Its hard to believe considering we just finished up an Intel launch, but it is already time to check out Intel’s next launch. Kaby Lake was launched at the beginning of this year and the Mainstream lineup of CPUs is getting refreshed with Coffee Lake and Z370. This is the 8th generation of Intel’s Core processors going back to the original launch back in 2006. While I’m sure Kaby Lake owners aren’t going to be all that happy about the relatively early launch, but those who waited might be excited to find out that Intel has added cores to the mainstream lineup and is bumping up the entire product stack. As someone who is still building my wife’s Kaby Lake build, I completely understand the feeling. But as long as she never finds out her new PC is already out of date I will still be alive long enough to put the i7 and i5 CPUs that Intel sent over to the test.

Product Name: Intel 8th Gen Core CPUs – Coffee Lake

Review samples provided for review by: Intel

Written by: Wes Compton

Pictures by: Wes Compton

Amazon Affiliate Link: i7-8700K and i5-8400

 

Coffee Lake

As always, before diving into performance testing I like to step back and take a look at the launch as a whole. In this case, Intel is launching their new Coffee Lake CPUs that are part of their 8th generation of Core processors. In addition to being the second mainstream launch this year, they have also changed their launch process. Back in August, they introduced their Mobile U-Series CPUs to start things off. Today we have K SKU and premium consumer processor then according to Intel in the first half of 2018 we will see the commercial and broad consumer processors.

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So what exactly is a “premium consumer processor” well here is the breakdown of what is launching today. Obviously, a lot of the focus is going to be on the i7-8700K as it is the new flagship for Intel’s mainstream lineup. The biggest change is the move to 6 cores, the first time Intel has ever done this on their mainstream CPUs. What really caught my eye though was the 8700K and 8700 not being the same CPU with just overclocking unlocked like a normal K designation gets you. The K now gets you an additional .5 GHz on the baseclock, going from 3.2 to 3.7 and .1 on the boost clock going from 4.6 to 4.7. Along with that, they bumped up the TDP from 65 to 95. Both 8700’s have 12MB of cache and dual-channel 2666MHz support. Speaking of memory, Intel has bumped up their memory support in both the i5 and i7 CPUs to 2666MHz, in the past this was 2400MHz and 2666MHz was considered an overclock.

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Moving down the lineup things are different across the board. For years now it has been 4 cores 8 threads on i7, no hyperthreading but 4 cores on i5’s and 2 cores with i3’s. Now for i5, they have bumped things up to 6 cores but we still don’t have hyperthreading then for the two i3 SKUs they get 4 cores no hyperthreading. This is a big improvement all the way down to the bottom of the stack and is no doubt in part by increased competition from AMD. The standard 4 cores 8 thread is missing from the lineup but I think this is because it is hard to fit that setup without it competing with CPUs higher than it. Would you put it below the i5’s and have 8 threads on the low end and 6 threads on the high-end i5?

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For i5 Intel has different name designations that help split the two SKUs apart more than on the 8700k and 8700. The 8600K is unlocked and while they both have the same 6 cores 6 thread and 9MB of cache they are separated by clock speeds with the 8600K sitting at 3.6 base and 4.3 boost with a 65-watt TDP. The i3’s are interesting in that they drop the turbo boost all together but they did at least go with good base clocks. The i3-8350K (what an odd model name) is overclockable though and has a 91-watt TDP so that should be a good buy for those who don’t need additional core but can edge out extra performance from overclocking.

As for pricing, well on the top end Intel did bump the price up with the i7-8700K coming in at $359 were the i7-7700K came in at a much more reasonable $305 at its launch. The i7-8700 is a lot better at $303 then from there the prices drop down with the lowest i3 coming in at $117. The i5-8400 that I will also be testing today runs $182.

