Intel to launch 6 core Coffee Lake-S CPUs & Z370 chipset 5 October 2017

[Brazo]

And their you go. Command Buffer Behavior in Direct 12

ALL 8 CORES UTILIZED

WORK DISTRIBUTED ACROSS ALL CORES.

As we've been saying it's already begun, so yes single thread is still important and 4 cores is more popular, but that will now begin to change. That 4 core that has been Intels staple for the last ten years with the i5's and i7's is no more, it's now 6 core. Does that still not mean anything to you? Like I said keep your 4 core for as long as you want, my next cpu will likely have 8 and I'm quite sure that most people on here will now go 6+ when they finally upgrade.

What you also need to realise is that cores are only one aspect of a cpu's potential performance.

Ipc and clockspeed are equally important.

Although what is most important of all and what determines just how well a cpu does is an application. Yes a tiny, tiny percentage of applivations are starting to use more than four cores but it's really not worth basing a current purchase on that because the cpu won't perform as well as a faster four core in the majority of applications and by the time (years and years) we get to the point where such software is the norm the current crop of octocores will be obsolete.

AMD's fx series should demonstrate to anyone that moar cores is not the be all and end all. It was getting wasted by an intel dual core so no moar cores is not always the answer.

 

[AndreiD]

Not just AMD's FX series, we've had consumer 6 cores for over 7 years now (Thuban and Westmere were launched in 2010) and the push @Doobedoo is fantasizing about hasn't happened and probably won't anytime soon because multi-threading games, or almost any piece of software really, is very difficult and the benefits do not outweigh the cost, especially when >97% of the market is quads or lower.

 

[Doobedoo]

It's not about Fantasizing it's reality. I've already said you can't click your fingers it doesn't work like that but ask yourself this, will you from now on be recommending either the new i3 or Kaby lake x to people, will you tell them that the 8600 and 8700 are pointless? The answer is most likely no.

Now let's use the 8700k as an example. It's basically the 7700k with 2 extra cores and a 200mhz single core clock speed bump, it do what 7700k could do and more. So from this moment forth people are likely going to be buying 6 cores, take amazon for example, over the last couple of months the 1600 has out sold many 4 core processors, what do you think will happen when they drop the price further?

We get that ipc and single core matter but when the multi core variants offer the same advantage plus more room for future development what is the point.

4 cores will still be relevant but the tables are now starting to swing, we have seen much evidence of 4 cores beginning to choke.

No need to hold up development the future is upon us .

 

[Journey]

God all this is bringing back when they first introduced the Pentium D and then the Core2 Quad, same arguments, recycled but this time with 6/8 cores and beyond. It's like the eternal question who bought the first fax machine, and why? You need to invent something for people to take advantage of it, and when lots of people have it then it becomes the norm, but that happens overtime, not over night.

Could one of you please go and find out how long it took for quads core to outpace dual cores in the Steam graphs or whatever you are looking at, and extrapolate when 6+ cores will be come the norm?

 

[Brazo]

God all this is bringing back when they first introduced the Pentium D and then the Core2 Quad, same arguments, recycled but this time with 6/8 cores and beyond. It's like the eternal question who bought the first fax machine, and why? You need to invent something for people to take advantage of it, and when lots of people have it then it becomes the norm, but that happens overtime, not over night.

Could one of you please go and find out how long it took for quads core to outpace dual cores in the Steam graphs or whatever you are looking at, and extrapolate when 6+ cores will be come the norm?

If you look at steam most people are still on dual cores! Just saying!

 

[Brazo]

It's not about Fantasizing it's reality. I've already said you can't click your fingers it doesn't work like that but ask yourself this, will you from now on be recommending either the new i3 or Kaby lake x to people, will you tell them that the 8600 and 8700 are pointless? The answer is most likely no.

