PC Tech - Part 5 - Intel Core i7 8700k 8th Gen Chips released... Ryzen 7 1800x compared.
It was inevitable that Intel was going to release something that could compete with AMD's new Ryzen line up, and they have done. Some people in the tech world are already dubbing this new release the ''new gaming king''. Pfft.
The new i7-8700k Coffee Lake is an updated version of the already powerful 7700k, but this new chip now features 3 cores and 6 logical processors and 12 threads. They have messed about with the chip architecture and squeezed in 2 more logical cores and 4 more threads, but essentially it is the same as the last one. Still 14nm, still only 16 PCI lanes. still 1.5mb L2 cache but have bumped up to 12mb L3 cache.
The new line up supports the ever popular LGA 1151 socket, but if you are thinking that Intel are using the same Socket for 3 generations. Think again. On all the 300 series motherboards like x370 or x399 are not backwards compatible, they will only work with 8th gen chips. So that new x399 motherboard you just bought will not work with your older 6700k or 7700k chips.
I think Intel are forcing you to buy there new chips.
The new Core i7 come from the factory with a base clock of 3.7Ghz, and in turbo boost mode can jump up to 4.7Ghz. If you have an efficient cooling system, you can easily get that number up to 5.0Ghz or more (just don't destroy the chip if you do go higher. You will only have yourself to blame.)
As for benchmarking up against AMD's 1800x, the i7 bumps heads on every game, sometime Intel will be better. Sometimes AMD. But when it comes to synthetic tests. They are equal across the board as the GPU is the main bottleneck. When it comes to productivity, Intel Sleigh on the single processor bench where as AMD take the lead in multi core processing. Again with video rendering, encoding, 7zip and real bench they are both very close, but the AMD takes the win. But not by much.
This is where Intel have taken a page out of AMD's book. Intel can now compete now that they have put a reasonable price tag on their chips, and the 8700k even undercut the Ryzen 1800x by $20 - $30 at $360 compared to the last gen which was a massive $400+ price tag.
For the new spilled my coffee lake to be declared the new gaming king is a bit pre mature as many game developers have been working on games and developing them to work better on the Ryzen chip for over 3 months now, and you can be assured they wont swap out that threadripper any time soon. As the 1800x may have some good competition in both price and performance but the threadripper is still king.
Thanks for reading.
