Intels Skylake-X and Coffee Lake CPUs Discussion

[Kagthul]

So 8700K might actually be a downgrade for gaming unless there are some notable IPC gains.

Keep in mind that the leaks have no turbo boost shown, meaning they are almost assuredly engineering samples.

Kaby Lake samples were also clocked at about 3.6, but the eventual Kaby Lake 7700k released at 4.5, so...

Quite likely the base clock will be around the 4.0-4.5 range, depending on what Intel determines is best for the basic profile.

It will overclock just as well as the 7700K, given adequate cooling, which means for the enthusiast uses, just as good or better (samples are showing about an 8-12% IPC increase).

[Fascinate]

Ill just leave this here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfNMn7RWgLw#t=17m45s

[mojo6912]

Oh man, he burnt a contact on the CPU overclocking to 4.7GHz @ 1.25v. Ouch.

[Gaidax]

Finally 6/12 Intel CPU for plebs incoming.

I am in the line for this one, looks to be the best of both worlds there, Intel single core performance and a bunch of multi-threading.

[Remilia]

Safe to say the voltage and power scale way more exponentially than previous HEDT processors.

Skylake-X is pretty bad outside of AVX honestly speaking.

[MonsieuRoberts]

Ill just leave this here:

Fuckin' nuts. Half the price for such a similar experience. I wonder if Coffee lake will be demonstrably better than this, bearing in mind that's not HEDT.

This comment said it best:

Yeah thats crazy that Ryzen is matching performance at that 700Mhz deficit. With less power!

Also, [video] is now you hotlink vids, not [url].

[Evildeffy]

http://wccftech.com/intel-coffee-lak...-details-leak/

If specs are true then I just have the following to say:

"Well I sure hope somebody picks up that phone... Because I fucking called it!" <-- Shameless rip-off of TeamFourStar's DBZ Abridged Movie: Revenge of Cooler.

[mrgreenthump]

http://wccftech.com/intel-coffee-lak...-details-leak/

If specs are true then I just have the following to say:

"Well I sure hope somebody picks up that phone... Because I fucking called it!" <-- Shameless rip-off of TeamFourStar's DBZ Abridged Movie: Revenge of Cooler.

Still rumors etc, but yes Intel does like to stick to their 95 watt TDP upper limit on their mainstream platform. Hence if they didn't find energy savings in their architecture, they'd have to tune down the clocks.

[Evildeffy]

Still rumors etc, but yes Intel does like to stick to their 95 watt TDP upper limit on their mainstream platform. Hence if they didn't find energy savings in their architecture, they'd have to tune down the clocks.

Yep ... but like is prevalent on these fora ... logic is hard to find and common sense ... not so common.

The part I called though references ... well I think you're well aware of what exactly and why, no need to rehash it right?

[chronia]

Fuckin' nuts. Half the price for such a similar experience. I wonder if Coffee lake will be demonstrably better than this, bearing in mind that's not HEDT.

This comment said it best:



Also, [video] is now you hotlink vids, not [url].

Have to say though, does look like the 78xx/79xx series need some optimalisation patches in some games just like Ryzen needed at release, look at for example Mafia, Farcry, Total War Warhammer, GTA V, Player unknown, Tombraider, Hitman, Warhammer 40k all weirdly high gaps between the 7800x and the 7700k that you can't really explain with a near 0 IPC improvement between Skylake and Kabylake and only 200Khz difference.

Looks to me that some games might not be taking advantage and are even negatively impacted by either the new cache structure or the mesh grid that connects the cores instead of ringbus or both on the 7800X

[Remilia]

Have to say though, does look like the 78xx/79xx series need some optimalisation patches in some games just like Ryzen needed at release, look at for example Mafia, Farcry, Total War Warhammer, GTA V, Player unknown, Tombraider, Hitman, Warhammer 40k all weirdly high gaps between the 7800x and the 7700k that you can't really explain with a near 0 IPC improvement between Skylake and Kabylake and only 200Khz difference.

Looks to me that some games might not be taking advantage and are even negatively impacted by either the new cache structure or the mesh grid that connects the cores instead of ringbus or both on the 7800X

From what it seems is a combination of both. The smaller L3 cache is impacting some performance a bit and the mesh increased latency a bit despite enabling better scaling to more cores.

[Evildeffy]

Have to say though, does look like the 78xx/79xx series need some optimalisation patches in some games just like Ryzen needed at release, look at for example Mafia, Farcry, Total War Warhammer, GTA V, Player unknown, Tombraider, Hitman, Warhammer 40k all weirdly high gaps between the 7800x and the 7700k that you can't really explain with a near 0 IPC improvement between Skylake and Kabylake and only 200Khz difference.