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So beyond the changes to the number of cores, clock speeds, and the overall revamp of the i3/i5/i7 system what else is different with Coffee Lake? Well, I was surprised to see Intel put such a big focus on overclocking this time around. They have made changes to what can be controlled including real-time memory latency control, per core overclocking, and they extended the range on things like memory ratios, and PLL trim controls.

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The other half of this launch is that along with the new CPUs Intel is introducing the new Z370 chipset and this is the area that people are going to be a little upset. Specifically, because Z370 and Z270 that launched earlier this year both still share the same LGA 1151 socket. In the past, with situations like this they at least made changes to the alignment notches but that didn’t happen this time. So you can put a Kaby Lake CPU in Z370 and physically it will fit, the same goes for Coffee Lake into Z270, but neither will work. With the move to 6 cores, Intel did have to change power delivery, that isn’t too big of a surprise. While making those changes they also changed memory routing to up the sorry for DDR4-2666MHz. So with that, I completely get why you couldn’t run one of the new 6 core CPUs in Z270. But what about running Kaby Lake in Z370? Well while on a call with Intel they just said they did that to avoid confusion. Personally I’m not a fan of that at all, being able to potentially pick up a Z370 board now to open up the upgrade to a 6 core CPU later would have been really nice. It would also leave more replacement options later if a Z270 board dies, finding out of production motherboards to repair a dead PC gets really hard or expensive.

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Overall the new platform does still have everything that Z270 had to offer so you can expect to see boards with USB 3.1 Gen 1 and Thunderbolt. Intel Optane support is included again and they are pushing that even harder this time even going as far to list support for each CPU on the CPU specification listing earlier and including an Optane module with all of the CPUs sampled to the press.

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Speaking of what was sampled to the press, this is what they sent over (Optane module wasn't pictured though). They sent two CPUs, the i7-8700K flagship CPU along with the new 6 core i5-8400.

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After those came in a second package also came in from them with a little gift. As I like to be completely open about anything being provided to us this is what they sent. Inside the box, they tied in the Coffee from Coffee Lake with a bag of Intel Coffee and a really nice Intel mug that can be drawn on with chalk. They also slipped in the chalk, not that I have time to draw on it right now lol.

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Test Rig and Procedures

Intel Z370 Test System

Motherboard

Asus ROG Strix Z370-F Gaming

Live Pricing

Cooling

Noctua NH-U12S for cooling

Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Paste

Live Pricing

Live Pricing

Memory

Kingston 2666 MHz DDR4 Fury quad channel 4x8Gb

Live Pricing

Storage

Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD

Live Pricing

Video Card

Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti

Live Pricing

Power Supply

Thermaltake 850w

Live Pricing

Case

Dimastech Test Bench

Live Pricing

OS

Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

Live Pricing

CPU Testing Procedures

Team Fortress 2

1080p – high, very high, high, reflect world, high, enabled, 8x msaa, x16, multicore on. Testing is then run with this benchmark

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation

1080p – Standard quality setting, DX12, built in benchmark on the CPU-focused setting

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands

Built-in Benchmark, 1080p, High detail setting

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

1080p – Ultra Setting – DX11 – Vsync Turned off using built-in benchmark

Dolphin 5.0 Benchmark

For information on configuration, view this thread

3DMark Fire Strike

Physics Score – Performance benchmark

7-Zip

Built-in benchmark set to 32MB, run 4 passes

Jetstream

http://browserbench.org/JetStream/

wPrime

1024M

X264 HD Benchmark

Pass 1 and Pass 2

Cinebench R15

CPU and CPU (Single Core results)

