Core i7-8700K Review: Coffee Lake Brews A Great Gaming CPU

[madmatt30]

^ well no not really .
Best gaming & streaming CPU for the $450-500 price range - because you absolutely without a doubt need $100-150 240mm+ aio to get the most from it.

 

[saunupe1911]

^The question is which 240mm currently supports it? Will 1151 mounting hardware suffice?

 

[Scott_123]

blah, blah, blah, spend more money, blah, blah, blah, not much faster, blah, blah, blah, thermal constraints, blah, blah, blah, no reason to upgrade...

 

[madmatt30]

@saunupe1911 - same mounting from what I see so yes.

 

[saunupe1911]

@saunupe1911 - same mounting from what I see so yes.

Thanks...I wasn't sure about all of that. I think I will wait for Cannon Lake. I need a 6 core to hit 5.0Ghz without crashing. And better efficiency. This chips seems rushed. My 6700k will suffice for now.

 

[karma77police]

^ well no not really .
Best gaming & streaming CPU for the $450-500 price range - because you absolutely without a doubt need $100-150 240mm+ aio to get the most from it.

Like i would run Ryzen without AIO cooler. In my book 8700K is the best gaming/streamer/content creation CPU i can get for $350+. And z370 mobo is around $160 dollars.

 

[madmatt30]

^ $360+$160+$120 = $640.

So yeah CPU wise maybe but total system cost wise there is a massive gap .

Unless you're running 144htz & insist on 144fps on just about every title then its not a value proposition.

On a 75htz screen a $180 ryzen 1600 will so exact the same job.
That doesn't need an expensive cooler or an expensive board .

But yes if you have a fairly unlimited budget it is without a doubt the best mainstream CPU there is.

I just don't get the amazement & fanfare from.some people on here , its a refinement of kaby lake with extra cores & threads so ita performance was never going to be a debate anyway.

There are only 2 slight surprises for me personally (neither of them good ones) & that's the temperatures & the power draw stock or overclocked.

This CPU is irrelevant to amd entirely IMO , as I said before the bottom end i3 & i5 are the only real direct competitors .

 

[almostdecent]

One cannot overlook the cost of the system as well. The real battle will be at the mid-range between the i5-8600k and the Ryzen 1700 or 1700x. The Intel is roughly $630+ ($260 for CPU, $160 mobo - low-end, $160 16GB DDR4, $50 for half-decent cooler), and the AMD is $500 ($260 for 1700 cpu, $90 mobo - mid-range, $160GB DDR4, comes with Wraith cooler), which makes it also 20% cheaper, and still with 8 cores. Hardware.fr has results on all, and the conclusion was that the Ryzen 1700-1700x is the better performers on applications, while the Intel i5-8600k is clearly the better gaming machine.

 

[A Stoner]

I have an Intel I7-980X 6 core overclocked to 4.3Ghz, I like to seriously multi task play android games, and can currently run 8 instances of an android emulator smoothly, 13 with significant lag and temporary lockups. I would like to run all 13 instances without the lag/lockups, about how much more headroom would this architecture give me if I upgraded to this processor with 32 or 64 gb of ram?

 

[Armando_0818]

should I upgrade from an i7-6850k?

 

[CaptainTom]

"overclocking headroom". Errhhh no this goes from 4.7 - 5.1GHz. That's a tiny increase compared to the 3.5 - 4.5GHz years of old.

 

[CaptainTom]

I think my biggest problem with the 8700K is that it effectively changes nothing. Up until now I recommended:

-R5 1600 to 95% of builders
-R5 1700 to those who stream or do a ton of productivity on a budget
-Threadripper to mega-taskers
-i7-7700K to 1080 144Hz+ gamers

Now I will just recommend the 8700K to 1080p 144Hz+ gamers. Nothing's changed except the price is now higher for slightly better performance....

 

[TJ Hooker]

"overclocking headroom". Errhhh no this goes from 4.7 - 5.1GHz. That's a tiny increase compared to the 3.5 - 4.5GHz years of old.

4.7 GHz is single core turbo. From what I can find online, all core turbo is 4.3 GHz. So if you can get it to 5.0-5.1 GHz on all cores, that's a 700-800 MHz overclock. Not massive, but not tiny either.

 

[MaCk0y]

There's a slight mistake on the first page.

"As expected, most models continue to wield 2MB of L3 and 256MB of L2 cache per core."

 

[mapesdhs]

"Intel reminds us, though, that it offers up to 40 lanes when we add the platform controller hub's 24. "

Please, stop. Don't let Intel get away with another twist of PR terminology, it's incrediby misleading (you should remind Intel the only thing connecting the chipset to the CPU is a single DMI 3.0 link). No way would any review of CPUs years ago have added the chipset lanes to those from the CPU, other reviewers and people on the forums would have scorned such a notion. Have a chat with Ian at AT about this, he has a strong position on the PR spin of adding lanes together in this way for marketing.

Ian.

