Intel To Unveil 8th Generation Core Processor 'Coffee Lake' Family August 21

[turkey3_scratch]

I'm happy Intel feels like it needs to increase core counts which it could have done a very long time ago. Thanks AMD for making Intel pick up the pace. Got to love competition coming back to CPU's again.

Anyone else find a 30% increase in performance by adding 50% more cores(4 to 6) a little weird to boast about?

Intel definitely did the right thing by waiting, though. They always have had this buffer where, when this situation would finally come, they can just add more cores and call it a day.

By your logic Intel did the right thing by thwarting performance enhancements while maximizing consumer cost, which revenue they squandered on fruitless endeavors towards markets in which they've failed miserably? What they did benefited only their Company's profits and was no more than a slap in the face of loyal customers such as yourself!

Exactly. That's why they did the right thing for their business.

Just to confirm: you are praising Intel for stifling innovation and scalping consumers with
egregiously inflated pricing for the sake of personal profit as praiseworthy? A simple yes will suffice.

You should not take me out of context, you are creating a straw man argument here. I said they did the right thing for their business. And I believe Intel hires some very intelligent financial analysts who also agree with me. Would you agree?

 

[sfcampbell]

i3 having 4 Cores and no HT with base clock speed of 4.0Ghz is enough to tear down entire Ryzen lineup <$170. Good enough for me.

An i3 "tear(s) down entire Ryzen lineup"? Really? If you pull your head out of your FPS hind-side for five seconds, you might realize how absurd that comment really is...

I'm reading that to mean he thinks an i3 with 4 cores and a base frequency of 4 GHz (basically a locked version of today's i5 7600k) would beat any Ryzen priced <$170, ie the r5 1400 on down the stack. Not that the price of the i3 is the <$170 figure, and that it would beat any Ryzen model such as the r7 line.

@TMTOWTSAC, I applaud your fairness in trying to afford @freak777power the benefit of the doubt, but realistically his remark is not deserving of your pragmatism. In his own words the "i3 having 4 Cores and no HT... is enough to tear down entire Ryzen lineup". Given all the time and lenience of logical restraint there is no possibility he could justify this flagrantly absurd insinuation, whether it be for the Gen 8 i3 products or i5 7600k. His allegation is hopelessly erroneous. That was good enough for him!

 

[rhysiam]

@TMTOWTSAC, I applaud your fairness in trying to afford @freak777power the benefit of the doubt, but realistically his remark is not deserving of your pragmatism. In his own words the "i3 having 4 Cores and no HT... is enough to tear down entire Ryzen lineup". Given all the time and lenience of logical restraint there is no possibility he could justify this flagrantly absurd insinuation, whether it be for the Gen 8 i3 products or i5 7600k. His allegation is hopelessly erroneous. That was good enough for him!

No, the quote is "tear down entire Ryzen lineup <$170." That clearly says the entire Ryzen lineup under $170. Your quote cuts him off mid-sentence.
*edit* I can't believe I'm defending @Freak... but there you go! In this instance I think he makes a reasonable point.

 

[sfcampbell]

I'm happy Intel feels like it needs to increase core counts which it could have done a very long time ago. Thanks AMD for making Intel pick up the pace. Got to love competition coming back to CPU's again.

Anyone else find a 30% increase in performance by adding 50% more cores(4 to 6) a little weird to boast about?

Intel definitely did the right thing by waiting, though. They always have had this buffer where, when this situation would finally come, they can just add more cores and call it a day.

By your logic Intel did the right thing by thwarting performance enhancements while maximizing consumer cost, which revenue they squandered on fruitless endeavors towards markets in which they've failed miserably? What they did benefited only their Company's profits and was no more than a slap in the face of loyal customers such as yourself!

Exactly. That's why they did the right thing for their business.

Just to confirm: you are praising Intel for stifling innovation and scalping consumers with
egregiously inflated pricing for the sake of personal profit as praiseworthy? A simple yes will suffice.

You should not take me out of context, you are creating a straw man argument here. I said they did the right thing for their business. And I believe Intel hires some very intelligent financial analysts who also agree with me. Would you agree?

Our perceptions of the obvious have not differed; though our ideology does.