Passmark 8

CPU Mark Score

PCMark 10

Normal test ran, not the express or extended

AIDA64

Memory, Cache, and FLOPS testing done with built-in GPGPU and Memory benchmarks

Power Usage

Idle and load testing using a Kill-A-Watt and wPrime to put the CPU under load

Temps

Aida64 stability test to load and to record temperature readings

Onboard Testing Procedures

Bioshock Infinite

Adrenaline Action Benchmark Tool on the “Medium” quality setting at 1080p

Tomb Raider

Adrenaline Action Benchmark Tool on the “Medium” quality setting at 1080p

Hitman: Absolution

Adrenaline Action Benchmark Tool on the “Medium” quality setting at 1080p

Sleeping Dogs

Adrenaline Action Benchmark Tool on the “Medium” quality setting at 1080p

GRID Autosport

Ultra and Medium presets at 1080p

F1 2013

Ultra Preset

Team Fortress 2

1080p – high, very high, high, reflect world, high, enabled, 8x msaa, x16, multicore on. Testing is then run with this benchmark

Unigine Valley Benchmark 1.0

Extreme HD Preset

Unigine Superposition

720p Low and 1080p Medium settings

3DMark Fire Strike

Performance setting – GPU Score

3DMark Time Spy

GPU Score

Cinebench R15

OpenGL benchmark

 


CPU Performance

So we can finally dive into performance and to do that I started with X264 HD Benchmark 4.0. This tests overall encoding speed when encoding and the CPUs are ranked by the average FPS that they ran. This is a test that typically favors clock speeds a touch more than core count but it does take both into account. So it isn’t a huge surprise that the 8700K topped the charts above the 7700K. But did surprise me though was the i5-8400 trailing behind just slightly, topping the 7960X and all of those other high-end CPUs.

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With that out of the way, I could finally get into my favorite benchmark, Cinebench R15. I like this one specifically because it does a test using all of the cores and then another with just a single core. More synthetic benchmarks should do this to give us a better look at performance in programs that don’t use all of your cores. On the single core test, the 8700K matched the 7700K perfectly with a score of 195. The 8400 was down much lower with its lower clock speeds but still up above all of the Ryzen CPUs. When running the multicore test things were a little different. Ryzen has 8 core CPUs and Intel has a whole list of high core count CPUs on the 2066 socket that bested the 8700K. It did still perform really well here and with a score of 1432 over the 7700K’s 980 you can really see how much the two extra cores help. The 8400 comes in right with the 7700K on this one, not bad for an i5.

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My next two tests are both math related. wPrime is a simple test that calculates prime out to a specific length, in this case, it is 1024 million spots. This is a multi-core test that overclockers love to use to compare performance as clock speeds do make a difference. The 8700K did well here but all of the Ryzen R7 CPUs with their additional two cores were slightly ahead and the new 16 and 18 core count CPUs from Intel are in their own class here. The 8400, on the other hand, came in faster than the R5 1500X but slower than the R5 1600X. In 7-Zip I’m just testing decoding performance, this is also a very multi-threaded application. The 8700K came in right with the 1800X though even with the core count disadvantage. One again on the 8400, it came in between the R5 1500X and the 1600X.

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Next, I wanted to check out browser-based performance with a mix of HTML5 and Java tests using Jetstream that runs them all then averages out all of the tests after running each three times. So here the 7700K is still the top dog but the 8700K and the 7740X both came in near each other. The 8400, on the other hand, is down at the low end of the Intel CPUs but up above all of the Ryzen CPUs tested.

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For a general CPU synthetic test, I used Passmark’s Performance Test 9 that runs a whole series of different synthetic CPU focused benchmarks and puts together an overall CPU score. These tests end up favoring the high core count CPUs a lot but the 8700K did still outperform the 8 core Ryzen CPUs and has a large gap between the 7700K and itself. The 8400, on the other hand, came in really close to the 7700K, above the 1500X and below the 1600X.

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For a more real-world look at the performance, I love using PCMark 10 as it is repeatable and uses rear world programs for things like photo editing, office applications like excel and word, video playback, and any other situation you might use your PC for. We end up with a few scores for each of the areas of the tests as well as an overall score. The 8700K topped the charts here with the overall score. In the Essentials test the 7700K was still faster but it pulled ahead in content creation and productivity where the two additional cores really helped. The 8400 is back in the middle of the pack but competing with the 7980XE a $2,000 CPU. Not bad for an i5 I would say.

