Intel introduces Coffee Lake generation of desktop processors

Not impressed at all so far. But I'll wait for the reviews to form a concrete opinion about it.

 

Weak sauce Intel. To little to late.

 

Oh, don't get me wrong, I have a Ryzen 7 system myself and I have no plans to get Coffee Lake. I'm just clarifying why such comparisons are made. The thermal situation certainly deserves a good look - at 95W, it isn't too far off from the 7700K's 91W, so they'll definitely need to scale back the all-core clock speed. I assume most enthusiasts will overclock though, so TDP considerations will go out the window (the only real limit will be cooling performance, and I assume most will use a high-end AIO or a custom loop).

 

"40 pcie lanes" , it has 20 lanes from the cpu x16 + x4(DMI), chipset acts as a switch allowing devices connected via the "24" lanes to go through the dmi link just like z270. this of course is fine and very useful. really wish they would just say " You can connect X number of devices via pcie" and ditch the wanky marketing.

 

I'm actually buying it to game in UWQHD.

Have you ever read a CPU review? I suggest you try doing so now.

Obviously you missed the part where I mentioned I need a reasonable number of PCIe lanes. X370 is so nerfed in that respect it's not even remotely funny. As for the rest: Have you ever read a CPU review? I suggest you try doing so now.

That's just ignorant. As of right now, IPC and frequency is far more important in the vast majority of games than the number of cores in excess of 4. After all, there's a reason why the 7700K has been, and currently still is, the best mainstream games CPU in existence.

That will remain the case for many years, as games (which, as stated, is my intended primary use) are designed to run on as many computers as possible, meaning they're designed to run at least resonably well on common and garden variety quad core CPUs. As long as that's the case, in other words as long as most people run quad core CPUs or worse, games design will not transition to take full advantage of more cores, as there is no way (currently, at least) to do so and still have a game run well on a lesser CPU. A game designed for the least common denominator will to some extent take advantage of additional cores and threads, for instance by handling a greater number of characters on screen without lag becoming an issue. The core mechanics, however, will not - they will only respond to higher IPC and a higher frequency.

So no, single thread performance will certainly not become irrelevant for +80% of consumers any time soon. Eventually, sure, but not for the next decade or longer.

 

There are actually very, very few reviews out there showing why this is a problem.



The example of a sound card is true, but does not really illustrate what the issue is. It's not a problem per se, but not hard to see where the OP was going. Two decent NVMe drives in RAID0 cap the DMI without any problem all on their own. You wouldn't even need the 960 Pros in the video to do it - 960 EVOs wouldn't have a problem capping the bus, nor would the decent offerings from OCZ or the like. After you have that set up, anything else you do beyond reading and writing from them is subtractive. Copying data from them across the network? Subtract a gigabit from the drive speeds. Copying from them to a SATA or Thunderbolt 3 drive? There goes up to 6 gbits (more, if the SATA drives are in RAID as well).

The fact that they added MORE lanes to the chipset vs Z270 is completely and utterly useless from a performance standpoint, and is little more than marketing BS designed to make Z370 look more appealing when compared to X299 and (likely especially) X399.

 

IPC and frequency are indeed important - UNTIL you hit your GPU bottleneck. Which, unless you are playing at 1080p happens pretty quick in modern games. Presumably most people spending $650+ on a mobo and CPU are running similar components across their entire system. In fact, the most common setup for a 7700k at this point seems to be a GTX 1070 and a 1440p monitor. You know what the average framerate difference is in that setup between a 7700k and a 1600X? Around 10 fps. So, $150 more for the CPU probably 100 more for the mobo, and you get 10 frames per second.

The next logical argument is people that have a 1080Ti with that combo. At that point, those same people are likely running at 4k, and the difference is even smaller.

Now, that being said, there is the argument that you are buying now for a video card upgrade in a year or two when cards can take advantage of the extra CPU umph - which is a reasonable statement; I am running my old 4770k with a 1080ti and it's very capable of dishing out 100+ FPS even at 1440p (actually 2560x1080 in my case, but similiar pixel count). It's important to note, though, that such arguments made today don't really hold much water until said future GPU is in your hot little hands.