I agree that Intel has profited hand-over-fist while choking the life blood out of innovation for the sake of prolonging profitability at maximum cost of the consumer. I also agree that financial analysts would sell their souls to achieve the level Intel has attained in doing so. On these facts we agree!

I resent their hypocrisy feigning devotion to the advancement of their trade under false pretenses, whereas you are making it abundantly clear that your interest parallels that of the financiers instead of with all upon whom they capitalize.

Inversely sir, you are attempting to rationalize the shape of your argument, whereas I am representing its body.

 

[rhysiam]

You should not take me out of context, you are creating a straw man argument here. I said they did the right thing for their business. And I believe Intel hires some very intelligent financial analysts who also agree with me. Would you agree?

I always find these arguments on tech sites a little out-of-place. If this was a forum for share holders or market traders then absolutely, let's all praise big-business for their profit-maximisation strategies. But we're not (most of us) shareholders, we're tech enthusiasts. Surely what most of us want to see is innovation that opens up the potential for new experiences or new workflows, or progress with aggressive value for money that makes higher performance tiers accessible to a broader array of consumers?

Closed standards, vendors lock-ins and strategically managed drip-feed performance increments might be "good business", but generally speaking they stifle progress and are bad for the tech enthusiasts and bad for consumers.As tech enthusiasts I think we should be calling companies out when they do this, not praising them.

 

[sfcampbell]

@TMTOWTSAC, I applaud your fairness in trying to afford @freak777power the benefit of the doubt, but realistically his remark is not deserving of your pragmatism. In his own words the "i3 having 4 Cores and no HT... is enough to tear down entire Ryzen lineup". Given all the time and lenience of logical restraint there is no possibility he could justify this flagrantly absurd insinuation, whether it be for the Gen 8 i3 products or i5 7600k. His allegation is hopelessly erroneous. That was good enough for him!

No, the quote is "tear down entire Ryzen lineup <$170." That clearly says the entire Ryzen lineup under $170. Your quote cuts him off mid-sentence.
*edit* I can't believe I'm defending @Freak... but there you go! In this instance I think he makes a reasonable point.

Due to the inarticulate nature of @freak777power's post, neither you nor I can attest to the intended meaning behind it. Was he only comparing the i3 against only Ryzen processors less than $170 (as you claim), or was he saying the i3 for less than $170 "is enough to tear down entire Ryzen lineup"? There are a whopping two processors in "the entire Ryzen lineup" under $170. You don't think he could have mustered the sensibility to say "both Ryzen processors under $170" or "Ryzen 3s" since they are the only ones under $170?

He didn't; he said "the entire Ryzen lineup". I did not cut his post short at all -- the original quote was included in its entirety attached to my reply. If he had better written his original post this wouldn't be a point of discussion at all, but unless you or I read his mind the context of his message can only be interpreted from the form in which it was originally entered.

 

[sfcampbell]

You should not take me out of context, you are creating a straw man argument here. I said they did the right thing for their business. And I believe Intel hires some very intelligent financial analysts who also agree with me. Would you agree?

I always find these arguments on tech sites a little out-of-place. If this was a forum for share holders or market traders then absolutely, let's all praise big-business for their profit-maximisation strategies. But we're not (most of us) shareholders, we're tech enthusiasts. Surely what most of us want to see is innovation that opens up the potential for new experiences or new workflows, or progress with aggressive value for money that makes higher performance tiers accessible to a broader array of consumers?

Closed standards, vendors lock-ins and strategically managed drip-feed performance increments might be "good business", but generally speaking they stifle progress and are bad for the tech enthusiasts and bad for consumers.As tech enthusiasts I think we should be calling companies out when they do this, not praising them.

Thank you @rhysiam!

 

[turkey3_scratch]

-snip-

Our perceptions of the obvious have not differed; though our ideology does.

I agree that Intel has profited hand-over-fist while choking the life blood out of innovation for the sake of prolonging profitability at maximum cost of the consumer. I also agree that financial analysts would sell their souls to achieve the level Intel has attained in doing so. On these facts we agree!

I resent their hypocrisy feigning devotion to the advancement of their trade under false pretenses, whereas you are making it abundantly clear that your interest parallels that of the financiers instead of with all upon whom they capitalize.

Inversely sir, you are attempting to rationalize the shape of your argument, whereas I am representing its body.