Now let's use the 8700k as an example. It's basically the 7700k with 2 extra cores and a 200mhz single core clock speed bump, it do what 7700k could do and more. So from this moment forth people are likely going to be buying 6 cores, take amazon for example, over the last couple of months the 1600 has out sold many 4 core processors, what do you think will happen when they drop the price further?

We get that ipc and single core matter but when the multi core variants offer the same advantage plus more room for future development what is the point.

4 cores will still be relevant but the tables are now starting to swing, we have seen much evidence of 4 cores beginning to choke.

No need to hold up development the future is upon us .

The future starts when software developers decide not cpu manufactures.

I can see your point about the 4 plus 2 performance of the 8700k and I'll find it very hard myself not to go down that route but what's stopping me is software. There's nothing that I will use that would benefit additional cores. Maybe in 2020 we'll see some of my packages start to take advantage but honestly given they whizz along on a quad I can't see that happening 'that' soon!

 

[AndreiD]

@Doobedoo More L3 cache too, which I think is probably going to contribute more that the 2 extra cores for whatever performance increase Coffee Lake will have over Kaby Lake in gaming.
And in my opinion the only CPUs that matter right now for gaming are the Kaby Lake Pentium G series for ultra budget stuff, R5 1600 for sweet spot and 7700K for best performance, not much else makes sense for gaming. If you have some other niche workloads then R7/TR/i9 start making more sense, but that's a different story.
If the Coffee Lake parts are priced well they could displace the R5 1600, but I can't really see Intel cutting on their margins.

@Journey Difficult to predict market trends, but 6+ cores and up are <3% of the market right now and progression is slow. Quads have been growing a lot (58% currently) so that's probably going to slowly become the lowest common denominator.

If you look at steam most people are still on dual cores! Just saying!

Correction: Quads, currently at 58% http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/cpus/

 

[Hagar]

What you also need to realise is that cores are only one aspect of a cpu's potential performance.

Ipc and clockspeed are equally important.

IPC and clockspeed are not equal, IPC is important as it demonstrates what each clock cycle can do. Clock speed is secondary and yes a higher clock is directly more cycles but at a heat / power penalty. So a CPU that can do more per Hz requiring lower power is the ideal.

 

[humbug]

According to the Steam hardware survey, 6 cores and up only amounts to <3% of the market, there's really no incentive for any developer to cater to that base when <4 cores is >97%, with quads at 58% share and growing fast.
Additionally, even with the current low level apis, single core performance is still fairly important, here's one of AMD's own sliders from not long ago that should give you a good visual representation:

That right there is the reason why the 7700K is still usually the fastest gaming CPU even in DX12/Vulkan games, even though the performance delta between CPUs decreases.

That slide is two years old, and AMD marketing.

I recorded this short clip last night, Insurgency, an old but popular game running on source engine, Image quality settings as high as they would go and the resolution at 4K, 120 to 160 FPS, great right? no, i don't know if you can see it or not as Youtube butchered it but its stuttering, why is it stuttering? look at the CPU utilisation, 4690K @ 4.5Ghz and its jumping up and down, sometimes peaking at 100% on all 4, its causing micro stutter.

GTX 1070 BTW.

Yes a lot of games only use 4 cores, but if you have high powered GPU's you still need more than that to keep a smooth game.

The original 4K video...
https://mega.nz/#!8dFWkRKS!KYaGy5nYLOIBIMNAX61LU45r35Xo0t1BsLyF-XiV1WA

A couple more examples of this... look at the light blue frame times line of the 7700K in this...

Look at the CPU utilisation on the 7700K in this....

 

[Martini1991]

The day of the quad core is certainly numbered. It's a fools game to buy one looking into the future. Ryzen 1700 is *the* GOAT for gamers.

Sure. It's not the best in all games all the time. But it'll offer the absolutely most consistent experience due to its core for core performance coupled with the amount of cores.

 

[AndreiD]

@humbug did you use x264 to record? Source doesn't really uses quad cores like that...

Edit: Wait, hold on, you were recording at 4K with a quad core and expected the CPU to not get bogged down? What!?