Looks to me that some games might not be taking advantage and are even negatively impacted by either the new cache structure or the mesh grid that connects the cores instead of ringbus or both on the 7800X

It's unlikely ... but possible.

Remember this is Skylake-X .. the base is Skylake, an architecture already highly optimised in software/games.
Just because the cache structure is different has more to do with HPC than gaming as the sizes are too small to impact games properly, having a higher L3 is probably more beneficial than L2.

That said they cannot optimise anything regarding Intel's new "Mesh" grid they are so fond of promoting, it's an independent something that works off the UEFI/BIOS and not OS which is funny because Intel takes a crack at AMD's "Infinity Fabric" yet employ something incredibly similar.

So whilst it's possible that Skylake-X could need optimization patches, it's unlikely to due to aforementioned reasons.

[chronia]

It's unlikely ... but possible.

Remember this is Skylake-X .. the base is Skylake, an architecture already highly optimised in software/games.
Just because the cache structure is different has more to do with HPC than gaming as the sizes are too small to impact games properly, having a higher L3 is probably more beneficial than L2.

That said they cannot optimise anything regarding Intel's new "Mesh" grid they are so fond of promoting, it's an independent something that works off the UEFI/BIOS and not OS which is funny because Intel takes a crack at AMD's "Infinity Fabric" yet employ something incredibly similar.

So whilst it's possible that Skylake-X could need optimization patches, it's unlikely to due to aforementioned reasons.

Then how would you explain the differences in those games as its highly unlikely that the near 0 IPC gain from skylake to Kaby can contribute towards 20-30 FPS differences between 7800x and 7700K in some games, and nor can a 200Mhz difference as that would be around a ~4% difference, not the 17% you see in for example hitman or even the 33% you see in Warhammer: Total War, whilst the changes to cache and the move towards Mesh are 2 of the big changes going from Skylake to Skylake-X together with the added subset of AVX512 (however as far as my knowledge goes no games use AVX512 at all, i dont think even alot of games use AVX if at all).

Just looking at those numbers there must be something that is not making these games run correctly on 7800X, just what is this "something" then as numbers wise its just not logical that Skylake-X is so behind in some games based on minute IPC differences and the 200Mhz alone.

[Evildeffy]

Then how would you explain the differences in those games as its highly unlikely that the near 0 IPC gain from skylake to Kaby can contribute towards 20-30 FPS differences between 7800x and 7700K in some games, and nor can a 200Mhz difference as that would be around a ~4% difference, not the 17% you see in for example hitman or even the 33% you see in Warhammer: Total War, whilst the changes to cache and the move towards Mesh are 2 of the big changes going from Skylake to Skylake-X together with the added subset of AVX512 (however as far as my knowledge goes no games use AVX512 at all, i dont think even alot of games use AVX if at all).

Just looking at those numbers there must be something that is not making these games run correctly on 7800X, just what is this "something" then as numbers wise its just not logical that Skylake-X is so behind in some games based on minute IPC differences and the 200Mhz alone.

Like I said, as did @Remilia .. the Mesh structure adds latency to commands but cannot be "optimised" for, it's in the inner workings of the CPU, there's no scheduler updates that can fix this etc, it's a passive internal core communication network.

And like I said lowering the L3 cache in favour of L2 may help with HPC (High-Powered Computing) but in games it's likely a detriment in performance.
An example of this can be seen with the few Core i7-5775C CPUs that were brought out and had 128MB of L4 cache.
In quite a few games it was able to outpace the Skylake 6700K ... but was lower IPC and clocks.

The same effect happens here (very likely, though this is just an estimation at this stage and not a hard fact) but in reverse and the lowered L3 cache is probably hurting more than it's doing good.

(Note that the following is an example)
The problem with this is that you cannot really optimise for this as it's a physical limit much like you have 8GB of RAM and you cannot increase it barring physically replacing it, you can work with programmes all you like and use compression tricks etc. but if you don't have 8GB of RAM which the programme requires it will simply suck.

Granted game devs can technically incorporate these things into their games but it would mean that a great deal of resources would have to be split up in smaller data chunks, increasing overhead and cost to develop something as instead of 1000 data points needed to develop you now need 4000 f.ex.
Game devs will not really do that as long as the vast majority of users uses the "traditional" system and the extremely small minority uses these types of processors.