It's just some processor chips, I just don't think it's that big of a deal here. It's their business, they are not, like, oppressing citizens or anything. And now you're just using big words which is making your point difficult to understand. logos over ethos.

So you don't like it, basically, is what I got out of that.

 

[rhysiam]

@sfcampbell: I'm sure neither of us want this to descend into a petty back-and-forth, so this will be my last response. While you're right, I can't read @Freak's mind, as I read it the meaning is pretty straightforward.

PCPartpicker has the sub $170 Ryzen lineup as everything up to (and including) the 1500X. It's four of the nine consumer Ryzen CPUs.

He didn't; he said "the entire Ryzen lineup". I did not cut his post short at all

I know you included the full quote originally, but every time you're re-quoting it, as you've done again above, you're cutting off the last, crucial part of the sentence: "<$170". Look at where the period/full stop is, it's after "<$170". So surely the only way to read that is with reference to "entire Ryzen lineup <$170".

I can say fairly confidently that, "I am faster than Usain Bolt at typing". If I've put a period/full stop at the end of the sentence, it would be pretty disingenuous for someone to drop the words "at typing" off the end of the sentence and then call me an idiot.

I'm done now.

Back on topic and whatever @Freak's meaning, I do think that an i3 priced quad core with decent 4Ghz+ would be a big, big problem for AMD. Current Zen dies are maxed at 4Ghz, and with their 8 core silicone, I don't think they're going to want to drop to the sub $100 pricing they would probably need to hit to compete effectively with a ~4Ghz quad core Intel @ ~$120.

 

[alextheblue]

Back on topic and whatever @Freak's meaning, I do think that an i3 priced quad core with decent 4Ghz+ would be a big, big problem for AMD. Current Zen dies are maxed at 4Ghz, and with their 8 core silicone, I don't think they're going to want to drop to the sub $100 pricing they would probably need to hit to compete effectively with a ~4Ghz quad core Intel @ ~$120.

Do you really believe Intel is going to release a 4Ghz quad core for $120? That's currently the domain of top-end ~$250 i5 CPUs - that would hurt their margins. I find it unlikely. Even with aggressive Ryzen pricing, most CPUs sold are still Intel. I don't see Intel panicking at this stage, not with AMD barely taking share from them. Also if they wanted to do that, they wouldn't need to wait for Coffee Lake. They could have slammed prices on existing chips. Coffee Lake isn't built on a new process, a quad core i3 would cost more to produce than current dual-core models (even if it does have a diminished iGPU compared to i5).

If and when AMD manages to seriously hurt Intel's sales, not just by making a dent in enthusiast desktops, but by making major headway in high-volume OEM markets (with integrated graphics)? At that point I would expect Intel to get very aggressive on pricing. Prior to that, they will balance performance against AMD. Coffee Lake WILL move the bar. There will be models with more performance at the all price points, and I expect their price/performance to mirror or even exceed AMD (at least in the near-term). But 4Ghz quad at $120? More like $150-170+. A 3-3.5 Ghz quad at $120-ish seems more likely.

 

[rhysiam]

Do you really believe Intel is going to release a 4Ghz quad core for $120? That's currently the domain of top-end ~$250 i5 CPUs - that would hurt their margins. I find it unlikely. Even with aggressive Ryzen pricing, most CPUs sold are still Intel. I don't see Intel panicking at this stage, not with AMD barely taking share from them. Also if they wanted to do that, they wouldn't need to wait for Coffee Lake. They could have slammed prices on existing chips. Coffee Lake isn't built on a new process, a quad core i3 would cost more to produce than current dual-core models (even if it does have a diminished iGPU compared to i5).

If and when AMD manages to seriously hurt Intel's sales, not just by making a dent in enthusiast desktops, but by making major headway in high-volume OEM markets (with integrated graphics)? At that point I would expect Intel to get very aggressive on pricing. Prior to that, they will balance performance against AMD. Coffee Lake WILL move the bar. There will be models with more performance at the all price points, and I expect their price/performance to mirror or even exceed AMD (at least in the near-term). But 4Ghz quad at $120? More like $150-170+. A 3-3.5 Ghz quad at $120-ish seems more likely.

Well that's the massive question that hopefully will be answered on the 21st. Compared to their current lineup a highly clocked quad core i3 looks pretty unlikely. But the rumours have pretty consistently had i7 as 6C12T, and i5s as 6C6T. **If** Intel maintain their current pricing structure (that is an "if"), then i3s are going to need to offer a bunch more to have a sensible position in the lineup.