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As I start to get into 3D performance I tested using the Dolphin 5.0 benchmark that tests CPU only emulation performance. I was honestly expecting a little better performance here with the two additional cores but Ryzen performs much better in this workload. Then for 3dmark I used the Fire Strike benchmark and took a look at the physics score because that is the main score that changes with CPU performance. The high core count Intel Core-X CPUs are still at the top of this chart but the 8700K isn’t far behind (well relatively at least lol) with it besting the Ryzen 7 CPUs as well as the 7700K. The 8400, on the other hand, was right in line with the 6700K, a still good performing CPU from a few years ago.

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Then I finally got into actual in game performance. I only have a few actual game tests in our suite but I did try to get a good mix. We have new games as well as TF2 as an old game. Then with the new games, they touch on some GPU and some CPU leaning games to show how much of a gap you can see depending on if the game is CPU or GPU limited. In Ashes of the Singularity in the CPU benchmark, you see a big gap between the top CPUs all the way down to the lowest CPUs. Both Coffee Lake CPUs are in the mid-range here with the 8700K doing well but sitting behind all of the 8+ core count Intel CPUs. The 8400, on the other hand, is right in the mix with really good CPUs like the 1800X and 1700X and only a few FPS behind the 7700K. Wildlands shows a big drop in performance when going to any of the Ryzen based CPUs and the 8700K is up near the top here with its big of core count and high clock speeds. In TF2 the 8700K shows a big jump putting itself up over the 7700K that has dominated this chart up until now. Again the Ryzen CPUs are down at the bottom of this chart as well. Deus Ex Mankind Divided, on the other hand, doesn’t have a big FPS range between the top and bottom CPUs so the 8700K that is a the top isn’t far off from all but the lowest CPUs.

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For my last batch of tests, I used a few of the benchmarks in AIDA64 to take a look at memory and cache performance as well as single and double precision FLOPs and a few different integer IOPS. Of course, the quality of results when compared with most of the Ryzen and current Intel offerings makes this one into a big wall of text, be warned. The two Coffee Lake CPUs tested come in right with the 7700K for memory performance, given the similar chipset that isn’t too big of a surprise. The bumped up memory speeds don’t apply here because we always test at 2666MHz anyhow. Now the bigger Cache does help though and the two additional cores help a lot in the rest of the tests as well.

