Review: Intel Core i7 8700K processor

Discussion in 'Frontpage news' started by Hilbert Hagedoorn, Oct 5, 2017.

  1. D3M1G0D

    D3M1G0D Guest

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    He said it was to gain mind share, to get people hyped up over Coffee Lake and halt Ryzen's momentum. He also mentioned that this tactic will hurt sales of their own Kaby Lake processors, but Intel just wants to stop Ryzen at this point, even if it means hurting themselves (sales are swinging in AMD's favor now and Intel is desperate to stop the bleeding). Doing a paper release is a gamble (personally, I hate paper launches with a vengeance) but as long as people are holding out for CL, Intel will be happy.
     
  2. Hilbert Hagedoorn

    Hilbert Hagedoorn Don Vito Corleone Staff Member

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    Processors tested the past are sent back to Intel, typically Intel gave 2-3 weeks with them. Some new benchmark suites over time are introduced, ergo some benchmarks will not hold all processors. I would love to retest all procs, but I'm afraid that isn't possible. The other option is to leave out all other procs and only use the one I purchased myself. I choose to include as much as I can.
     
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  3. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag Ancient Guru

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    Why is everyone so anal about FPS and bottlenecks? I really don't get it. Get the CPU that fits your needs and/or your wallet, not your morals, not your ideals, not your ego, and not hypothetical situations. Geez, it's like trying to argue that 1+1=2.

    If you've got a 60Hz monitor of any resolution, as of today, a Ryzen 5 will play anything you throw at it just fine (assuming you've got a capable GPU). This is not up for debate. That being said, so will a 8700K, and so will a 7600K. So ultimately what it comes down to is what are your priorities for other tasks? What do you expect you will be doing that may require the 8700K in a way a Ryzen 5 can't do sufficiently? And yes, there are situations where that is true - a Ryzen 5 is far from perfect, but in most cases there isn't really a good reason to spend more. At that point, you can use your pedantic principles to make your decision.

    Meanwhile, if you've got a 144Hz monitor, a Ryzen will be a bottleneck before an 8700K. Again, this is assuming the GPU is not a bottleneck. So if that's what you're expecting to use, don't get a Ryzen. This doesn't mean an 8700K can't/won't be a bottleneck either, but it is indisputable that it would be less of one. For those who care about FPS, spending the extra money is worth it.

    To reiterate:
    Buy only what you need. If it was so black and white what you should always get, one company would never make any sales. If you're always asking "what if in the future ____" and are willing to spend extra then tell me: why do you not have an overclocked i9 7980XE right now? You have to draw the line somewhere.
     
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  4. vbetts

    vbetts Don Vincenzo Staff Member

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    One thing I will say, I really believe that budget market now Intel has. A quad core for under $120 with the ipc Intel usually has per core is not that bad of a deal.

    Ryzen has lower cost cpus, but the biggest issue with those is for the most performance you have to spend more on a faster kit for memory, which then also means you need a board that can handle the faster memory, and if you overclock(which on the 8100 since it's a locked cpu you can't overclock but you really don't need to), you still need to spend more on a decent cooler which adds more to the cost. Really once more board options come out for Coffee Lake, Intel might have a winning platform as far as budget pricing goes.

    Now if you're talking an overclockable quad core comparison, definitely Ryzen has that advantage.
     

  5. tunejunky

    tunejunky Ancient Guru

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    that would be terribly uncomfortable.
    i work in Silicon Valley, i live 5 minutes from Nvidia, four of my friends are engineers there.

    on the 3rd quarterly earnings call Jen Huang (Nvidia ceo) said

    “Volta for gaming, we haven't announced anything. And all I can say is that our pipeline is filled with some exciting new toys for the gamers, and we have some really exciting new technology to offer them in the pipeline. But for the holiday season for the foreseeable future, I think Pascal is just unbeatable. It's just the best thing out there. And everybody who's looking forward to playing Call of Duty or Destiny 2, if they don't already have one, should run out and get themselves a Pascal.” That was August 15, 2017

    AND they plan on using GDDR6... so there's a second and third party parts pipeline to consider.
    Meaning they haven't taped out V102 or V104.
    V100 costs $1k to manufacture.

    i have a gtx 1080ti, which i've had for a year now (at Christmas)
    i would dearly love a Volta GTX 2080

    the bottom line is Nvidia isn't going to step on their own dick re: pascal sales. pascal is selling just fine thank you and Nvidia is confident of no real AMD pushback until 2019 and navi.

    and if you want quotes google search them. i would recommend financial sites (like the motley fool, forbes, etc...) as they have more accurate information with a marked lack of fanboy-ism.
     