Yes they could have slashed current pricing, but that would upset the established product tiers and market segmentation that has made Intel so much money over the last few years. Selling an i5 for $120, that's a bit embarrassing, no? On the other hand releasing a "new" lineup, with entirely different performance tiers while maintaining the established i3/i5/i7 segmentation and pricing is, in my mind at least, a more likely response from Intel.

RE Clock speeds, you may well be right. According to Intel Ark the high end locked i3s seem to be usually in the $140-150 range, which is higher than I thought off the top of my head. It's the entry level i3 models that usually sit at ~$120. So maybe $150 for a highly clocked (~4Ghz) locked i3 is more realistic based on past pricing. Even at $150 I still think that puts Ryzen quad cores in a tight spot. For sure it will be interesting to see actual specs and pricing.

 

[bit_user]

If only there were some way to harness the power of internet arguments to do useful work...

 

[kinggremlin]

You should not take me out of context, you are creating a straw man argument here. I said they did the right thing for their business. And I believe Intel hires some very intelligent financial analysts who also agree with me. Would you agree?

I always find these arguments on tech sites a little out-of-place. If this was a forum for share holders or market traders then absolutely, let's all praise big-business for their profit-maximisation strategies. But we're not (most of us) shareholders, we're tech enthusiasts. Surely what most of us want to see is innovation that opens up the potential for new experiences or new workflows, or progress with aggressive value for money that makes higher performance tiers accessible to a broader array of consumers?

Closed standards, vendors lock-ins and strategically managed drip-feed performance increments might be "good business", but generally speaking they stifle progress and are bad for the tech enthusiasts and bad for consumers.As tech enthusiasts I think we should be calling companies out when they do this, not praising them.

The people who make these arguments are people who don't live in a vacuum and are able to see the whole picture for what it is. Intel spends over 3 billion dollars a quarter on R&D. That money doesn't just fall out of the sky for Intel to use. AMD's quarterly revenue is barely 1/3 that. Intel has 1000's of highly compensated world class engineers who have to design and build the CPU's and chipsets that people here seem to think is some trivial matter. Assuming you have a job, I would think you would want the company you work for to maximize revenue so they can afford to pay you more.

How exactly do you determine that Intel is charging more than they should? Because you don't want to pay X $'s for a 10 core CPU you have no need for, but simply want so you can post it in your signature like anyone cares what's in your desktop? Don't decide based on AMD's prices. They haven't had a profitable quarter since 2014. You can see the results of having no R&D budget on the Radeon side of company with the underwhelming Vega that is over a year late and still no where near the performance of a 1080ti. It took Intel hitting a wall years ago, for AMD to catch up on the CPU side. The way GPU performance is increased means there is no such wall forthcoming for Nvidia. If AMD doesn't get their act together immediately, it's going to be a one horse race at the highend for years to come.

All the forum warriors can rant on about how AMD is kicking Intel's ass all over the place, but the fact is, undercutting the competition by 40% for no particular reason is an idiotic business decision. Who only buys a CPU if it is 40% cheaper for similar performance? AMD could have just as well undercut Intel by 25% and sold about the same number of CPU's. They're leaving money on the table that they can afford to leave. AMD needs to turn a profit very soon. If they can't increase R&D expenditures, pay off their long term debt and pay enough top level engineers to compete, then we will all lose going forward. But who cares about that? You're not a stockholder, you're an enthusiast that saved a few hundred bucks on an unneeded CPU today. That's what really matters.

 

[sos_nz]

To put it another way: the Intel marketing and financial departments are a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

 

[f3d3100]

Welp, wanted to upgrade my i5 6500 to an i7 with 6 cores and 12 threads... Guess I can't gg Intel.
AMD wait for me, I'm cominnngggg!

 

[f3d3100]

Welp, wanted to upgrade my i5 7500 to an i7 with 6 cores and 12 threads...
Guess I can't anymore Good Job Intel.
AMD wait for me, I'm cominggg

 

[zippyzion]

i3 8350k is unlocked i3 CPU with 4 cores and 4.0Ghz base clock with the price of <= $170...