 

I like it that Intel have described their i7-8700K as "Intel's best gaming desktop processor" - I think that shows some integrity from them because it is a better gaming CPU than their other new 10,12,18 core CPUs, and they're not really trying to get gamers to buy their more expensive & less gaming effective CPUs. i5-8600K looks really interesting, probably the best gaming performance per dollar, i7-8700K is the only other CPU worth considering really, and you for sure want an overclockable CPU for gaming - extra free Mhz is king for extracting maximum fps, especially if you're talking 144fps+!

 

2xm.2 nvme and you are toast (and with the current prices of flash memory i don't see anybody buying large flash drives,its more realistic scenario to buy now one smaller 215-512 GB drive and later on when prices go down a bit second larger one or same size and doing raid)

 

X370 NERFED ???? What the hell are you talking about ? It has more lanes then your precious z370 (did you forgot that x370 has separate USB3.1 gen2 and SATA lanes directly from CPU ?)

 

In my case that per se is exactly the crux of the issue. I know I can max out the DMI, it's easy if you try (sorry Mr. Lennon, it wasn't intentional), but that fact has so far never adversely affected me. If I'm playing a game, then playing that game is pretty much all I do. I don't copy files to and from various drives in the background, I don't encode, I don't stream, etc, etc. I may well be downloading stuff, but even if I max out my 500Gb/s connection there'll be plenty bandwidth left over for whatever the game needs.

Conversely, if I do something else I won't be gaming and in general I do one thing at a time, being neither a great multi-tasker, someone with lots of computer related tasks to go through in a short time, nor plagued by an excess of impatience.

So yeah, the DMI can certainly be saturated, but it likely won't be saturated by me and hence its theoretical limitations are of little practical interest beyond the fact that they're handy to be aware of.

Kindly see my previous post.

Those USB and SATA lanes are of near zero interest to me, I need a single NVME drive and 2 x 8X (electrical) or better PCIe lanes for my two HBAs. The Z370 (which is neither mine, nor particularly precious) will provide that, while the X370 has a single, measly X4 lane on offer.

 

I still don't get it what are you talking about? 1 single NVME from CPU x370 has,1x16 or 2x8 as far i can tell all x370 boards have plus x4 for chipset plus SATA and USB 3.1 gen1,gen2,USB 2.0 also from CPU.Maybe you are confusing AMD with Intel?AMD doesn't Nerf there chip-sets like Intel does.Each AMD core has 32 PCIE gen 3.0 lanes.So x399 with two cores has total of 64 PCIE lanes,EPYC with its 4 cores has 128 lanes,and x370 with one core has 1x16 for gpu plus 1x4 for chipset plus 1x4 for m.2 nvme disk,thats total of 24 lanes and the 8 remaining lanes is given to SATA and USB ports.Granted there isn't much on chipset beside sound and lan port,so some (i didn't check how many boards support it but i know for sure that some asrock and asus boards do support it) boards have second m.2 slot (works slower x2).

 

Deary me....

In my particular scenario X370 provides the following:

1 PCIe 16X slot for my 1080 Ti
1 M2 4X for an NVME SSD
1 PCIe 4X, which is awfully hard to fit 2 x 8X HBAs into

While Z370 will provide the following:

1 PCIe 16X for my 1080 Ti
1-3 M2 4X for one or more NVME SSDs
1 PCIe 8X for an 8X HBA
1 PCIe 8X or 4X for another HBA

So there it is, or at least there I assume it is, given that no motherboards have dropped yet.

Edit:

Just to address this specifically:

The Asus ROG Crosshair VI Extreme has:

1 PCIe 16X or shared 8X/8X, the latter of which is of no interest.
3 PCIe 1X, which are of no earthly use to me.
1 PCIe 4X

Obviously we're talking 16X, 8X and 4X electrically, not physically. Perhaps you're unaware that there is a difference?

 

Wait....people think that having more pci lanes for m.2 drives etc is a gimmick?


That is the dumbest thing I have read in a while. My next cpu and motherboard will need to have at least 3 full speed m.2 x4 slots all running at 4x as well as 16x for a gpu....nothing gimmicky about it. An all m.2 pc is super fast and space efficient...not a single sata power or data cable. Just tucked away on the motherboard.

