Coffee Lake Coming With 1151 Socket, But Still Requires 300-Series Chipset

Status
Not open for further replies.

jtd871

Distinguished
Jan 26, 2012
114
0
18,680
I'd be stunned if the new 300-series mobos supported Kaby or Skylake. Not that it wouldn't be possible, but there would be no practical point. With Coffee Lake available (and priced to compete against Ryzen), who would buy Kaby or Skylake CPUs to put in the new motherboards?!
 

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator

Back when there used to be significant market pressure on Intel some 10+ years ago, new generations of CPUs spelled significant price cuts (20-50%) on most of the older stuff to clear motherboard, chipset and CPU inventory. Drop the prices of Kaby Lake i3/5/7 by something like 30% and they become compelling value propositions against Coffee Lake.
 

epobirs

Distinguished
Jul 18, 2011
197
13
18,695
Beats me but I've never been big on changing out bits of an existing build. I might use previously untapped resources, like empty RAM slots but I've never had the urge to change out for a different CPU or other major changes if it isn't broken. I'd rather plan a new build if there is interesting new stuff to work with. OTOH, I generally don't go in for really expensive builds either, so I don't have great sunk costs to recover.
 

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator

I don't bother with it either, unless I have an opportunity to do so for really cheap or free. One of my friends bricked his motherboard by flashing the wrong BIOS, I haven't been successful in unbricking the board due to both SPI Flash chips being fried (one won't accept programming while the other has tons of errors), so he let me keep his CPU+MoBo+board as compensation for the time I spent trying to fix it since he couldn't find affordable z68/77 motherboards from trusted sources. I ended up scavenging his i7-2600k to upgrade my i5-3470.
 

MichaelElfial

Commendable
Oct 22, 2016
9
0
1,510
I wonder if the new boards will support Xeon CPU the way we had this until Haswell. It doesn't seem to be place in this short list for a CPU without graphics and consequently cheaper, supporting Xeons will open some options in that direction I hope...
 

Druidsmark

Commendable
Aug 22, 2016
43
1
1,530
I'm building a brand new custom built intel computer in the second half of next year so this is good news for me, as I'm more interested in the 300-series boards for my new pc. Still undecided on whether to go Coffe Lake or Sky Lake though as I have nott really seen much information to let me know whether I should go 6 core or 8 core for a new processor next year, thinking I would prefer an 8 core processor. Will be building it for 4k gaming, to replace my 1080p gaming computer I use currently.
 

compprob237

Distinguished

I'm with you here with one exception: My LGA1366 build. The 6-core Xeons got so cheap that upgrading to one, from an i7-920, became a good proposition especially considering my plans to use it as an on-demand game server.
 

ibjeepr

Distinguished
Oct 11, 2012
632
0
19,010


If you're looking to build in the second half of next year I can assure you all of this will be irrelevant by then. I'm willing to bet the 300 series mobos will be a one and done. 10nm Cannon Lake Chips will be out by the time you're looking to build and I would suspect they won't go into a 1151 socket or 300 series board.
 

adrianoabobora1

Distinguished
Apr 9, 2008
4
0
18,510
If theres really this lack of backward compatibility with 200-series motherboards (or 100 for that matters), and Intel is traying to force me to buy a whole new Mobo, IF (big capital letters here) that mobo is going to be Intel family, it will be a X299, with a way better possible future upgrades, as in a 18 cores cpu. There´s no way I´d by a 300 mobo for a top 6 cores CPU with a X299 mobo with the same 6 cores CPU with a probable same price and a possible huge future upgrade. No way.
 

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator

Even if you buy an X299 board, Intel changes socket specs for HEDT every other year just like it does for desktop and you'll still need a new motherboard for every other generation anyway, which would make Kaby Lake (E)X the last CPUs likely to launch on LGA2066v1/X299.

HEDT platforms are a waste of money and no more future-proof than mainstream platforms if you aren't going to need their HEDT features in the near-future. Better off building mainstream to skip HEDT platforms until you actually need one.
 

Well if you fried your mobo for some reason, wouldn't it be great if you could replace it with one you could eventually put a newer CPU in? Also the old CPUs might potentially be heavily discounted, and again putting it in a new mobo that you can use for a possible future upgrade would be a nice to have imo.

 

kinggremlin

Distinguished
Jul 14, 2009
574
41
19,010
This isn't an entirely new tactic from Intel, but we need a good reason to upgrade from the eight-month old Kaby Lake-era Z270 motherboards

Spoiler alert. There isn't one. Why on earth would someone replace their just released latest generation when purchased CPU after 8 months? No one is on an annual upgrade cycle for CPU's. I just don't get why this point keeps getting brought up like it actually affects anyone except people who have more money than sense. There is no reason to upgrade every new CPU generation, or even every other one. It isn't 2003 any more. You want/need? a 6 core CPU for under $400? You could have bought a 5820k over THREE years ago. Does an HEDT board cost a bit more? Sure, but even at release there were boards under $200, and you wouldn't have had to upgrade for at least 3 years, which would have saved significant money over upgrading every generation of the mainstream CPU.
 