CPU

Memory Read

Memory Write

Memory Latency

Intel i7-8700K

38421 MB/s

40175 MB/s

57.9 ns

Intel i5-8400

38096 MB/s

40549 MB/s

59.8 ns

Intel Core i9-7980XE

77004 MB/s

68888 MB/s

73.4 ns

Intel Core i9-7960X

79416 MB/s

71554 MB/s

74.9 ns

Intel Core i7-7820X

76049 MB/s

73759 MB/s

71.6 ns

Intel Core i5-7640X

30786 MB/s

31888 MB/s

68.5 ns

Intel Core i9-7900X

76856 MB/s

72856 MB/s

72.8 ns

Intel Core i7-7740X

38455 MB/s

40596 MB/s

53.2 ns

Intel i7-6900K

66786 MB/s

68130 MB/s

61.9 ns

Intel i7-7700K

38498 MB/s

40448 MB/s

52.7 ns

Intel i7-5960X

66108 MB/s

49545 MB/s

62.8 ns

AMD Ryzen R7 1800X

44031 MB/s

43425 MB/s

81.8 ns

AMD Ryzen R7 1700X

44493 MB/s

43749 MB/s

78.3 ns

AMD Ryzen R7 1700

45343 MB/s

43777 MB/s

82.6 ns

AMD Ryzen R5 1600X

44452 MB/s

43918 MB/s

83.7 ns

AMD Ryzen R5 1500X

44289 MB/s

43746 MB/s

83.1 ns

L1 Cache Read

L1 Cache Write

L1 Cache Latency

Intel i7-8700K

1595.6 GB/s

803.65 GB/s

0.9 ns

Intel i5-8400

1417.2 GB/s

710.79 GB/s

1.0  ns

Intel Core i9-7980XE

3758.3 GB/s

1896.7 GB/s

1.1 ns

Intel Core i9-7960X

3532.3 GB/s

1785.2 GB/s

1.0 ns

Intel Core i7-7820X

1969.9 GB/s

995.02 GB/s

1.0 ns

Intel Core i5-7640X

1044.8 GB/s

31888 GB/s

1.0 ns

Intel Core i9-7900X

2418.5 GB/s

709.16 GB/s

1.0 ns

Intel Core i7-7740X

1102.7 GB/s

561.25 GB/s

0.9 ns

Intel i7-6900K

1963.9 GB/s

999.59 GB/s

1.0 ns

Intel i7-7700K

1114.6 GB/s

560.82 GB/s

0.9 ns

Intel i7-5960X

1748.5 GB/s

874.60 GB/s

1.2 ns

AMD Ryzen R7 1800X

917.46 GB/s

460.16 GB/s

1.1 ns

AMD Ryzen R7 1700X

867.89 GB/s

435.33 GB/s

1.2 ns

AMD Ryzen R7 1700

793.90 GB/s

398.12 GB/s

1.3 ns

AMD Ryzen R5 1600X

689.47 GB/s

345.95 GB/s

1.1 ns

AMD Ryzen R5 1500X

446.84 GB/s

224.01 GB/s

1.1 ns

L2 Cache Read

L2 Cache Write

L2 Cache Latency

Intel i7-8700K

640.37 GB/s

397.14 GB/s

2.6 ns

Intel i5-8400

543.81 GB/s

352.90 GB/s

3.1 ns

Intel Core i9-7980XE

1671.7 GB/s

1069.9 GB/s

5.6 ns

Intel Core i9-7960X

1571.6 GB/s

1003.5 GB/s

5.1 ns

Intel Core i7-7820X

884.63 GB/s

574.74 GB/s

5.6 ns

Intel Core i5-7640X

397.26 GB/s

247.00 GB/s

2.9 ns

Intel Core i9-7900X

1037.3 GB/s

521.94 GB/s

5.2 ns

Intel Core i7-7740X

424.55 GB/s

304.30 GB/s

2.7 ns

Intel i7-6900K

710.28 GB/s

310.34 GB/s

4.1 ns

Intel i7-7700K

415.45 GB/s

285.97 GB/s

2.7 ns

Intel i7-5960X

623.08 GB/s

272.77 GB/s

3.5 ns

AMD Ryzen R7 1800X

831.95 GB/s

446.37 GB/s

4.7 ns

AMD Ryzen R7 1700X

809.29 GB/s

419.38 GB/s

5.0 ns

AMD Ryzen R7 1700

742.92 GB/s

389.73 GB/s

5.4 ns

AMD Ryzen R5 1600X

630.99 GB/s

334.93 GB/s

4.7 ns

AMD Ryzen R5 1500X

306.82 GB/s

211.58 GB/s

11.8 ns

L3 Cache Read

L3 Cache Write

L3 Cache Latency

Intel i7-8700K

337.00 GB/s

213.67 GB/s

11.0 ns

Intel i5-8400

270.89 GB/s

186.82 GB/s

13.0 ns

Intel Core i9-7980XE

229.61 GB/s

118.40 GB/s

21.0 ns

Intel Core i9-7960X

220.22 GB/s

121.04 GB/s

19.8 ns

Intel Core i7-7820X

114.40 GB/s

103.57 GB/s

19.2 ns

Intel Core i5-7640X

228.31 GB/s

163.86 GB/s

11.1 ns

Intel Core i9-7900X

124.16 GB/s

106.78 GB/s

21.2 ns

Intel Core i7-7740X

287.01 GB/s

186.67 GB/s

21.2 ns

Intel i7-6900K

243.96 GB/s

195.41 GB/s

14.6 ns

Intel i7-7700K

234.50 GB/s

188.70 GB/s

10.4 ns

Intel i7-5960X

260.72 GB/s

184.92 GB/s

