Introduction

Intel recently expanded its 8th generation Core processor family with more Core i5 six-core processor models, capturing important price points between $189 to $229. This price-band has become rather crowded now with the i5-8400 starting at $189, the i5-8500 around $209, and the i5-8600 at $229. With the advent of AMD's 2nd generation Ryzen "Pinnacle Ridge" processor family, the competition between Intel and AMD heated up even more, with some retailers serving up the i5-8500 as low as $204 to compete with the new Ryzen 5 2600.

Before the Ryzen 5 1600 from last year, the more popular price-performance-sweetspot processors sold slightly north of $200. These are processors sought by gamers who don't do that much multi-threaded work and rather focus on something that won't bottleneck their graphics card. The market was reshaped with the Ryzen 5 1600, which was quantitatively the most popular Ryzen SKU and sold a ton. AMD bolstered the six-core chip with SMT (making it 6-core/12-thread), the full 16 MB of L3 cache, and an unlocked multiplier, making it an unbeatable proposition. Intel responded to it by launching the affordable six-core i5-8400 at $189. With the introduction of the Ryzen 5 2600, its position is threatened, and so now, we have the slightly speed-bumped Core i5-8500 at a similar price point swinging between $204 to $210 depending on where you look for it.



The Intel Core i5-8500 meets the psychological 3-gigahertz mark with its nominal clock bang at 3.00 GHz. Its maximum Turbo Boost frequency is rated at 4.10 GHz. Our past experience with the latest Core i5 chips, particularly with the i5-8600 performing on par with the i5-8600K, shows that the i5-8500 is effectively just a 100 MHz speed-bump over the i5-8400. You still get the same 9 MB of shared L3 cache and a locked multiplier.

AMD has stirred the $200-ish processor pot once again with the Ryzen 5 2600 (non-X) launched at $199. This puts the i5-8500 in head-on competition with it. It's going to be an uphill task for the Intel chip as it lacks HyperThreading and an unlocked multiplier, both of which AMD offers with the 2600. Is there enough in this chip for gamers to save $30 over the i5-8600/2600X, which is better spent on a faster graphics card or a bigger SSD?

A Closer Look

The Intel Core i5-8500 comes in a standard retail box, which includes a fan heatsink, case-badge, and some literature.


Intel's stock fan heatsink for the LGA115x sockets hasn't changed much within the past decade beyond evolving regulatory compliances (becoming lead-free, RoHS, etc.) It's the same top-flow cooler that has a cylindrical heatsink with radially projecting, forked aluminium ridges, which is ventilated by a 70 mm fan. With its TDP rated at 65 W, you should be able to run the i5-8500 with this cooler.


The Core i5-8500 looks like every other LGA115x processor launched within the past decade. A point to note here is that unlike AMD, Intel is using glue and thermal paste as the interface material between the integrated heatspreader and die. Enthusiasts generally prefer soldered dies. Gamers don't care as long as their machines are quiet enough.


With this generation, the biggest point of confusion has been the package. The 8th generation Core desktop processors bear the "LGA 1151" package markings and look like they'll work on older 100-series and 200-series chipset motherboards. They'll even physically fit on them since nobody at Intel bothered to put the key notches elsewhere. The chips, however, will not work on older motherboards. The machine won't even POST. The box clearly states that you need a 300-series chipset motherboard to use the processor.

Architecture

The 8th generation Intel Core processors are based on the "Coffee Lake" micro-architecture. The CPU circuit design is essentially the same as with "Skylake," but the silicon is built on Intel's third iteration of the 14 nanometer silicon fab process, which the company refers to as 14 nm++. This node improves the ability for the chipmaker to dial up clock speeds at minimal power/thermal cost. While the quad-core "Kaby Lake" silicon was "Skylake" built on a refined 14 nm+ process, the six-core "Coffee Lake" silicon is a new design with a die-area of 150 mm².

The "Coffee Lake" silicon physically features six CPU cores with 256 KB of dedicated L2 cache per core and 12 MB of shared L3 cache. On the Core i5 "Coffee Lake" series, the L3 cache is reduced to 9 MB, which still keeps up with the 1.5 MB/core configuration of previous-generation Core i5 chips. The integrated Gen 9.5 graphics core is physically carried over from the "Kaby Lake" die, but is bolstered by higher clocks and an enhanced driver, which lets Intel brand it as the "Intel UHD Graphics 600 series." Internal communication is handled by a "ring bus" and not the mesh-interconnect Intel deployed on its new Core X "Skylake-X" processors.



The system agent (the integrated Northbridge) also appears to be carried over from the "Kaby Lake" die with its dual-channel DDR4 memory interface. There are minor improvements, such as the standard DDR4 memory clock being upped to DDR4-2666 (JEDEC) on the Core i7 and Core i5 SKUs and DDR4-2400 on the Core i3 SKUs. The IMC supports XMP 2.0 profiles. The processor only puts out 16 PCI-Express gen 3.0 lanes meant for PEG (PCI-Express discrete graphics). It talks to the motherboard chipset over the DMI 3.0 chipset bus with 32 Gbps-per-direction bandwidth.



The "Coffee Lake" CPU core is of the same exact design as Skylake and Kaby Lake, which dates back to 2015. Compared to the Haswell/Broadwell core, it features an improved front end with a 25% fatter 5 µOP pipeline, a 50% wider allocation queue depth, an improved branch-prediction unit, and a wider instruction window. The execution stage features a slightly bigger re-order buffer, a bigger integer register file, and an improved on-chip memory system. All of these contribute to a 5-10 percent IPC increase over "Haswell" to "Skylake" clock-for-clock.



Between "Skylake" and "Coffee Lake," Intel turned its R&D efforts towards refining the 14 nm process. It met with success on "Kaby Lake," and owing to its significantly higher clock speeds, "Kaby Lake" was able to provide higher performance than "Skylake." With "Coffee Lake," the nominal clock speeds look low, but Turbo Boost frequencies are higher than with "Kaby Lake," and refinements in the process allow the chip to sustain elevated boost-clock states better. As we mentioned throughout the introduction, the design focus of these chips is to increase core counts across the board in order to better compete with AMD Ryzen.

The Gen 9.5 integrated graphics core takes up nearly a third of the die area. Since it's of the same core configuration as the one on the "Kaby Lake" silicon, it still features 24 execution units in the GT2 trim. Higher clocks and some driver magic let Intel brand it "UHD Graphics." Don't expect to play PUBG at 4K on this, the "UHD" moniker only indicates that the IGP can handle 4K Ultra HD displays, features modern connectivity options such as DP 1.4 and HDMI 2.0, and can playback 4K video in new formats with 10-bit color and HDR10/Dolby Vision standards.

Intel 300-series Platform

Chipset options for the Core i5-8500 include the top-end Z370 Express which the platform debuted with, followed by the H370 Express, B360 Express, and entry-level H310 Express. The Z370 Express chipset, which succeeds the Z270 Express, appears to carry over the same platform feature set. It wouldn't surprise us if the Z370 turns out to be a re-brand of the Z270; however, we have no way of telling right now. The H370 has almost all features of the Z370, but one lesser M.2 slot, lack of CPU overclocking support, and lack of multi-GPU support. The B360 Express has fewer M.2 slots still. As we mentioned on the previous page, 8th generation Core processors won't work on 100-series/200-series chipset motherboards.