It'south been almost 11 years since Intel released its beginning quad-core desktop CPU, the glued-together Core two Quad Q6600, and what a glorious processor it was. The 65nm quad-core fleck operated at 2.4 GHz, but back then boost clocks weren't a affair and CPUs operated on a forepart side bus.

Since then we've seen eight major architectural updates and four die shrinks spanning a decade. Yet after all that fourth dimension, Intel still only offers upwards to four cores on its mainstream processors, the latest of which was released in January every bit the $340 Kaby Lake Core i7-7700K.

Shortly later on that, AMD did something we all hoped they'd exercise (even if we weren't convinced they could) past releasing a highly competitive CPU architecture. Ryzen certainly disrupted Intel's 'business organisation every bit usual' type of attitude in the PC marketplace and information technology's been fireworks e'er since.

AMD striking Intel the hardest by offering more cores for less coin, which was kind of the strategy with Bulldozer, but this time the cores didn't completely suck. IPC performance is slightly below Intel'southward latest and greatest but Ryzen's efficiency is excellent, and then AMD isn't giving anything up here. The biggest advantage Intel has right now is its superior clock speeds and this is something AMD hopes to accost next year.

Earlier AMD can exercise that, Intel is hitting back with its eighth-generation Core series, which counters Ryzen with cores, lots of cores. Although Ryzen 7 will even so have a core count advantage, Intel is at present making vi cores the standard for their higher-end parts. The new Core i5 and Core i7 processors now pack six cores and that'southward going to have a considerable impact.

On hand today we take a flagship part, the Core i7-8700K, which is based on Intel'due south new "Java Lake" compages. Nosotros as well have the Cadre i5-8400, only we'll be looking at that CPU separately in the coming days. We do not have the Cadre i5-8600K yet, merely the plan is to get one of those shortly, too. For at present, let's focus on the big guy and with six cores and 12 threads, the 8700K certainly means business.

Designed to operate no slower than 3.vii GHz, it will boost a single core as high equally 4.7 GHz, and under full load should maintain an operating frequency of iv.iii GHz. Each of the six-core processors features a 256KB L2 cache while at that place is a much larger 12MB L3 cache. Intel has given the chip a 95 watt TDP rating and once once more they are using the LGA 1151 socket, though this can be considered a second version that is in no way compatible with previous Kaby Lake or Skylake CPUs.

Pricing has been adjusted from the 7700K as the 8700K, a $20 price hike which comes in at a rather steep $360.

That likewise makes the 8700K $sixty more expensive than AMD's Ryzen vii 1700, the company's cheapest and unlocked Ryzen 7 part. The 1700X is also priced at $360, just smart shoppers will opt for the cheaper not-X model and I've had merely as much luck overclocking both to four GHz.

Unlike the high-cease desktop Skylake-X parts on the LGA 2066 platform, the new Coffee Lake CPUs still use the ring bus and not the mesh inter-connect method of the higher core count parts. This is corking news and it ways the 8700K volition maintain the 7700K's gaming prowess and should in fact be able to take things to the next level in this category. So without wasting any more fourth dimension, let's come across how this thing handles...

Criterion Time

Memory and Application Performance

First up allow'due south check out the memory bandwidth operation. These DDR4 dual-channel memory controllers look to exist good for around 31-39GB/due south of memory bandwidth when using 3200 retentiveness. Please note all configurations were tested with the same DDR4-3200 CL4 memory.

First up, let's cheque out the retentivity bandwidth functioning. Please note all CPUs were tested using DDR4-3200 CL14 memory. That in heed, it's interesting to note that the Core i7-8700K takes a step forward here from the 7700K and is now on par with the Ryzen 5 CPUs with around 36GB/s of retention bandwidth. That said, it's nonetheless trailing the Ryzen seven models by around 2GB/s.

Okay so let'south check out the Cinebench R15 scores. As luck would accept it, later on a three run boilerplate the 8700K matched the R7 1700 with a multi-threaded score of 1423 pts. That did hateful it was xiii% slower than the 1800X, merely nonetheless an impressive outcome all the aforementioned.

Actually, what was impressive is its single core score and this explains how a half-dozen-core Intel CPU kept pace with an viii-core AMD CPU. The 8700K provides the same 195 signal unmarried thread score as the 7700K and past extension the 7740X. So the 8700K is looking pretty solid all round, it also completely dusts the Core i7-7800X likewise so our condolences if you bought one of those recently.

Moving on we have PCMark x and this gives us a look at how the CPUs compare in more than general apply case scenarios. Core count isn't that of import for the about part, it'south really all almost frequency. For this reason the Core i7-8700K does extremely well, outscoring the 7700K by a 5% margin.

Excel is an role blazon benchmark which tin can utilize many threads, especially when running the extreme Monte Carlo simulation. The 8700K finds itself situated between the Ryzen vii 1700 and 1800X with a completion time of 2.55 seconds. This besides makes it effectually thirteen% faster than Intel's half dozen-core 7800X.

Testing with VeraCrypt nosotros see that this time the 8700K trails the Ryzen 7 1700 though it is still around ten% faster than the Core i7-7800X and 14% faster than AMD'due south 6-cadre R5 1600.

Side by side up we have non-encrypted compression and decompression operation using 7-Zip. The Core i7-8700K was able to out perform the Ryzen seven 1700 by a decent margin when compressing data while information technology was just a fraction slower when decompressing. The 8700K also edged out the 7800X for the pinch test also.