 

[mapesdhs]

I have an Intel I7-980X 6 core overclocked to 4.3Ghz, I like to seriously multi task play android games, and can currently run 8 instances of an android emulator smoothly, 13 with significant lag and temporary lockups. I would like to run all 13 instances without the lag/lockups, ...

If that's the sort of task spread you have to contend with, wouldn't you be better off sourcing a used X79 mbd like an R4E or WS and fitting it with a low-cost 10-core XEON E5-2680 V2?

Ian.

 

[madmatt30]

I have a 6600K which I can't overclock past 4.2ghz without lots of heat (lost the Silicon Lottery).

I play lots of 64 player BF1 and regularly see 100% CPU usage.

Is this worth the upgrade long term?

No not unless you stream ,render or do heavy multitasking/rendering/productivity.

For straight gaming it offers pretty much nothing over a 6700k/7700k - they will not require a $150-200 board replacement.

That said ,if you cant wait then a z370 board & one of the 6 core i5's would probably be as beneficial as going for a kably/skylake i7 with the benefit of having a board that should be ready for the 10nm cannon lake chips that are a 'proper' refinement of the current chips.

These coffee lakes were absolutely rushed imo because amd are making big footholds in the $200 & below market & intel could not let that happen.

 

[madmatt30]

I think my biggest problem with the 8700K is that it effectively changes nothing. Up until now I recommended:

-R5 1600 to 95% of builders
-R5 1700 to those who stream or do a ton of productivity on a budget
-Threadripper to mega-taskers
-i7-7700K to 1080 144Hz+ gamers

Now I will just recommend the 8700K to 1080p 144Hz+ gamers. Nothing's changed except the price is now higher for slightly better performance....

Except really you wouldnt ?? You'd be recommending the 8600k 6 core i5 for straight gamers because its $100 less & they dont need the hyperthreading.

 

[madmatt30]

I have an Intel I7-980X 6 core overclocked to 4.3Ghz, I like to seriously multi task play android games, and can currently run 8 instances of an android emulator smoothly, 13 with significant lag and temporary lockups. I would like to run all 13 instances without the lag/lockups, about how much more headroom would this architecture give me if I upgraded to this processor with 32 or 64 gb of ram?

Emulators inside windows ?

If so thats a limitation of windows being unable to efficiently release resources to each emulator & maybe your ram, & also a limitation of splittting gpu resources efficiently.
Your processor at that speed is still strong enough irregardless of how old it is.

Why do you need 13 instances running simultaneously ?? Do you have 13 monitors & 13 pairs of eyes & hands??

To run more than 7 or 8 with intensive apps running on each you need 32gb ram & you need to set core affinities in task manager for each instance & set a seperate thread for each one.

Your issue is software based not hardware.

 

[pug_s]

AMD is more efficient than Intel CPU's. Though for people like me, I want the best bang for the buck, I would probably look at the i3-8100. Decent quad core near $120 that's definitely a good buy.

 

[madmatt30]

Chipzilla !
[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T65rW_SIzg0"][/video]
:lol:

Unless you're living off a big trust fund or have incredibly low self esteem in need of epeen, 'general computing and gaming' works just dandy on a Kaby i5 or Ryzen 5 --- either with great combos between $300-$400.

And stay away from overhead power lines ...

I disagree with you fairly consistently a lot of the time - however you nailed it completely with that comment & then posted one of the most under rated songs of the 20th century - For that you get my gratitiude & a upvote [:madmatt30:1]

Im going to go & listen to some B.O.C at high volume now

 

[madmatt30]

should I upgrade from an i7-6850k?

If you have unlimited amounts of money,need a bigger epeen ,& always want the latest stuff no matter what ? Yes you should absolutely

If its just about performance & you're a sensible kind of guy with a normal job & better things to spend money on ???
No absolutely not.

 

[madmatt30]

I don't understand why the conclusion keeps bringing up you needing to buy a motherboard if you want to use your new cpu. Especially when comparing it to AMD. Is AMD giving away free motherboards with the purchase of a Ryzen CPU? You're going to have to buy a new motherboard regardless of which cpu you decide to go with.

Why ?? Because around 50% of current PC gamers are running socket 1151 boards already.
While the coffee lake is touted as socket 1151 current boards are incompatible completely.

Someone who owns an i5 6500/6600k/7500/7500k cannot upgrade to these cpu's without a 'platform' change.
Intel can call it the same socket but apart from the cooler mount points it absolutely is not.

You cant compare to amd & ryzen at all,That was an entirely new chipset & amd's first major socket change in 7 years.

 

[bjornl]

Why no comparison to Intel's other 6-core processors? It would seem a logical "like vs. like" comparison to include.

 

[madmatt30]

I just read that the coffee lake boards aren't backward compatible with sky/kaby CPU's??

Is this right ??
It doesn't sound right to me :-/ ?!?!

If that's true that is maybe the biggest FU to current skylake / kaby lake CPU owners that Intel could possibly have managed.