Intel's Coffee Lake 8700K Expected to Arrive in Early October

https://videocardz.com/newz/rumor-intel-i7-8700k-to-launch-on-5th-octoberStart saving those pennies now.

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Less than a year after Intel launched the Kaby Lake mainstream desktop computing platform, the company is expected to have its successor, Coffee Lake, on store shelves within the month. The Kaby Lake parts arrived in early January of this year, lead by the current PC gaming king, the Core i7-7700K. While the 7700K was a quadcore CPU with hyper-threading, its Coffee Lake descendant, the Core i7-8700K will sport 6 cores while still retaining the hyper-threading support. Videocardz is reporting that the new CPU could be arriving sometime around October 5th.

New motherboards are also arriving with the new CPU. These boards will be based on Intel’s Z370 chipset and be loaded to the gills with RGBs and m.2 slots. While the new Coffee Lake CPUs share the 1151 socket with the Skylake and Kaby Lake processors, the Coffee Lake CPUs will not work on older Z170 or Z270 motherboards.

Leaked shot of the MSI Godlike Z370 via VideoCardz.com

For years, Intel went mostly unchallenged in the mainstream gaming platform arena. This changed in March of this year when AMD launched its new Ryzen platform. The new Ryzen CPUs offered more cores than Intel for the money and are demonstrably superior in most heavily-threaded workloads. For users interested only in gaming performance, the Intel 7700K was still the superior performer, but AMD finally had competitive parts that offered a superior value for many use cases. The 8700K is expected to help Intel pull closer to AMD in multi-threaded performance while still providing enthusiast-class gaming performance.

Contributing Tech Editor

Chris Jarrard likes playing games, crankin' tunes, and looking for fights on obscure online message boards. He understands that breakfast food is the only true food. Don't @ him.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    September 6, 2017 1:55 PM

    Chris Jarrard posted a new article, Intel's Coffee Lake 8700K Expected to Arrive in Early October

    • reply
      September 6, 2017 4:05 PM

      Seems so weird that my 6700k, which I've only had for maybe a year and a half, is already geriatric by two chipset generations.

      It makes me miss the AMD AM2 days. I think I rocked the same motherboard for 5 or 6 years, going from an athlon 64 to an athlon fx to a phenom II X4 and only having to upgrade RAM and apply a BIOS update along the way. What a technological lucky break that ended up being.

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        September 6, 2017 6:18 PM

        [deleted]

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          September 6, 2017 6:26 PM

          Perhaps, but I guess my main gripe is that I got this processor and mobo together, and when the inevitable processor upgrade does one day become advantageous, it will be certain that a simultaneous mobo upgrade will also be necessary

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            September 6, 2017 6:39 PM

            Processor upgrades? Pfft

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            September 7, 2017 4:31 AM

            These days, processor upgrades can be so far apart that I'd be crazy to not want a new motherboard at the same time. It's going to end up being like 7-8 years for my 2500K, and it was like 5 years for the system before that.

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          September 6, 2017 6:38 PM

          [deleted]

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            September 7, 2017 5:36 AM

            Same thing happened with my 2500k board, twice :/

            Swear I had the worst luck on that.

            Ended up building Ryzen in March as a result of board 2 dying. Kind of stings that Coffee Lake was this close but the cores help my workload and couldn't exactly go 6+ months without a solid desktop.

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        September 6, 2017 8:35 PM

        [deleted]

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      September 6, 2017 4:12 PM

      This could be where I upgrade from my i7 3770! Or, I'm just waiting for the eventual i11s!

      Truthfully, I'd like to see some IPC benchmark that would compare my current chip to the latest and greatest. I'm pretty sure my i7 isn't too far behind the latest Ryzen in IPC.

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      September 6, 2017 6:18 PM

      I'm kinda pissed. I bought a 7700k just this March, and they're already coming out with the 8700k, and changing sockets after not just one generation, but half in less than a year from the previous cpu release. I already swore to myself that my next computer (after this one) would be a Zen 2, or whatever, but this just cements it. They absolutely don't need to change sockets, but they love doing it to screw people when they want to upgrade. No wonder my last computer was an AMD.

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        September 6, 2017 6:19 PM

        That said, I wouldn't ever switch from a 7700k to an 8700k, but I'm already realizing that upgrading to even a 6 core from this would likely require a new motherboard because of Intel's practices.

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        September 6, 2017 6:55 PM

        That's wrong.. i7-8700K is 1151 socket same as the past 2 generations.

        So far Intel hasn't said anything regarding support for the 100 and 200 series chipsets. So far we got one tweet from ASRock saying it's not supported but that's it.

        But I've also seen some rumors that it will be supported on Z170 and Z270 based boards at a later date after launch. But that hasn't been confirmed by Intel or any motherboard vendors at this point.

