European Core i7 8700K Coffee Lake prices Spotted in Germany

#5471007 Posted on: 09/11/2017 02:11 PM

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I wanted to build a new PC and was just waiting for the new generation to be released but now I really have to question that decision.
For gaming the I7-8700k isnt really better than a i7-7700k. In some benchmarks it is slightly better, in other benchmarks it is slightly worse and since multicore performance isnt important for gaming at all it makes no sense paying 100€ more for a CPU that performs exactly the same as generation 7 CPU. Additionally to that you have to calculate the costs of a new mainboard and here I highly doubt that the z370 boards (which will be outdated just a few months later) will cost the same price as their z270 counterparts. It is more likely to assume that the z370 boards will be most expensive because they are new (while they actually do not perform any better than the z270 boards).
So for gaming you have to pay extra for the CPU without any real benefit and you most likely have to pay extra for the mainboards without any additional benefit (and the knowledge that in 2018 these boards will be outdated again).

"But they have better multicore performance"
Yeah... so does Ryzen.
If you want the PC for working then its better to go with a Ryzen CPU because you get more performance for lower price.
If you want gaming performance you stick with i7-7700k because the i7-8700k isnt any better.

"But future games will have multicore support and i7-8700k will rock eventually"
Yeah, I heard the same song 6-7 years ago when the first quad and eight core CPUs were released. In the meantime we got 2-3? games which effectively make use of multiple cores.
Do you really still believe in that fairytale?

If Intel would release the new CPU for a reasonable price (which they wont) I would be able to overlook the disadvantages like being stuck on a warmed up series of z270 boards.
But lets face it, if you want the K CPU you have to take these z370 boards which are not better than a z270 and when finally the true 300 series Z boards get released in late 2018, intel is probably not far away from releasing their 9th Generation of CPUs which yet again will need a new socket.

The more I think about the new intel CPUs and how they are released (timing and pricing) the more I start to believe that waiting for Generation 8 Intel CPUs was a huge mistake.
For gaming older Intel CPUs are cheaper and offer the same performance for 99.9% of the games.
For working Ryzen is also cheaper and will most likely outperform the new Intel CPUs.

Intel probably should start to re-think how they treat their customers or they will lose a big bunch of them with such a release policy.

#5471034 Posted on: 09/11/2017 03:56 PM

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Yeah, I heard the same song 6-7 years ago when the first quad and eight core CPUs were released. In the meantime we got 2-3? games which effectively make use of multiple cores.
Do you really still believe in that fairytale?

More or less all AAA games these days require 4 cores. If people don't have more than 4, what kind of madman would make a game requiring more, huh? Still, it's not rare anymore to see i7 as the recommendation, with its 8 threads. It doesn't matter what AMD's lousy CPUs provided before Ryzen because they were too weak to matter.

Optimising games is hard, especially since people have so different systems. That's why making inefficient games is much easier and saves a lot of money for the studios. This applies to multithreading very well, so while 4 might be enough for a long time if perfectly optimised, that's not going to happen.

#5471098 Posted on: 09/11/2017 06:20 PM

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AAA games are more GPU demanding then CPU demanding.
Only very few of them truely require 4 cores, and by that 4 threads are actually enough in most cases. Most of the games that tell you that a quad core is required actually run very well on dual core with ht (of course not with the same performance but they run).

More cores are mainly needed for streaming or additional tools running on the PC.
Most of the games, including modern AAA titles focus on 1-2 cores. In many cases this is even the more logical design for games which require linear calculations.

However, thats not even the point. Until a few weeks ago for every Intel gamer 4 cores were enough... all of a sudden it isnt? If so then Ryzen is as much an option as Coffee Lake.

#5471549 Posted on: 09/13/2017 08:30 AM

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@ChrisMa
gaming at higher than 1080p and ryzen is as fast as intel.

any newer game will run on more than 4C.
there is a difference between min/rec, and what the game can use, if resources are there....

besides that, future will be optimized for more cores, especially since cheap 6/8C from amd will allow more gamers/user to get them,
as well as the next consoles will have more cores, so why chose intel for single thread perf?
it might do good for another year or two, doubt its more.
and since most are not replacing their hardware every 1-2y, ryzen is always the better choice,
unless gaming at 108p or lower, but then again a faster gpu will have larger impact.

#5471657 Posted on: 09/13/2017 03:05 PM

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Irrelevant.



I doubt the studios will limit their customer base just for the heck of it after spending millions in developing a new game. They put a 4-core requirement if after testing they see more problems than profit coming from allowing dual cores.



It's not like we would be seeing a 6-core minimum requirement any time soon. But already six can help especially if it's not only the game and absolutely nothing else running on the PC. Optimisation is something no studio actually wants to do because it eats time and money and can be frustrating due to the dozens of different CPUs PC gamers might have. That's one reason why having more than necessary is good, although it's also a major reason why single core performance still matters so much and why AMD's pre-Ryzen CPUs were worhtless.

#5471788 Posted on: 09/13/2017 10:05 PM

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Some people like myself buy 1080/1080Ti to game at 1080p 144Hz, so there is a market for that (albeit small).

But I hear ya, I don't get why the 1800X is being dragged into this discussion. The 1800X doesn't sell so well because price/performance is not that good, the 1700/1700X are what's killing its sales.

People will always find a reason to bullshit their way around their past and (apparently) future purchases when they're fanboys, don't you worry about that. They already know who they're buying, they're just trying to justify.


As for the news article itself, Intel apparently thinks they can crap on their consumers again; not exactly something new. I have a feeling it won't work this time though.
Still how much of a diference makes from 100 fps to 110 -120? Especially if you use g-sync . That said i am a pleb that is happy with 60 i guess when the time comes and get a new monitor i might change my view... first gpu though, when the mining craze is finaly over my 770 retirement plan was postproned till farther notice cause of it!

#5471861 Posted on: 09/14/2017 06:48 AM

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What's all this talk about games requiring 6 or 8 cores etc....

Look at games core usage now. There is 1 or 2 heavy threads and a bunch of extremely low core usage threads.

Game developers aren't going to make some deliberately heavy thread loads just to take advantage of new cores. The games will have a bunch of 5% core usage type threads spread across more cores, new cores will be utilized, but those tiny tasks won't be pushing all cores to their limit or something.


You will still always have that 1 thread that is extremely heavy, having 8 cores won't take that away. So having more cores will be slightly beneficial, and having higher ipc and core speed will be slightly beneficial. It's not an either/or scenario. It's not like if amd made a 32 core gaming chip at 2.5ghz it would be sick for gaming, or if intel made an i5 at 6ghz that it would be the best chip for gaming.

The only way I can see new cores being actually saturated is if developers start doing coding for extreme amount of background ai and pathing etc to save on loading or stutter, or if some heavy cpu physics was implemented now that cpus could handle that sort of thing.

Your stock standard AAA game is going to have borderline flatline usage on all those extra threads, and heavy on the thread for the most intensive task, same as always.