With less cache than a current i5, which means it will not perform as well as a current i5, which means it isn't tearing down anything. AMD chips are still fairly competitive with high end i5s in gaming. What Intel will do is level the field in multi threaded productivity tasks, where AMD currently exceeds them.

Intel won't be getting much better performance in games, partially because games STILL aren't optimized to take advantage of lots of threads, and ESPECIALLY because of little to no IPC improvements. So your new i3's will perform like low end i5s. Your i5s will perform like (probably Haswell or Broadwell) i7s. Your i7s will be much closer to lower end i9 (6c/12t was once the HEDT dream)... but only in multi threaded applications. If you have a program that utilizes 4 cores, it still only utilizes 4 cores, and unless individual cores get faster you won't gain much in performance.

As for this being a rushed launch, it is, but only slightly. When Ryzen R7 dropped months ago Intel moved up Coffee Lake by something like 4 or 5 months, but had to drop it back because apparently you can't launch a processor with so many changes so quickly. So, it is still a slightly earlier launch than originally planned.

 

[AgentLozen]

i3 having 4 Cores and no HT with base clock speed of 4.0Ghz is enough to tear down entire Ryzen lineup <$170. Good enough for me.

Freak777power came over my house last night and we played Mario Kart 64. My mom made us brownies so that was pretty sweet (no pun intended). In one race, I was leading the entire time but then freak777power hit me with a blue shell just before I crossed the finish line and he won instead.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that freak777power is super cool irl and we're BEST FRIENDS. Please don't give him a hard time. =)

Edit: Does zippyzion not like Mario Kart 64?

 

[GOKU4LIV]

Intel THE BEST for cpu game..... Nvidia THE BEST for PRO GAMERS..... AMD RYZEN have a bug in linux, and amd radeon slow and It has a high energy consumption

 

[AgentLozen]

Intel THE BEST for cpu game..... Nvidia THE BEST for PRO GAMERS..... AMD RYZEN have a bug in linux, and amd radeon slow and It has a high energy consumption

You know, you might be right about all of that.

Benchmarks have shown that the Core i7 7700k puts out higher frames than anything by AMD in most games. Similarly, Nvidia typically has more powerful and more efficient gpus than AMD also.

It's important to note that this accounts for very few real life use cases. AMD has competitive hardware and is the BOSS at pricing. Many people prefer AMD because of this.

Can anyone think of a good analogy that describes how silly GOKU4LIV is being? I'll start:

It's like saying a pickup truck is the best kind of vehicle because it can tow a boat. That's a specific use case to you. Not everyone needs to tow a boat.

Someone else do one now.

 

[MASOUTH]

It's like saying a fire is the best way to warm a house. That's a specific use case to you. Some of us got bronchitis, we ain't got time for that.

 

[bit_user]

A Coffee Lake powered laptop won't be available for several months after the desktop chips are released. This is based on history of previous mobile CPU releases after the desktops.

Kaby Lake and Broadwell were mobile-first. Of course, Broadwell is a bit of an outlier, since the desktop parts were largely MIA.

 

[sfcampbell]

You should not take me out of context, you are creating a straw man argument here. I said they did the right thing for their business. And I believe Intel hires some very intelligent financial analysts who also agree with me. Would you agree?

I always find these arguments on tech sites a little out-of-place. If this was a forum for share holders or market traders then absolutely, let's all praise big-business for their profit-maximisation strategies. But we're not (most of us) shareholders, we're tech enthusiasts. Surely what most of us want to see is innovation that opens up the potential for new experiences or new workflows, or progress with aggressive value for money that makes higher performance tiers accessible to a broader array of consumers?

Closed standards, vendors lock-ins and strategically managed drip-feed performance increments might be "good business", but generally speaking they stifle progress and are bad for the tech enthusiasts and bad for consumers.As tech enthusiasts I think we should be calling companies out when they do this, not praising them.

The people who make these arguments are people who don't live in a vacuum and are able to see the whole picture for what it is. Intel spends over 3 billion dollars a quarter on R&D. That money doesn't just fall out of the sky for Intel to use. AMD's quarterly revenue is barely 1/3 that. Intel has 1000's of highly compensated world class engineers who have to design and build the CPU's and chipsets that people here seem to think is some trivial matter. Assuming you have a job, I would think you would want the company you work for to maximize revenue so they can afford to pay you more.

