Overall and Final Verdict

So I think most people will admit that AMD has had a lot of wins this year with all of the Ryzen launches. As I found out in our 1700v7700K coverage the 7700K was still a great performing CPU, especially when looking at gaming performance. But with just four cores the additional cores that Ryzen 7 and 5 CPUs get you, it was clear that Intel could really use a core count bump on the mainstream lineup. I figured we would see it happen around the holidays but with us just getting to October Intel is ahead of the game. I do think the early launch is going to upset some of the Kaby Lake owners but as the numbers show from my testing today, getting 7700K performance in single core tests but with two more cores makes for a powerful CPU. The i7-8700K with its boost clock going all the way up to 4.7 GHz is a great middle ground between the X299 based Core-X CPUs and their high core counts and the tiny mainstream CPUs.

Gaming performance was still good and in some cases better and with a few exceptions the Core-X CPUs were the only CPUs coming in faster and even that was only in some benchmarks. The two additional cores and four threads should really help with people who are multi-tasking or streaming, AMD did a great job of showing how a little extra headroom with additional cores can help improve the gaming experience when streaming or when you have a lot of background tasks open.

Now that’s not to say the i7-8700K is perfect. The onboard performance, while still being up near the top of our charts, is still not really improving at the same rate that games have been improving. So performance on our old benchmarks showed playable results but when testing with modern games turned all the way down the frame rate dropped. I also know a lot of people aren’t going to be happy with the switch to a new chipset. Personally, I completely get the reasoning, but I wish they would have blocked out the new CPUs with a knock being changed to prevent confusion. The 8700K is also pushing it for power draw when compared to the competition from AMD. 

The i5-8400 is something that in the past I think Intel would never sample but I’m really glad they did. While it doesn’t have any overclocking, just having a 6 core model in the i5 lineup really pushes the entire market up. This is the price point that a lot of people are buying their CPUs. I just wish the overclocked 8600K wasn’t so much more expensive. When the i5-8400 stands out though is when compared to the competition. In tests line Cinebench the 8400 is coming in between the 1600X and the 1500X but it is priced below the 1500X. Unlike the 8700K it runs cooler and pulls less wattage as well.

So how do the new CPUs fall into the market? Well if you considered Intel behind Ryzen before (it really depends on what you were looking to use them for) then now things have come back to normal. Intel’s new lineup brings higher core counts down into their mainstream CPUs without cutting into the high clock speeds that we have grown to love. The i5-8400 is priced really well to compete with the 1500X and 1600X, though there should be an overclocked model available near this price range but there currently isn’t. The i7-8700K isn’t going to take away the main flagship from the 7980XE but with the mainstream line being a lot more popular I think we can expect to see a lot of new builds with it this winter. Of course with a price of $359 Intel really jumped the price up from the i7-7700K. Its performance comes in ahead of the high-end Ryzen 7 CPUs though so I guess the price isn’t too far off. Pair that with the new motherboard you now have to buy and I don’t expect to see too many Kaby Lake owners to be upgrading, but for those who held out either CPU would be a good pick. Now would I prefer to go Ryzen or Coffee Lake? I’m leaning a little towards Coffee Lake as it did outperform in a lot of our testing. But I do hope Intel does a better job in the future on cooling these high-end CPUs down.

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Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

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