs by placing them in the wrong motherboards.
Integrated Graphics
Blowing up specialized sand aside, there is going to be a few differences in the capabilities of each platform. The new processors will support HDCP2.2 on both DisplayPort and HDMI, although an external LSPCon is still needed for HDMI 2.0.
The video outputs for Coffee Lake will be similar to that on Kaby Lake, with three display pipes supported for motherboard manufacturers to configure as needed.
The full decode/encode support is listed below.
Perhaps surprisingly, Intel did not explicitly mention the state of the integrated graphics in the new set of processors during our pre-briefing. This is odd, especially given the amount of time spent praising the virtues of previous generations of the graphics. Due to the early announcement of the processors last week, more details have emerged.
All the six processors being made available today will have Intel’s UHD Graphics 630. This is basically identical to the previous generation's HD Graphics 630, except the name is now UHD, which we suppose is for marketing purposes now that UHD content and displays are more ubiquitous when the naming first started. The other change is HDCP2.2 support.
We were told that there are performance improvements with the new graphics package, mainly from an updated driver stack but also increased frequencies. All the parts will have an idle frequency of 350 MHz, and boost up to the following frequencies:
| Intel 8th Generation 'Coffee Lake' Desktop Processors | ||||||
| i7-8700K | i7-8700 | i5-8600K | i5-8400 | i3-8350K | i3-8100 | |
| Integrated Graphics | GT2: 24 EUs | GT2: 23 EUs | ||||
| IGP Base Freq | 350 MHz | 350 MHz | ||||
| IGP Turbo | 1.20 GHz | 1.20 GHz | 1.15 GHz | 1.05 GHz | 1.15 GHz | 1.10 GHz |
In the case of the Core i7-8700K, this is a 50 MHz jump over the previous generation.
The Intel Z370 Chipset
From a high level, the Z370 chipset is identical to the Z270 chipset. The connectivity is the same, the number of supported PCIe 3.0 lanes is the same, the available bifurcation is the same, the controller support is the same: it is the same chipset under a new name, to help identify the new motherboards that support Intel’s 8th Generation processors compared to the previous chipset for the previous generation of processors.
From the chipset directly we get 20-24 PCIe 3.0 lanes, six SATA 6 Gbps ports with support for RAID 0/1/5/10, a total of 14 USB ports (either 2.0 or 3.0, up to a maximum of ten of USB 3.0), and support for network controllers, support for Thunderbolt 3, and support for Intel’s Optane memory as a boot drive. It’s critical that we say ‘support’ here, because the diagram above from Intel is misleading: Intel is not supporting Thunderbolt directly from the chipset, and motherboard manufacturers will have to include a Thunderbolt 3 controller in order to do so.
So on the face of it, the chipset is not too different. What will be different is on the motherboard-as-a-whole side.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
222 Comments
View All Comments
Koenig168 - Friday, October 6, 2017 - link
Hmm ... rather disappointing that Anandtech did not include Ryzen 1600/X until called out by astute readers.mkaibear - Friday, October 6, 2017 - link
...apart from including all the data in their benchmark tool, which they make freely available, you mean? They put in the CPUs they felt that were most relevant. The readership disagreed, so they changed it from their benchmark database. That level of service is almost unheard of in the industry and all you can do is complain. Bravo.Koenig168 - Friday, October 6, 2017 - link
Irrelevant. While I agree with most of what you said, that does not change the fact that Anandtech did not include Ryzen 1600/X until called out by astute readers. To make things a little clearer for you, the i7-8700 is a 6C/12T processor. The Ryzen 1600 is a 6C/12T processor. Therefore, a comparison with the Ryzen 1600 is relevant.You should have addressed the point I made. Instead all you can do is complain about my post. Bravo. (In case this goes over your head again, that last bit is added just to illustrate how pointless such comments are.)
mkaibear - Saturday, October 7, 2017 - link
So your point is, in essence, "they didn't do what I wanted them to do so they're damned for all time".They put up the comparison they felt was relevant, then someone asked them to include something different - so they did it. They listened to their readers and made changes to an article to fix it.