How exactly do you determine that Intel is charging more than they should? Because you don't want to pay X $'s for a 10 core CPU you have no need for, but simply want so you can post it in your signature like anyone cares what's in your desktop? Don't decide based on AMD's prices. They haven't had a profitable quarter since 2014. You can see the results of having no R&D budget on the Radeon side of company with the underwhelming Vega that is over a year late and still no where near the performance of a 1080ti. It took Intel hitting a wall years ago, for AMD to catch up on the CPU side. The way GPU performance is increased means there is no such wall forthcoming for Nvidia. If AMD doesn't get their act together immediately, it's going to be a one horse race at the highend for years to come.

All the forum warriors can rant on about how AMD is kicking Intel's ass all over the place, but the fact is, undercutting the competition by 40% for no particular reason is an idiotic business decision. Who only buys a CPU if it is 40% cheaper for similar performance? AMD could have just as well undercut Intel by 25% and sold about the same number of CPU's. They're leaving money on the table that they can afford to leave. AMD needs to turn a profit very soon. If they can't increase R&D expenditures, pay off their long term debt and pay enough top level engineers to compete, then we will all lose going forward. But who cares about that? You're not a stockholder, you're an enthusiast that saved a few hundred bucks on an unneeded CPU today. That's what really matters.

If Intel brags about $3b per quarter in R&D but how much do they spend on bribes, racketeering, and market manipulation (a.k.a. manufacturer rebates, loyalty discounts, and monogamy incentives)? If you saw the numbers I would not be surprised to find out it's way higher than their R&D budget. Bought & paid for by single minded Intel fanatics too blind to see you have to buy a $1,000 processor to get more PCI-E lanes than you had 10 years ago! That's not the providing the best product value, that's using a monopoly to scalp your consumer base.

And why does Intel not brag about how much they spend quarterly on market manipulation? Oh yeah, I know -- because it's illegal!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osSMJRyxG0k

 

[Shumok]

I do think the new i5's with 6 cores and 6 threads will be the new gaming value champs...until the next iteration of R5's.

 

[sfcampbell]

@sfcampbell: I'm sure neither of us want this to descend into a petty back-and-forth, so this will be my last response. While you're right, I can't read @Freak's mind, as I read it the meaning is pretty straightforward.

PCPartpicker has the sub $170 Ryzen lineup as everything up to (and including) the 1500X. It's four of the nine consumer Ryzen CPUs.

He didn't; he said "the entire Ryzen lineup". I did not cut his post short at all

I know you included the full quote originally, but every time you're re-quoting it, as you've done again above, you're cutting off the last, crucial part of the sentence: "<$170". Look at where the period/full stop is, it's after "<$170". So surely the only way to read that is with reference to "entire Ryzen lineup <$170".

I can say fairly confidently that, "I am faster than Usain Bolt at typing". If I've put a period/full stop at the end of the sentence, it would be pretty disingenuous for someone to drop the words "at typing" off the end of the sentence and then call me an idiot.

I'm done now.

Back on topic and whatever @Freak's meaning, I do think that an i3 priced quad core with decent 4Ghz+ would be a big, big problem for AMD. Current Zen dies are maxed at 4Ghz, and with their 8 core silicone, I don't think they're going to want to drop to the sub $100 pricing they would probably need to hit to compete effectively with a ~4Ghz quad core Intel @ ~$120.

@rhysiam, I honestly am not trying to be argumentative. I actually respect and have voted up many of the remarks you've made on these threads! And I'm not trying to manipulate @freak's original post -- the whole post was quoted in my first reply, and was only cut shorter in subsequent replies.

@freak's original post was ambiguous, so much so that I can't prove my interpretation of his post is more accurate than an alternative view. He has however made frequent and repetitious flagrant remarks with little to no substantiation; trolling Intel fanboy-ism such as the following post:

It is going to be funny to watch Coffee Lake i3 8350K <$170 CPU to tear down entire Ryzen lineup including Thread Ripper in about every game.

(link: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3490224/intel-unwraps-rest-core-series-cpu-family.html)

I appreciate your politeness discussing our different interpretations of his post, and I apologize if my replies have seem in any way disrespectful to you as this was not my intent. Personally I don't believe @freak deserves the benefit of the doubt you are affording him.