Also quality cherry picking there.

 

[Jono8]

The day of the quad core is certainly numbered. It's a fools game to buy one looking into the future. Ryzen 1700 is *the* GOAT for gamers.

Sure. It's not the best in all games all the time. But it'll offer the absolutely most consistent experience due to its core for core performance coupled with the amount of cores.

If the 8700k settles to a more sensible price nearer £300 after release (like the 7700k did) and offers pretty much the 1700's multi core performance but hugely better single core performance the 8700k will be the go to cpu for gamers.

 

[humbug]

@humbug did you use x264 to record? Source doesn't really uses quad cores like that...

Edit: Wait, hold on, you were recording at 4K with a quad core and expected the CPU to not get bogged down? What!?

Also quality cherry picking there.

I used GPU Hardware Encoding to record that, it makes no difference to the CPU's performance in game.

Had i used Software encoding the game would have been a slide-show. literally.

 

[Martini1991]

If the 8700k settles to a more sensible price nearer £300 after release (like the 7700k did) and offers pretty much the 1700's multi core performance but hugely better single core performance the 8700k will be the go to cpu for gamers.

If that happens, then I agree. But at present that's not what we have. We can only make judgement on the here and now.

To be honest. I do kind of wish I'd held off and waited to see coffee lake. My one sticking point with Ryzen is the crap clocks.

But at the same time, AMD produced a viable upgrade from my 4770k at a price point that was enticing, so I went in with both feet.

 

[AndreiD]

@humbug if you're recording with NVENC or Shadowplay then that's pretty weird, Insurgency of all games too.

But if you think an R7 1700 will give you better fps, then best of luck. I wouldn't go in expecting lots of improvement, for me it wasn't much of a jump from an old 4.7Ghz i7 2600K, regression in a lot of cases. If you have workloads that can use the threads, maybe some rendering or encoding, then it's more than worth it.

£300 8700K would be pretty amazing, but I don't see Intel cutting into their margins too much, I'm expecting it to be around £350.

 

[humbug]

@humbug if you're recording with NVENC or Shadowplay then that's pretty weird, Insurgency of all games too.

But if you think an R7 1700 will give you better fps, then best of luck. I wouldn't go in expecting lots of improvement, for me it wasn't much of a jump from an old 4.7Ghz i7 2600K, regression in a lot of cases. If you have workloads that can use the threads, maybe some rendering or encoding, then it's more than worth it.

£300 8700K would be pretty amazing, but I don't see Intel cutting into their margins too much, I'm expecting it to be around £350.

I know i will get higher Frame Rates because one of my regular gaming partners has a 1700X and does get higher performance than me, in everything we play, sometimes its a marginal improvement, other times the difference is huge.

Having said that the FPS is not what i'm worried about, not for as long as i'm getting good frame rates, 150 FPS vs 175 FPS or 300 FPS vs 350 FPS that makes no difference to me, i don't measure performance in Frame Rates, unless its the only thing someone understands, remember back in the day when AMD's 7950 was getting higher Frame Rates than the GTX 670 and someone had the insight to say "hang on a minute, it may get higher Frame Rates but its a stutter fest" they were right and right to point it out.

High Frame Rates might as well be console Frame Rates if that's what the gameplay feels like, i will be upgrading my platform when i can afford it, the problem is i have to change the whole platform and that's expensive, even for a Ryzen 1600 thats going to cost me £500, yes for £170 more or even 'just' for the i5 £100 more i can get a 6 core Intel and have 350 FPS vs 300 FPS..... WOOOOOOW NO! the 1600 will be ultimately smooth, as smooth as the £350+ 8700K, the only way i will know the difference is if i turn the Frame Rate counter on and look at it, that warm fussy E-Peen feeling is not worth £170.

PS: do you have Insurgency? what CPU - GPU do you have..? go see for yourself, you will replicate it, it is what it is.