Should they have put the R5 in the original comparison? Possibly. I can see arguments either way but if pushed I'd have said they should have done - but since even the 1600X gets beaten by the 8400 in virtually every benchmark on their list (as per https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2018?vs=20... they would then have been accused by the lurking AMD fanboys of having picked comparisons to make AMD look bad (like on every other article where AMD gets beaten in performance).
So what are you actually upset about? That they made an editorial decision you disagree with? You can't accuse them of hiding data since they make it publicly accessible. You can't accuse them of not listening to the readers because they made the change when asked to. Where's the issue here?
mkaibear - Saturday, October 7, 2017 - link
OK on further reading it's not "virtually every" benchmark on the list, just more than half. It's 50% i5 win, 37% R5 win, 12% tied. So not exactly a resounding triumph for the Ryzen but not as bad as I made it out to be.In the UK the price differential is about £12 in favour of the i5, although the motherboard is about £30 more expensive (though of course Z370 is a lot more fully featured than B650) so I think pricing wise it's probably a wash - but if you want gaming performance on anything except Civ VI then you'd be better off getting the i5.
...oh and if you don't want gaming performance then you'll need to buy a discrete graphics card with the R5 which probably means the platform costs are skewed in favour of Intel a bit (£25 for a GF210, £32 for a R5 230...)
watzupken - Saturday, October 7, 2017 - link
As mentioned when I first called out this omission, I would think comparing a 6 vs 4 core irrelevant. This is what AnandTech recommended to lookout for on page 4 "Core Wars": Core i5-8400 vs Ryzen 5 1500X.You be the judge if this makes sense when there is a far better competition/ comparison between the i5 8400 vs R5 1600. Only when you go reading around and you realized that hey, the i5 8400 seems to be losing in some areas to the 1600. I give AnandTech the benefit of the doubt, so I am done debating what is relevant or not.
KAlmquist - Friday, October 6, 2017 - link
The Anandtech benchmark tool confirms what Ryan indicated in the introduction: the i7-8700k wins against the 1600X across the board, due faster clocks and better IPC. The comparison to the i5-8400 is more interesting. It either beats the 1600X by a hair, or loses rather badly. I think the issue is the lack of hyperthreading on the i5-8400 makes the 1600X the better all-around performer. But if you mostly run software that can't take advantage of more than 6 threads, then the i5-8400 looks very good.Personally, I wouldn't buy i5-8400 just because of the socket issue. Coffee Lake is basically just a port of Skylake to a new process, but Intel still came out with a new socket for it. Since I don't want to dump my motherboard in a landfill every time I upgrade my CPU, Intel needs a significantly superior processor (like they had when they were competing against AMD's bulldozer derivatives) to convince me to buy from them.
GreenMeters - Friday, October 6, 2017 - link
So Intel still isn't getting their head out of their rear and offering the option of a CPU that trades all the integrated GPU space for additional cores? Moronic.mkaibear - Friday, October 6, 2017 - link
Integrated graphics make up more than 70% of the desktop market. It's even greater than that for laptops. Why would they sacrifice their huge share of that 70% in order to gain a small share of the 30%? *that* would be moronic.In the meantime you can know that if you buy a desktop CPU from Intel it will have an integrated GPU which works even with no discrete graphics card, and if you need one without the integrated graphics you can go HEDT.
Besides, the limit for Intel isn't remotely "additional space", they've got more than enough space for 8/10/12 CPU cores - it's thermal. Having an integrated GPU which is unused doesn't affect that at all - or arguably it gives more of a thermal sink but I suspect in truth that's a wash.
Zingam - Saturday, October 7, 2017 - link
We need a completely new PC architecture - you need more CPU cores - add more CPU cores, you need more GPU cores add more GPU cores, all of them connected via some sort of Infinity fabric like bus and sharing a single RAM. That should be possible to implement. Instead of innovating Intel is stuck in the current 80s architecture introduced by IBM.