  6. Ryu5uzaku

    Ryu5uzaku Ancient Guru

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    I would go as far as to say Ryzen is fine for 144Hz... In pretty much all cases. Just like all the other mentioned things. In most cases people will run to gpu bottleneck before cpu one anyways. After that it comes down to the games anyway. I got Ryzen knowing fully well I have 144Hz display and that I can drive all the games I play way over that.
     
  7. Agent-A01

    Agent-A01 Ancient Guru

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    There are plenty of games where ryzen is nowhere near enough for 144hz.
    No way "in pretty much all cases".

    Unless we have different opinions of 'fine'
     
  8. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag Ancient Guru

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    I believe you, but did you have to make any sacrifices to reach those framerates where something like an 8700K wouldn't have to make? Generally speaking, Ryzen tends to lose up to (but usually less than) 15FPS in most games. I get the impression the performance gap gets wider and wider as the framerates get higher. This is likely due to the higher latency, and arguably video drivers or CPU schedulers can be to blame. But the fact of the matter is, a Ryzen is much closer to reaching its limits to reach 144Hz than something like an 8700K, regardless of either or both of them being overclocked. If high frame rates are your goal, I stand by my point that an 8700K makes for a better option. However, if you're fine with 90Hz displays or less, I would firmly recommend a Ryzen instead.

    Note that I myself use Ryzen for my gaming PC, and I have built a Ryzen gaming PC for someone else. I am likely to do another one. For the average gamer, I would recommend a Ryzen, but some of these specialty cases (like 144Hz monitors) I think an overclocked i7 is more dependable.

    To each his/her own, though.
     
  9. Denial

    Denial Ancient Guru

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    Yeah I think if you're 100% in on FPS at high refreshrates Intel is the way to go - but different people are going to have different preferences to how they value performance in varying categories.

    In the past the gap was so wide between AMD/Intel at "respectable" price points that the choices were clear for most people. Now that the performance/pricing is similar overall, but varying in different categories, it's going to come down to where people value performance, gaming or productivity and how people can utilize that performance - GPU bottlenecks/Refresh rate caps/etc.

    Plus secondary factors like potentially being able to drop a Zen+ chip in, platform differences, not wanting to give money to evil incarnate intel, etc.
     
  10. S V S

    S V S Member

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    Agreed, this is my issue with the gaming portion of this review. The games used and the resolution/graphic settings used are GPU limited across all processors in almost every game. Obviously the 8700K is significantly better for gaming than a Ryzen 3 or 5 (and likely the 7s) but you can't tell from the graphs because every game but one is significantly GPU limited. I seriously don't even get the point of displaying those graphs? Hilbert has used multiple synthetic, non-gaming benchmarks that are not limited by other components. I don't understand why he won't also take efforts to ensure we know to what extent a given CPU out performs another CPU in GAMING. Most of us are here on this site for GAMING after all, not only for synthetic benchmarks.

    There are plenty of games out today that show significant swings in minimum and average FPS with CPU power. For example, I see a movement of 20-30+ average FPS in BF1 multiplayer by OC'ing my 4700K (1080Ti GPU) to 4.8 ghz from stock. Another example, turn times are significantly faster in many strategy games I play when OC'ed versus stock. Minimum frames are even MORE important of an issue and Hilbert isn't even addressing that issue.

    Hilbert, please address why you can not display this kind of information? This would be really valuable information to have, arguably much more valuable than pages of tables of GPU limited CPU performance in a CPU review. If you have a table showing a Ryzen 3 is 1-2 FPS average off an 8700K, that chart is arguably useless.

    I do appreciate the thoroughness of your current reviews, I just think you should consider changing how you address gaming benchmarks in your *CPU* reviews so they actually display the relative performance differences among *CPUs*.
     

  11. alanm

    alanm Ancient Guru

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    Have posted reply here: https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/i...new-on-the-horizon.416751/page-2#post-5479164

    (to not continue being off-topic here).
     
  12. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag Ancient Guru

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    The opposite can be said too. I think most people don't want to spend any more than they actually need to, and don't give a crap about framerates their display can't actually render. The resolutions Hilbert tests in are the most common. So, if an i3 or a Ryzen 3 manages to keep up with an i9 in the games you play and the display you have, then why buy anything better? Why does it matter how much faster a CPU can hypothetically be if it's a resolution you're never going to play at? Testing below 1080p is just plain irrelevant.