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        September 6, 2017 7:38 PM

        I've been building for 20+ years and I can't think of a single time I did an in-socket upgrade, even during AMD's heyday and 18-24 month upgrade cycles.

        Futureproofing via sockets has never worked out practically speaking, by the time there is an upgrade worthy of changing the CPU its also time to switch up everything else.

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          September 6, 2017 10:34 PM

          Playing devil's advocate, all because you haven't upgraded cpu's in a socket doesn't mean that there isn't a large crowd that does. I was totally considering upgrading my AMD Phenom 2 955 X4 to a decently faster 6 or 8 core cpu. Did I? No, I played the waiting game for so long that I ended up with my current i7 7700k system instead. Part of that is because my motherboard, etc. were already 7 1/2 years old at that point, and putting a new cpu in there seemed stupid since the MB, etc. could die anyday.

          For me, a lot of it is just reassurance and peace of mind.

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            September 6, 2017 10:48 PM

            I have definitely done it a few times over the years.

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            September 6, 2017 11:24 PM

            Sockets generally last two years tops. Again, by the time a CPU upgrade is justified there is a new socket and chipset. In line upgrades yield minimal results.

            People can do whatever they want, I'm saying the performance boost staying within a socket is minimal unless you started low to begin with, say an i3 to an i7

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            September 7, 2017 4:34 AM

            How about the reassurance that your CPU will be excellent for gaming for much longer than the life span of a socket though? And long enough that there will be stuff on motherboards that you'll want anyway.

            Part of you waiting and picking the right part means you don't have to worry about what the upgrade path looks like for a while, IMO.

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          September 6, 2017 10:51 PM

          I did it once in the 486 era and again with I think AM3. But the bigger thing wasn't the socket but that motherboard changes often meant new RAM and everything else.

          Doesn't really matter much these days. The bigger issue was that when my 3770k's MB died there were basically no replacements available because that socket had been out of use a few years.

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          September 6, 2017 11:26 PM

          Slocket! Slot 1 -> Socket 370 baby.

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          September 7, 2017 7:41 AM

          I've only done one, going from an e6600 to a QX9650 (which I'm still running today)

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        September 6, 2017 11:04 PM

        There's a new socket due around March too which is kind of crazy

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      September 6, 2017 6:20 PM

      What I've been waiting on to finally get rid of the i7 920. Weeee

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      September 6, 2017 6:41 PM

      Interested in how the lower clock affects gaming. IPS should be up, but it would have to be way up to counter the reduced speed. Games still don't use multiple cores very efficiently.

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        September 6, 2017 8:07 PM

        Leaked specs indicate that the 8700K has the same quad core turbo clock as the 7700K. The 8700K also has higher single and dual core turbo clocks and presumably slightly higher IPC. Base clock is pretty much irrelevant for gaming, so the 8700K is surely going to be faster.

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      September 6, 2017 10:35 PM

      Sweet, going to wait. Coffee Lake, 1080 Ti and 480 GB SSD here I come!

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      September 6, 2017 11:42 PM

      I have an i7 4770k 3,5GHz, do games need more? I'm keeping my open for upgrades.

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        September 6, 2017 11:46 PM

        [deleted]

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        September 7, 2017 6:48 AM

        [deleted]

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          September 7, 2017 6:54 AM

          Thanks, what about more recent motherboards and sockets and RAM, my system is 3-4 years old. Motherboard wasn't cheap but not the most expensive type either. They are not a significant factor either?

          I currently have a GTX 770, my thinking now would then be a GTX 1070 or GTX1080 to be able to do 1440p on a 144 KHz monitor.

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        September 7, 2017 6:50 AM

        OC it instead and it will easily do the job. Still a terrific CPU.

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        September 7, 2017 10:34 AM

        You'll see an improvement, but for games right now it will be marginal at best. I'd only upgrade if you already have a top tier GPU and are all SSD'd up for storage or if you want better general computing performance for stuff like 3D rendering, video editing, etc.

        You can probably wait out 2-3 more years of CPU updates (Intel's Tigerlake is slated for 2019 on the roadmap) without too much trouble to be honest.

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      September 7, 2017 5:18 AM

      [deleted]

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      September 7, 2017 5:50 AM

      Still rocking a 2600k @4ghz on the crappy stock cooler. Still plays all the things @ 1080p, swimmingly. Still interested...because new :|

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      September 7, 2017 6:57 AM

      So what are the implications for someone building a PC in say November? Will the 7700k/current motherboards drop in price as the new chipset and cpus come out? Does this socket have legs or will it be a stopgap from Intel?

      In semi-related news, I just priced out amd vs intel builds in Canada,and even with the $100 discount 1800x +vega64 bundles get, the AMD system is about $200 more than a 7700k/1080 system all else being equal. That is disappointing :/

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