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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mkaibear - Tuesday, June 12, 2018 - link
"Total flop"I suggest benchmarking the CPU in your phone against this CPU and try again.
SanX - Tuesday, June 12, 2018 - link
They mostly serve different purposes and apps and have different TDP. But if you restrict consumption power of Intel processors to the same one of mobile processors then in the same apps it's not clear in advance which one will win.Time for ARM to look at the server and supercomputers markets.
iranterres - Monday, June 11, 2018 - link
HAHA. Intel once again trying to fool some people and appeasing the fanboys with something worthless and expensive.xchaotic - Tuesday, June 12, 2018 - link
So are the regular i7-8600K unable to run all core 5GHz? If so, what't the max stable freq for a non-binned i7-8600K? Personally I went for an even lower/cheaper i5-8400 CPU, but I see why some people prefer to be running max speed all the time...Rudde - Tuesday, June 12, 2018 - link
I assume you mean the i7-8700k.There is a phenomenon called 'the silicon lottery.' Basically, when you buy an i7-8700k, you can't know the max stable frequency. It could max out at 5.2GHz or it could only reach 4.7GHz before going unstable. The thing is, you can't know what you'll end up with.
This brings us to the i7-8068k. The i7-8068k is pretty much guaranteed to have a max stable frequency above 5GHz. Of course, this matters only when overclocking.
Bradyb00 - Tuesday, June 12, 2018 - link
Is it a lower temp than a 8700k for a given multiplier though? i.e. both 8700k and 8086k at 46x which is cooler? 8700k obviously has to be averaged as not everyone is lucky with the silicon lottery.Presumption is the 8086k will run cooler on average due to the better binning.
In which case I'm happy to pay more to save some degrees in my wee itx build
Lolimaster - Tuesday, June 12, 2018 - link
Why not simply pick the Ryzen 5 2600, same thing with actual lower temps from using high quality solder...$189
TheinsanegamerN - Monday, June 18, 2018 - link
Depends on the use case. For pure gaming, I'd stick with intel, which is a bit faster now and, if history is any indication, will hold up a LOT better for gaming in 5 years then the AMD chip will.Especially if you run games or emulators dependent on IPC (like PCSX2) the intel chip will perform a lot better then the AMD chip.
There is also the memory controller. Ryzen 2000 improved, but intel's controller is still superior, and that matters for things like RTS games that consume memory bandwidth like black holes consume stars.
Stuka87 - Tuesday, June 12, 2018 - link
Props to Asrock for providing the system so that you could get us stuff so quickly Ian. Not sure why everybody is complaining about the system and cooling that was used. The system was loaned to you so that you could get us numbers fast, which personally I am happy about. Thanks for your hard work Ian!El Sama - Tuesday, June 12, 2018 - link
This is quite the premium cost for a small increase in frequency that should be close to what you get to a 8700k OCed, an interesting offering regardless.