15.3 ns

AMD Ryzen R7 1800X

388.18 GB/s

386.01 GB/s

12.4 ns

AMD Ryzen R7 1700X

369.75 GB/s

350.31 GB/s

12.9 ns

AMD Ryzen R7 1700

334.36 GB/s

332.12 GB/s

14.2 ns

AMD Ryzen R5 1600X

386.48 GB/s

326.86 GB/s

12.3 ns

AMD Ryzen R5 1500X

306.82 GB/s

211.58 GB/s

11.8 ns

Single-Precision FLOPS

Double Precision FLOPS

AES-256

Intel i7-8700K

825.0 GFLOPS

412.5 GFLOPS

29406 MB/s

Intel i5-8400

728.8 GFLOPS

364.5 GFLOPS

25192 MB/s

Intel Core i9-7980XE

1831 GFLOPS

915.5 GFLOPS

69377 MB/s

Intel Core i9-7960X

1681 GFLOPS

840.6 GFLOPS

65409 MB/s

Intel Core i7-7820X

944.9 GFLOPS

472.5 GFLOPS

36420 MB/s

Intel Core i5-7640X

536.5 GFLOPS

268.2 GFLOPS

18547 MB/s

Intel Core i9-7900X

1148 GFLOPS

574.5 GFLOPS

45506 MB/s

Intel Core i7-7740X

575.4 GFLOPS

287.8 GFLOPS

20503 MB/s

Intel i7-6900K

1023 GFLOPS

511.7 GFLOPS

36340 MB/s

Intel i7-7700K

575.7 GFLOPS

287.9 GFLOPS

20519 MB/s

Intel i7-5960X

895.5 GFLOPS

447.7 GFLOPS

31783 MB/s

AMD Ryzen R7 1800X

472.4 GFLOPS

236.2 GFLOPS

64016 MB/s

AMD Ryzen R7 1700X

446.8 GFLOPS

223.4 GFLOPS

61730 MB/s

AMD Ryzen R7 1700

408.5 GFLOPS

204.3 GFLOPS

56811 MB/s

AMD Ryzen R5 1600X

354.9 GFLOPS

177.5 GFLOPS

49340 MB/s

AMD Ryzen R5 1500X

229.8 GFLOPS

114.8 GFLOPS

31983 MB/s

24-bit Integer IOPS

32-bit Integer IOPS

64-bit Integer IOPS

Intel i7-8700K

370.0 GIOPS

370.0 GIOPS

51.55 GIOPS

Intel i5-8400

323.5 GIOPS

323.5 GIOPS

45.55 GIOPS

Intel Core i9-7980XE

821.2 GIOPS

821.3 GIOPS

121.6 GIOPS

Intel Core i9-7960X

754.0 GIOPS

753.9 GIOPS

114.7 GIOPS

Intel Core i7-7820X

423.7 GIOPS

423.7 GIOPS

63.85 GIOPS

Intel Core i5-7640X

238.1 GIOPS

138.1 GIOPS

33.53 GIOPS

Intel Core i9-7900X

515.1 GIOPS

515.0 GIOPS

79.76 GIOPS

Intel Core i7-7740X

258.1 GIOPS

258.0 GIOPS

35.97 GIOPS

Intel i7-6900K

255.9 GIOPS

255.9 GIOPS

63.96 GIOPS

Intel i7-7700K

258.0 GIOPS

258.0 GIOPS

35.98 GIOPS

Intel i7-5960X

223.9 GIOPS

223.9 GIOPS

55.97 GIOPS

AMD Ryzen R7 1800X

118.1 GIOPS

118.1 GIOPS

59.03 GIOPS

AMD Ryzen R7 1700X

111.7 GIOPS

111.7 GIOPS

55.84 GIOPS

AMD Ryzen R7 1700

102.1 GIOPS

102.1 GIOPS

51.05 GIOPS

AMD Ryzen R5 1600X

88.74 GIOPS

88.73 GIOPS

44.34 GIOPS

AMD Ryzen R5 1500X

57.43 GIOPS

57.45 GIOPS

28.72 GIOPS

 


Onboard performance

Oh boy, I hadn’t realized it but I hadn’t actually tested any onboard video in about two years. Our 7700K review was non-traditional and didn’t include it and well the X299 and Ryzen launches haven’t really needed it as well. So I had to dig out the 7700K and do some additional retesting for this one. I included all of our old tests and went ahead and added a few new games as well so we can drop some of the old games in the future. Before I get into gaming though let's check out other situations.

Like in Cinebench where we take a look at video encoding performance. Now the 5775C was a special CPU from Intel that didn’t really gain much traction at the time but the Iris onboard GPU is still showing up stuff like the 8700K. Even more interesting to me though was the FPS gap between the two Coffee Lake CPUs due to the clock speeds.

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The same gap can be seen in 3DMark in both the Fire Strike and Tim Spy benchmarks. The 5775C is still up top but the 8700K does really well, outperforming all of the past AMD APUs and putting a decent lead on the 7700K as well.