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator

The reason people are upset that Intel is putting its new CPUs on new sockets every other year are upset specifically because they would like their costly enthusiast motherboard to be good for more than one generation forward so they wouldn't have to change motherboards every other year and be able to upgrade to something two or more years newer than what they currently have instead of only one year newer at best when they buy into the first generation for a new socket.
 

kinggremlin

Distinguished
Jul 14, 2009
574
41
19,010


Your post has no relevance to the quote in my post I was commenting on. The quote from THG specifically asks for a reason to upgrade an 8 month old Kaby Lake CPU. There isn't one. Coffee Lake is not going to be generationally faster.

The point you made is still not a valid argument. There is no performance based reason to upgrade anything newer than a i7 Haswell CPU. That's a more than 4 year old architecture. Since then, we've seen Broadwell, Skylake, and Kaby Lake. Take a look at this link and see the slow trudge of performance:

https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/Intel-Core-i7-7700K-Review-Kaby-Lake-and-14nm/Clock-Clock-Kaby-Lake-Skylake-Broad

Going from Haswell to Kaby Lake you're looking at best case scenario about 15% increase, more typically 10% in CPU intensive tasks, and obviously far less in most typical desktop scenarios. If you're upgrading a Haswell or newer system, it's just because you want something new to play with, not because you're going to see any real world performance increase. In that scenario you'd want a new motherboard to play with as well.

If Coffee Lake is a worthy upgrade for Haswell, then that means Intel would have to support FIVE CPU generations with one chipset for you to have a worthwhile drop in upgrade. So my point should be obvious. Whether Intel supports 1,2,3 or even 4 generations of CPU's with one chipset is irrelevant, because there is no performance based reason to upgrade CPU's that close to each other.
 

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator

If you read the forums with any sort of regularity, you would know that there is still quite a large number of people who still want to exactly that anyway. Newer platforms support native NVMe, USB 3.1-gen2/3.2, DDR4, higher speed chipset link to alleviate the chipset bottleneck, etc. which is enough to convince some people to upgrade even if there is little CPU performance gain.
 

wifiburger

Distinguished
Feb 21, 2016
613
106
19,190
I think Intel chipset are bit out of wack ! they should integrate most stuff on CPU and have a generic chipset supporting multiple CPUs, this in turn would reduce the cost of both cpu and chipset by streamlining their production !
 

gavin.makinson

Prominent
Sep 9, 2017
1
0
510
So as far as the question who would buy a 370 board for a kaby lake or skylake cpu. I will use myself as an example. Now the move to coffee lake involves basically spending twice as much do to needing a new board to go with it. I am looking to upgrade from 7600k to a 8700k and that amount of money in one shot is a bit much for me. If the 370 boards have backwards compatibility I at least have the option of buying a 370 board then picking up the new cpu once I either sell my 7600k or wait till I have more money.
 

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator

All of the performance-critical stuff is already integrated in the CPU. AMD and Intel still use chipsets for the extra IO because chipsets can be manufactured on older (cheaper) processes instead of wasting die area on the CPU for functionality which doesn't require the most advanced process currently available.

AMD's history with AM2/3(+) isn't particularly clean either with many boards that should have been compatible with newer CPUs ending up not being so, at least not without some caveats. Changing chipsets and tweaking sockets every other year eliminates most of that problem. Want to bet that by the time Zen 3 comes along, it'll require AM4+ to work properly?
 

bodlat25

Reputable
Dec 19, 2014
8
0
4,510
I'm holding back on upgrading my Budget Haswell Refresh System for Coffee Lake. If this new Intel CPU is not backward compatibility instead of upgrading to Kaby Lake just jump to Coffee Lake for significant improvement with 2 more cores. I also holding back my GPU for Volta.
 

kinggremlin

Distinguished
Jul 14, 2009
574
41
19,010


Please stop quoting my posts, if nothing in your response has anything to do with what I typed in the post you quoted. Thank you.
 

ayylmayo6969

Prominent
Sep 9, 2017
1
0
510
I spent 200$ for my z270 board, knowing I have no upgrade path to coffeelake, despite it being the same socket, upsets me, I might just consider AMD this time around, sorry Intel you've lost it.
 

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator

Intel has been doing two generations of chipsets per CPU generation for the past ~20 years. It hasn't "lost it", it is just doing exactly the same thing that it's been doing practically since the dawn of VLSI chipsets in the 90s.
 

Olle P

Distinguished
Apr 7, 2010
720
61
19,090
Exactly! To get all of those new goodies you'll need a new motherboard, so why not get a new chipset with it?

You bought a motherboard now but won't buy a CPU for it until Coffee Lake is released? Why? :??:

As for previous generation hardware getting on sale I don't see that in Sweden. Since Kaby Lake was released most Skylake CPUs have stayed at their old price, just being available from a decreasing number of retailers. :(
 
Status
Not open for further replies.