    The fact of the matter is, CPUs don't really matter that much for gaming. As of today, 6c/12t CPU at roughly 4.5GHz ought to handle any modern game at any framerate your GPU and display can keep up with; maybe throw in a few extra 100MHz for good measure. Such a CPU would be excessive to the average user, though. For most people, you can get something much, much worse and still have a great experience.

    I do completely agree minimum framerates are very important, though more specifically frame times are even more useful. But do you not realize how much your anecdote works against your point? You're bringing a 3.5-3.9GHz CPU up to a very respectable 4.8GHz and yet you're only getting 30FPS extra? Your CPU isn't bad even by today's standards, so I'm sure your CPU at stock clocks didn't give you a sub-par gaming experience. Like I said before, CPUs just don't matter that much.

    It's not useless, it's a sign that spending more won't improve your overall experience.
     
  13. DmitryKo

    DmitryKo Master Guru

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    The pinout was also posted in the forum thread here.

    F36 could be problematic, replaces isolated graphics voltage sensing (VCC_GTx_SENSE ) with VCC +5V.

    Also the ball map in the specification has a quirk - J17, J19, B39, C40 are marked VCCG0-VCCG3 (???) on the picture and not RSVD as in the ball listing.
     
    Last edited: Oct 6, 2017
  14. -Tj-

    -Tj- Ancient Guru

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    The thing is, even if there is no competition they always release it in ~ 1year timeframe. If not ~ May 2018, then in Q4, October- November.

    And Of course he won't say anything, it would hurt Pascal sales now.



    //sorry for offtopic
     
  15. swISS

    swISS Guest

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    I know this may be a pretty braindead question, but looking for new hardware just because i enjoy it. Is 8700k even worth considering, given my current rig? (6700k / 980 ti)

    From what i gathered, next release would be Cannon and that's been pushed back to later 2018, is there a release inbetween with the current Gen or am i missing something?
     

  16. -Tj-

    -Tj- Ancient Guru

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    Nah, you're good for at least 2 more years, I would wait for IceLake arch. > TigerLake with ddr5 and 8core, sometime in 2019
     
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  17. D3M1G0D

    D3M1G0D Guest

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    I think he's speaking for enthusiasts, who typically spend way more than what is necessary, just to satisfy the e-peen. I know because I too fall into that category - I bought a K-variant Core i7 a few years ago but I would probably have been fine with the non-K, or even a Core i5 (I'm not a big a gamer as I used to be, and like most gamers, I play with a GPU cap). With such hardware choices, pride and ego is the primary motivating factor, not frame rates and gaming (wanting to have the best, no matter the cost).
     
  18. swISS

    swISS Guest

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    Cannon won't be a big enough increase to be considered, or simply not innovative enough compared to Ice potentially?

    I guess i got my question answered, no new gear for a while then :( Perhaps a new GPU down the line.

    Thank you for the reply :)
     
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  19. S V S

    S V S Member

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    I have no issue with your argument, outside my point that Hilbert should also be showing us the relative gaming performance of a given CPU.. not just that in some games and some gaming use-cases you may not need a better CPU. It really doesn't make any sense to benchmark CPUs for gaming and specifically only pick games and use settings that are completely GPU bound.

    I want to reiterate the point that there ARE games TODAY that are CPU limited, especially when it comes to high Hz monitors. This isn't a hypothetical, future issue. Hilbert's gaming benchmark suite for CPUs is completely useless at displaying the relative gaming performance of a CPU. I am not arguing he should stop showing the tables that show in some cases you are just fine spending less on a CPU for gaming, but there are plenty of gaming-use cases TODAY where you greatly benefit from having a better CPU. Hilbert's gaming benchmarks have provided me almost no data to really gauge the performance difference of a Ryzen 7 and 8700K for gaming. He could do this, and it would be valuable information to a lot of members here.

    I get the feeling you are arguing this information should not be provided because you are an AMD fan and you know it wouldn't reflect positively on Ryzen. I think that is bunk. If you'd want the information provided if the situation was reversed, AMD had the stronger gaming chip, you should also be for it here. Hiding this kind of information from us, the consumers, doesn't help us. I may actually consider a Ryzen 7 for gaming if I had a better idea of exactly how much weaker it is in gaming. Based off this review, I don't even begin to know enough to make a decision.
     
  20. Agent-A01

    Agent-A01 Ancient Guru

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    That's why you read multiple reviews to gather enough data for a purchase decision.

    All reviewers have different test setups and they can't all cover everything.
    If you want to gauge CPU performance, here is some good data.
    http://www.pcgamer.com/intels-8th-gen-processors-deliver-a-huge-jump-in-performance/

    8700k can be significantly faster in some games over top end ryzen.
     
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