Sunday, September 10th 2017
8th Gen Core i3 Part of Intel's First "Coffee Lake" Wave
It was initially believed that Intel will launch its 8th generation Core "Coffee Lake" desktop processor lineup with only 6-core SKUs in the Core i5 and Core i7 extensions, priced well above $200; with Core i3 SKUs joining in Q1-2018. A popular retailer confirmed to us that the first wave will include two Core i3 SKUs, namely the Core i3-8100 and Core i3-8350K. Both these chips are quad-core, and lack both HyperThreading and Turbo Boost, but feature rather high clock speeds.
The Core i3-8350K is a particularly interesting SKU. This 4-core/4-thread chip features an unlocked base-clock multiplier, and 8 MB of L3 cache, as opposed to 6 MB on the i3-8100. Just as Intel previously differentiated its Core i3-x1xx SKUs from i3-x3xx SKUs by giving the latter 33.33% more L3 cache, the trend is continuing with the 8th generation, except that both the core-count and L3 cache amount has doubled over the 7th generation. The prices could be noticeably higher, too. The six SKUs Intel will launch for the retail channel on the 5th of October, are tabled below.
The Core i3-8350K is a particularly interesting SKU. This 4-core/4-thread chip features an unlocked base-clock multiplier, and 8 MB of L3 cache, as opposed to 6 MB on the i3-8100. Just as Intel previously differentiated its Core i3-x1xx SKUs from i3-x3xx SKUs by giving the latter 33.33% more L3 cache, the trend is continuing with the 8th generation, except that both the core-count and L3 cache amount has doubled over the 7th generation. The prices could be noticeably higher, too. The six SKUs Intel will launch for the retail channel on the 5th of October, are tabled below.
24 Comments on 8th Gen Core i3 Part of Intel's First "Coffee Lake" Wave
They should have had something like this if truly awakened:
i3 - 4 Cores/no HT
i5 - 6 Cores/no HT
i7 - 8 Cores/16 HT
It's a shame, though they still ask premium for unlocked CPU's, at least the i5+ parts should not have any restriction if they're placed in a motherboard with a chipset supporting OC.
it LOOKS like that Intel is changing slightly the design of the 7700K that they are already fabing tons per day to have a microcode lock (to z370, since is still 1151). And sell than for a "bargain" for consumers
Just guessing...
Oh but didn't notice that cache. But still it's more like i5 since it doesn't have HT.
So the 8350K is a 7700K without HT and a chipset locker. And the 8100 is the 7600 refresh.
I think that they are going away for now, so that Intel can segment the market perfectly.
But then again there are games from years ago that use way more than 6 threads anyway so this isn't alien technology in actual fact.The usefulness of having more hardware threads diminishes with more cores. That being said the biggest difference it makes is when you go from a simple dual-core to a Hyper-Threaded one , from then on you gain less and less from SMT.