Intel Processor Refresh in Spring - 100 MHz bumps
Earlier this week you've already read the funny news about a KFC edition, in the upcoming weeks more processors will be added into the lineup from Intel, they, however, all are refreshes mostly 100 MHz increase on the frequency. In the desktop segment, You've already seen the Intel Core i5-9400 / 9400F.
In retail you can already spot most of the new SKUs listed, for the desktop, processors in the Coffee Lake Refresh will be available as the Core i-9000 processors.
Similar to the Core i5-9400, most models will be a higher-clocked Coffee Lake, typically 100 MHz more clock. The naming is a little weirder though. If you look at the below overview the Celeron sticks to two cores and two threads, Pentium procs offers at least four of them (two cores + two threads) now going to 4 GHz (Pentium Gold 5260). This is an entry-level Pentium Gold G5260 model is already present in some European stores along with a prominent availability date on March 4th. It is not known which architecture the Pentium Gold G5260 is based on, but according to a current Intel roadmap, this should be Coffee Lake-R. With the Pentium Gold G5260, six additional models are planned: Pentium Gold G5420, Pentium Gold G5420T, Pentium Gold G5600T, Celeron G4950, Celeron G4930 and Celeron G4930T. Pentium models should come in combination with two processor cores and a total of four threads, while two processor cores and two triads are expected in Celeron.
It is expected that Intel will bring the entire range of new models to market in April. Some of the KF versions can already be found.
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For games, a fast 4/8 is still plenty for 99% of the games. I'm seeing some high cpu usage in some games though and while those games still run great, I don't like stressing my cpu to near 100% in BFV and TD2.
I'm waiting for the Ryzen 2 release and if they don't perform, 9900kfc it is. I don't regret getting the 7700k at all btw as all I do is gaming, no computing/productivity work here so it gave me 2.5 years of great gaming performance. I always say people should just buy whatever is best for them.
I´ve bought a 7600K because the only demanding stuff i do is gaming, like you, and so far i´ve been happy with it. It´s overclocked to 5.0Ghz and it works like a charm with my 1080Ti, both driving my 144Hz screen perfectly. But despite all this my next CPU is probably going to be from AMD because of the "stunt" Intel pulled with the Z170/270/370/470 chipsets, changing the the layout of the pins of the last 2 to prevent users of the first 2 to upgrade to the 8xxx and 9xxx Intel CPUs artificially. This really pissed me of and it´s probably making me change to AMD, at least they know how to treat their customers properly.
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Intel have always been like that, new cpu = new motherboard, ever since I remember.
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Do you not remember socket 1, 478, 775, or 1366? Those took forever (relatively speaking) to get obsoleted. Sure, it might not have be as long-lived as AM2 or AM3, but they had pretty good runs.
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still on the same package. infinity fabric already showed to have worse latency than a monolithic die. also now cores themselves can get split between the 2 chiplets.
I really hope you're right, Zen 2 could be a major breakthrough in CPU performance, also Zen 2 is most likely going to be the CPU of choice for the next generation consoles, which will dictate the requirements for games.
I dont think the infinity fabric itself that is the problem, its really the speed, if you look at it , with "3200mhz"(real clock 1600mhz) memory the fabric runs at a mere 1600mhz on zen gen 1, where as intel's uncore runs at like > 3000mhz on a skylake cpu, and can be clocked independently from the memory. I think thats where the big difference in latency comes from,
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I agree with your first point; 4c/8t is becoming the new "minimum requirement" in gaming. However, I'm not sure I entirely agree with your 2nd point. I'm not saying I would advocate for reducing multitasking, but, I don't see a problem with it either. If I'm playing a game, anything else I'm doing that demands more cores is either distracting me or not grabbing enough of my attention to warrant the need for me to do it. When I play games, I hardly run any other background processes on the same PC. However, in the event I do care about multitasking, I have enough other computers on-hand (like a laptop or my server) where I can just use one of those next to my gaming PC. Not only does this allow me to buy cheaper, quieter hardware all-around, it also becomes more convenient since I never need to alt+tab. I also get another display, another set of inputs, and better overall stability.
All that being said, playing stuff like music in the background or running some chat service isn't going to affect your performance at all. If you've got something like a youtube video playing for other background noise, you can always minimize it and switch to a new tab to reduce CPU overhead from rendering the video (or, just stick it in 240p). If you're a streamer, yeah, you're probably going to need better hardware.
Anyway, there are plenty of good reasons to play on PC without taking advantage of multitasking. In fact, for most of PC gaming history, multitasking wasn't really feasible without paying a really high premium on some really fancy hardware, but there was still an appeal to it vs consoles.
Understandable. I am simply used to use 2 screens and almost always do more things at once.