Intel's Just Launched 8th Gen 'Coffee Lake' Processors Bring the Heat To AMD's Ryzen

bigwophh writes: The upheaval of the high-end desktop processor segment continues today with the official release of Intel's latest Coffee Lake-based 8th Generation Core processors. The flagship in the new lineup is the Core i7-8700K. It is a 6C/12T beast, with a base clock of 3.7GHz, a boost clock of 4.7GHz, and 12MB of Intel Smart Cache. The Core i5-8400 features the same physical die, but has only 9MB of Smart Cache, no Hyper-Threading, and base and boost clocks of 2.8GHz and 4GHz, respectively. The entire line-up features more cores, support for faster memory speeds, and leverages a fresh platform that's been tweaked for more robust power delivery and, ultimately, more performance. The Core i7-8700K proved to be an excellent performer, besting every other processor in single-threaded workloads and competing favorably with 8C/16T Ryzen 7 processors. The affordably-priced 6-core Core i5-8400 even managed to pull ahead of the quad-core Core i7-7700K in some tests. Overall, performance is strong, especially for games, and the processors seem to be solid values in their segment.

Comments

AMD v Intel

[harvey the nerd]

Intel the dairy farmer, milking the world.

One wonders whether we would still be running 286s if there were no AMD. It has been AMD that has made Intel actually compete in x86 space for 35+ yrs.

Re:AMD v Intel

[gweihir]

There is a reason the current instruction set is called AMD64 and not Intel64. Intel actually licenses it from AMD, because they failed to come up with anything competitive. AMD cares more about engineering and Intel more about profits. Now, if only MS would get a credible competitor, maybe this atrocity going on with Windows would finally stop.

Re:I'm a bit of an AMD Fanboi, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you are concerned about data security...
In which case both Intel and AMD should be viewed with some level of suspicion (as well as AMD/Nvidia videocards) as all of the above hardware is using signed firmware and user inaccessable DRM/NSA processors that could be spying on you, either now or in the near future when they finally feel penetration is deep enough to turn them on.

Most people scoff at these concerns, but an example that hasn't been brought up often enough: Tor and other privacy networks are only as secure as the software. But often forgotten in discussing that is that also the hardware they run on must be trustworthy. Windows 10 is already pretty well known to be untrustworthy, but when you add in the suspicious change of *ALL* processor manufacturers moving to signed firmware, without the end user having either software or hardware switches to either disable the signing so they as power users can use the hardware as they need/want to, or documentation to prove that this change in control over their hardware is in fact no more dangerous than unreviewable microcode updates to the processor microarchitecture itself, should be viewed with suspicion.

Intel has had ME since 2010 or so, on post LGA1366 cpu+motherboards. AMD pushed it with FM2+ and Ryzen, in fact with a worse implementation, since the PSP, containing a full fledged Arm TrustZone core, has a single image, so unlike the Intel design, you can't even strip certain modules in the hope of crippling its capabilities. Furthermore both of these designs are now used for Software TPM support, meaning that even if you assume the original TPM modules were trustworthy, the new software designs running inside the management engines could be hacked to exfiltrate keys in a manner with far less complications, since they are using a general purpose cpu to retain their security.