Coffee Lake or Ice Lake?

[jimbothejester]

Is there any reason I shouldn’t go with an i7 8700k right now and wait for Ice Lake? Just curious. I’m trying not to fall in the hole of waiting for the next new tech to release in order to justify my purchase.

 

[InvalidError]

Some people are saying that Cannonlake will be mobile only while others seem to think there will be a desktop line in the 300 series chipset.

That's exactly what I mean when I said "Intel might pull another Broadwell with Cannonlake" - it may launch a desktop variant but not put any meaningful marketing or availability behind it. Before Broadwell launched, Intel clearly aimed it at embedded and mobile markets by offering it only in BGA packaging, just like Cannonlake currently is.

Just like Broadwell-S (desktop Broadwell) which launched several months after embedded parts and mere months before Skylake, desktop Cannonlake (Cannonlake-S?) may end up launching only a handful of months before Icelake. Considering how Intel ended up scuttling Broadwell-S, it isn't too hard to imagine why it may not want to bother with repeating the experience. Yet another parallel with Broadwell which got preceded by Haswell-Refresh to fill in the product gap from Broadwell's delays, Cannonlake is also now also preceded by Reheated Coffee.

History may very well repeat itself.

 

[kol12]

This could be interesting. Seems to indicate that Coffee Lake is based on Cannon Lake architecture.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/09/14/exclusive-the-secret-of-intel-corporations-coffee.aspx

 

[InvalidError]

This could be interesting. Seems to indicate that Coffee Lake is based on Cannon Lake architecture.

Since Cannon Lake is Kaby Lake's 10nm shrink, that technically makes no difference, they're all fundamentally Kabies/Skyes. Intel has been sitting on Cannon Lake's taped-out design for over a year due to delays with 10nm. Basically doing an optical blow-up of an existing design makes sense as an extra in-between generation (Coffee) to pull out of its ass on short notice when an unexpected threat (Ryzen) arises.

 

[Gon Freecss]

Just ignore InvalidError. He clearly doesn't know what he's talking about.

Cannonlake-S was scrapped a long time ago when Intel realized they had a problem with 10nm, thus creating Kaby Lake (14nm+) and Coffee Lake (14nm++). They share the same basic micro-architecture with Skylake, but with errata fixes and better memory support. Also better/tweaked process nodes for higher clocks. Cannonlake-S was slated for 2016 with an 8 core mainstream part, but that never came up due to 10nm problems.

Intel are skipping desktop Cannonlake entirely, and are releasing Icelake next, which will be the next micro-architecture after Skylake. It will also be built on the 10nm+ process. It will bring 8 cores to the mainstream, and it will be likely launched either the end of this year, or the start of next year. I'm not sure whether Icelake will be supported on Z390, since it's a Cannonlake chipset, but we'll see.

Also, the 7900X is a native 10 core die, and not a cut down 12 core die. The 7820X is a cut down 10 core die, and it's of the Skylake-X family, a different micro-architecture from the current Skylake, Kaby Lake, and Coffee Lake family.

 

[kol12]

Most of the rumors I have read now seem fairly confident the 9700K (or similarly named) will be an 8 core mainstream chip on the Coffee Lake architecture released towards the end of the year on Z390. I would imagine Icelake desktop chips will come on the 10nm process eventually but no one knows when. Apparently Intel are still having trouble with 10nm in mobile chips..

I finally made a decision in the last few days and have purchased a Coffee Lake system. I figure the 9700K (incoming 8 core) will not perform as well in single thread as the 8700K and will likely be more expensive too (when have Intel ever released an 8 core in a mainstream price bracket?) I also don't think there will be anything significant in the desktop space compared to Coffee Lake until at least 10nm is well matured. Coffee Lake is the best right now and will be for some time. Sure there may be some new chipset features along the way but the Z370 chipset has everything that I need.

Have you seen some of the benchmarks? The 8700K performs nearly as well as the 10 core 7900K in productivity tasks!

 

[Gon Freecss]

Most of the rumors I have read now seem fairly confident the 9700K (or similarly named) will be an 8 core mainstream chip on the Coffee Lake architecture released towards the end of the year on Z390. I would imagine Icelake desktop chips will come on the 10nm process eventually but no one knows when. Apparently Intel are still having trouble with 10nm in mobile chips..

I finally made a decision in the last few days and have purchased a Coffee Lake system. I figure the 9700K (incoming 8 core) will not perform as well in single thread as the 8700K and will likely be more expensive too (when have Intel ever released an 8 core in a mainstream price bracket?) I also don't think there will be anything significant in the desktop space compared to Coffee Lake until at least 10nm is well matured. Coffee Lake is the best right now and will be for some time. Sure there may be some new chipset features along the way but the Z370 chipset has everything that I need.

Have you seen some of the benchmarks? The 8700K performs nearly as well as the 10 core 7900K in productivity tasks!

Well, then they're wrong. The 9th generation is confirmed to be Icelake by Intel.

How wouldn't not perform as good as the 8700K if it was practically just an 8700K with two more cores? That doesn't make any sense.

Uh, yeah, if those tasks don't utilize more than 6 cores. Otherwise, the 7900X crushes.

 

[kol12]

I didn't say the 9th gen wouldn't be Ice Lake. I said the upcoming 8 core is likely to be Coffee Lake released alongside Z390.

I would say the limitation in 8 cores clocking as high as the 8700K is power consumption. 8 cores running at 4.7-5.0 Ghz would be a huge power demand. The 8700K already runs very warm as a 4.7 Ghz chip. I would not doubt that Intel will achieve this eventually but I am not sure it will in the next 8 core chip. I could be wrong.

I may have exaggerated the 8700K/7900K comparison but the 8700K is definitely up there in multithreaded task performance, well above Ryzen 8 cores.

 

[Gon Freecss]

I didn't say the 9th gen wouldn't be Ice Lake. I said the upcoming 8 core is likely to be Coffee Lake released alongside Z390.

I would say the limitation in 8 cores clocking as high as the 8700K is power consumption. 8 cores running at 4.7-5.0 Ghz would be a huge power demand. The 8700K already runs very warm as a 4.7 Ghz chip. I would not doubt that Intel will achieve this eventually but I am not sure it will in the next 8 core chip. I could be wrong.

I may have exaggerated the 8700K/7900K comparison but the 8700K is definitely up there in multithreaded task performance, well above Ryzen 8 cores.

You said the 9700K will be an 8 core Coffee Lake above.

The 8700K runs warm because of its use of thermal paste between the die and the IHS. Delidded chips at beyond 5GHz run below 70 degrees in the AIDA 64 CPU test. A delidded 5.4GHz 8600K (1.45V) runs at 64.5C in the AIDA 64 test.

Eh, it depends on the task. Also, if the task is heavily throughput reliant and not latency reliant, the 8700K only matches the 8 core Ryzen chips. If it were a mix of both, the 8700K pulls ahead. If the task is latency reliant, then the 8700K wrecks lol

The 7900X is still better in multi-threading. However, in very latency and L3 cache reliant applications, the 8700K wins.