I have a 950 pro now and have the money aside for a 2tb 960 pro now but decided to wait for the 970 series as I am still busy playing a few games.

That's 2/3 m.2 drives right there and will fill both available slots on my current board.

Why would you limit yourself to using sata drives which at this point are basically a legacy connection that will be gone in a few years as m.2 drives take over.

Having extra pci slots for sli etc to me is not what I need and most people don't use it. But having a greater number of slots for the fastest and most convenient type of storage that exists...how is that a gimmick.

I suppose when they are making x8 m.2 slots with 10gb/s read spead and 8gb/s write speeds people with mechanical drives and a 256gb sata boot drive from 5 years ago will still be saying it's a gimmick...if you want the best performance you need the best hardware. Why by a new chipset that doesn't support it...

 

Your hardware should work fine if you just adjust your configuration. As I'm sure you're aware, the main PCIe 3.0 x16 slot can be split into two. To my recollection, x8 lanes is sufficient for a 1080Ti, and the extra x8 lanes can be used for one of your HBAs. Meanwhile, the other HBA ought to work fine on the x4 slot.
I don't really understand why you'd need more than one M.2 drive for a Ryzen build (especially with 2x HBAs) but there are PCIe cards that allow you to install another one if you really need to.

Currently, it is a gimmick for the vast majority of people. Very rarely do M.2 drives have any noticeable real-world performance difference. Most of the benefits are all synthetic tests or very specialized cases (for example, high-speed cameras). Remember, most (if not all) M.2 drives are partially SATA based, so that in addition to four PCIe lanes is excessive. You could probably use x2 lanes and even the best M.2 drive would see very little performance loss out of synthetic tests.

Looks like someone has a superiority complex and feels to need to justify his spending.

SATA is not going to be gone for a very, very long time. Look how long it took PATA to die, and that technology was somewhat obsolete the year it was released. SATA (and SAS) still serves purposes M.2 won't, such as hot-swapping, affordability, compatibility, and things other than SSDs (which is important in enterprise industries).

 

I am aware of difference,but here is the kick all that :
1 PCIe 16X for my 1080 Ti
1-3 M2 4X for one or more NVME SSDs
1 PCIe 8X for an 8X HBA
1 PCIe 8X or 4X for another HBA

that is not possible neither on x370 or z370 unless you accept that you are going to be heavily bottlenecked .Especially if you use more then one m.2 drive,if you want to fully use all of your devices your only option is then x299(44 lanes CPU preferably or x399.

 

I don't think there would be a noticeable bottleneck, but I do agree that Belforac would be better off with X299 or X399 regardless.

 

Thing is, I'm not really interested in building a computer which is just about acceptable right now. An 8X slot may well be fine, or almost fine, for a 1080 Ti today, but that means as soon as I want to upgrade the GPU it won't be fine at all. That's really no way to plan for one's computing future.

I didn't say I did need more than one, nor that I want to do a Ryzen build. I said I do need (well, want) one and that I won't do a Ryzen build.

Completely agree. Still want one M2 though.

Who? I certainly don't have one. Unless, of course, you think wanting a single M2 is totally unreasonable.

Certainly hope not, as I have 6 SATA SSDs I have no intention of ditching for M2.

 

I don't think there's enough data available to know when x8 PCIe 3.0 lanes will be insufficient for GPUs. With DX12 and Vulkan reducing PCIe overhead, it will become even less relevant. But, I take your point.

Notice I was responding to Emille at this point, not you. I don't think there's anything wrong with what you want.

Exactly: you are a solid example against Emille's statement.

 

I do think you'll need to provide some evidence for that being the case, or at the very least some logical reasoning, because I'm certainly not about to take your word for it.

How about you take the time to read and digest what I've written previously instead of referring to hypothetical scenarios which have no bearing on my reality? It would likely save us both some time.

That said: sure, if I use all my devices at the same time I'll no doubt be bottlenecked. Then again, if you had bothered to read my posts you'd have seen that I don't do that. Nor, I'm sure, does anyone else.