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Now with the Unigine based tests, I was once again completely underwhelmed with the performance for every CPU when using the now very old Valley Benchmark with none of them coming anywhere near being playable. In the new Superposition benchmark, I tested at 720p and 1080p and 720p was much smoother as the charts show.

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From there I got into the in game benchmarks. I was a little worried when I saw the result from TF2 and I did a lot of retesting here over and over. The 8700K struggled here when it really shouldn’t have. Thankfully we can toss that aside given its obvious issues and focus on the rest of the results that all seem to tell a better story. For starters, the 8700K puts a big lead over the 8400 in every test, showing that there are other real-world benefits for going with the i7 over an i5. For the most part, the 8700K was up near the top of the charts with just the 5775C out ahead of it. It will be interesting to see if the Iris GPU will see more use in the mainstream Coffee Lake CPUs Intel is bringing out next year. As it sits the gains from year to year are small. You can actually game at around 30 FPS in a lot of the older games though but without big improvements onboard may fall even farther behind as games improve.

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ob11

ob12

ob13

 


Power Usage and Temperatures

For my last two tests, I wanted to focus on power and temperatures. These are two areas that seem to get tossed to the side when pushing the limits as I saw with the high core count Core-X CPUs that pulled up to 287 watts. Well, the 8700K is up in power draw from the 7700K. Under load I saw it pull 173 watts compared to 123 for the 7700K, the extra cores had to be powered somehow I guess. The i5-8400, on the other hand, is a model for efficiency, even with its extra cores. Dropping the clock speeds down for this one dropped the load power down to 101 watts and the idle power to the second lowest I have tested. Both Coffee Lake CPUs were actually really power efficient when at idle so I have to give Intel props for that. The overall draw though does put the 8700K up ahead of all of the Ryzen 7 CPUs by about 15 watts.

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Now as always I have to point out that software-based temperature testing is flawed and that is what these results are based on. I just include the results because it is still interesting to see how things are landing. At 80c I would normally consider the i7-8700K to be extremely hot, and it still is, but look at the drop from the 7700K. While adding two more cores Intel has managed to cool things down slightly, even without replacing the TIM that has had a lot of enthusiasts upset for a while now. The i5-8400 comes in at a much more respectable 63c and is more in line with where I think the CPUs should be running, especially with the Ryzen CPUs running lower, even with the built-in offsets.

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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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