 

[jigger]

The change has happened mate. The industry went the multi core route years ago.

If the 8700k settles to a more sensible price nearer £300 after release (like the 7700k did) and offers pretty much the 1700's multi core performance but hugely better single core performance the 8700k will be the go to cpu for gamers.

The difference in per core performance will be minimal just like everything from Sandybridge. Coffeemaker is just more Skylake again sadly. It will be 2019-2020 before we see a jump in single core performance from Intel.

 

[humbug]

I know i will get higher Frame Rates because one of my regular gaming partners has a 1700X and does get higher performance than me, in everything we play, sometimes its a marginal improvement, other times the difference is huge.

Having said that the FPS is not what i'm worried about, not for as long as i'm getting good frame rates, 150 FPS vs 175 FPS or 300 FPS vs 350 FPS that makes no difference to me, i don't measure performance in Frame Rates, unless its the only thing someone understands, remember back in the day when AMD's 7950 was getting higher Frame Rates than the GTX 670 and someone had the insight to say "hang on a minute, it may get higher Frame Rates but its a stutter fest" they were right and right to point it out.

High Frame Rates might as well be console Frame Rates if that's what the gameplay feels like, i will be upgrading my platform when i can afford it, the problem is i have to change the whole platform and that's expensive, even for a Ryzen 1600 thats going to cost me £500, yes for £170 more or even 'just' for the i5 £100 more i can get a 6 core Intel and have 350 FPS vs 300 FPS..... WOOOOOOW NO! the 1600 will be ultimately smooth, as smooth as the £350+ 8700K, the only way i will know the difference is if i turn the Frame Rate counter on and look at it, that warm fussy E-Peen feeling is not worth £170.

PS: do you have Insurgency? what CPU - GPU do you have..? go see for yourself, you will replicate it, it is what it is.

I also get the #### taken out of me by my friends for the performance i'm getting, an example of this, a friend sold one of his drives through the MM, when one of our other gaming partners picked it up in there he renamed it to this.... hilarious right? it never stops, i need to change this platform.

 

[Martini1991]

The difference in per core performance will be minimal just like everything from Sandybridge. Coffeemaker is just more Skylake again sadly. It will be 2019-2020 before we see a jump in single core performance from Intel.

If IPC increases a few percent but clocks to 5hhz as kabylake does then Intel will have a massive single threaded performance advantage due to Ryzen low clocks.

 

[gavinh87]

I know i will get higher Frame Rates because one of my regular gaming partners has a 1700X and does get higher performance than me, in everything we play, sometimes its a marginal improvement, other times the difference is huge.

Having said that the FPS is not what i'm worried about, not for as long as i'm getting good frame rates, 150 FPS vs 175 FPS or 300 FPS vs 350 FPS that makes no difference to me, i don't measure performance in Frame Rates, unless its the only thing someone understands, remember back in the day when AMD's 7950 was getting higher Frame Rates than the GTX 670 and someone had the insight to say "hang on a minute, it may get higher Frame Rates but its a stutter fest" they were right and right to point it out.

High Frame Rates might as well be console Frame Rates if that's what the gameplay feels like, i will be upgrading my platform when i can afford it, the problem is i have to change the whole platform and that's expensive, even for a Ryzen 1600 thats going to cost me £500, yes for £170 more or even 'just' for the i5 £100 more i can get a 6 core Intel and have 350 FPS vs 300 FPS..... WOOOOOOW NO! the 1600 will be ultimately smooth, as smooth as the £350+ 8700K, the only way i will know the difference is if i turn the Frame Rate counter on and look at it, that warm fussy E-Peen feeling is not worth £170.

PS: do you have Insurgency? what CPU - GPU do you have..? go see for yourself, you will replicate it, it is what it is.

Insurgency uses the source engine. In all other benchmarks like cs:go that uses that engine, intel beats it every time.
You will not be getting better framerates with ryzen than you will on a 4690k @ 4.5ghz. Frametimes, maybe.