Intel is beginning to feel the pinch of AMD Ryzen 7-series, and the upper-end of the Ryzen 5-series, which offer better multi-threaded performance than similarly-priced quad-core Intel Core i7 and Core i5 "Kaby Lake" processors, and reasonably good single-thread performance, and platform costs. The company is responding in force with four new six-core SKUs, and for the first time since "Nehalem," the company isn't changing the socket with the introduction of its third mainstream-desktop micro-architecture on a given process. The 8th generation Core "Coffee Lake" mainstream-desktop processors will be built in the existing LGA1151 package, and will hopefully support existing motherboards through BIOS updates, even though Intel plans a new 300-series chipset to go with these chips.

The six-core "Coffee Lake" processor lineup addresses not just the higher-end of the lineup with Core i7 SKUs, but also the mid-range of it, with Core i5 SKUs. One of these could even scrape the sub-$200 price-point. Of the four confirmed SKUs are the top-dog Core i7-8700K, its slightly cheaper sibling, the Core i7-8700 (non-K); and the Core i5-8600K, with its cheaper sibling, the Core i5-8400. Of these the i7-8700K and i5-8600K are unlocked. The Core i7 parts feature HyperThreading enabling 12 logical CPUs for the OS to deal with, and 12 MB of shared L3 cache; while the Core i5 parts lack HyperThreading, and only feature 9 MB of L3 cache. The clock speeds and other features are tabled below. The company plans to launch these four either by the end of Q3 (late-September) or some time in Q4, before Holiday.