The market will follow whatever is dominant, if in 5 years both Intel and AMD use this type of increased L2 cache and lowered L3 cache the development process may be altered to suit the architectures but the workload increase is quite considerate.

[Life-Binder]

stuff on Coffee :

So for the details, the first processor is the Core i7-8700K. This chip has 6 cores and 12 threads. The chip is clocked at a base frequency of 3.7 GHz and has a minimum core frequency set at 0.8 GHz which is for idle mode. The chip features a boost clock of 4.3 GHz on a single core, 4.2 GHz in dual core mode while quad and hexa core boost clocks are rated at 4.0 GHz which is impressive. The CPU has a BCLK frequency of 100 MHz which is expected from Intel CPUs. The chip features an unlocked multiplier as suggested by the “IA (Intel Architecture) Overclock Capable” panel.

The chip has dual channel memory support with native speeds of 2400 MHz. There’s a total of 12 MB of smart cache on the processor, referring to the total L3 cache. The chip will be shipping with Intel’s GT2 level graphics core with a minimum clock speed of 350 MHz. The interesting thing is that the chip packs a 95W TDP and is compatible with the LGA 1151 socket which means that Intel may allow Coffee Lake support on 200-series and even 100-series motherboards although there will be a new chipset known as Z390 launching alongside the chips.

The other two processors are very interesting too. There’s another 95W chip that features clock speeds of 3.2 GHz base, 3.6 GHz (single core / dual core) boost and 3.4 GHz (quad core and hexa core) boost. This chip also supports overclocking but the clock speeds are rather lower for it to be a Core i5 K-Series chip. The other is a 65W part so we can take a guess that this is a T-Series, low TDP chip that comes with clock speeds of 3.1 GHz base but higher boost speeds of 4.2 GHz (single core), 4.1 GHz (dual core) and 3.9 GHz (quad and hexa core) boost clocks. Remaining specifications of the chips are rather similar.

The Coffee Lake S family which is the codename for the mainstream desktop platform is already known to feature the first 6 core mainstream processor from Intel. The processor lineup will launch in the third quarter with a release focused around August at Gamescom 2017. The release will include a series of 6 and 4 core models. There will also be dual core models added to the lineup but later in the first quarter of 2018.

The new 6 core parts will feature 50% more cores, threads and cache compared to current offerings. So we are looking at next-generation Core i7 mainstream SKUs with 6 cores, 12 threads and 12 MB of L3 cache. Similarly, the Core i5 models will be the first Intel mainstream models with full support for hyperthreading. The Core i5 models will ship with 6 core, non hyperthreaded and 4 core, hyperthreaded SKUs. There is internal discussion at Intel to allow hyper threading support on even the six core variants which would be nice.

The Core i5 models will ship with 4 cores, 8 threads and 8 MB of L3 LLC (Last Level Cache). This is up from 4 cores, 4 threads and 6 MB of LLC on the current Core i5 model. All models in the Coffee Lake S family will feature the next generation Intel GT2 tier graphics chip.The Pentium series will include 2 cores, 4 threads and up to 4 MB of L3 cache. There will also be some models with 3 MB L3 cache while featuring GT1 tier graphics chips.

wonder about this Z390 too, what will that be .. maybe its for a version of 8700K without IGP to allow even better OCing ? Im assuming Z370 and Z390 are actually different

the leaks seem pretty certain its still LGA 1151 and also Q3 launch for the i7 & i5



for gaming performance, if those specs are final - it would have 200-300 mhz less boost at stock than 7700K, but more cache and 2 more cores .. OC should be the same as 7800X (so 4.8+ all cores), if not better thanks to the 14++ nm process .. IPC differences are unknown, but probably nothing except from the bigger cache

it should also feature the old ringbus and not the mesh (hopefulyl) and thus alleviate SKL-X gaming performance defficiencies



so basically a 7700K with 50% more cores and threads, ~50% more cache too, but sacrificing a few hundred Mhz .. seems a fair trade to me

wouldnt expect current 7700K owners to need to upgrade to it for gaming (except maybe if their current board will support it and they have ~$350 lying around .. or less then that factoring in selling the 7700K), but for any new buyers it seems a no brainer to get 8700K over 7700K


already said it before but I think its a very good mix and balance of cores, cache and clocks all around

[Deleted]

so basically a 7700K with 50% more cores and threads, ~50% more cache too, but sacrificing a few hundred Mhz .. seems a fair trade to me

Changing your tune to suit the intel narrative I see.

This is exactly the position of Ryzen right now, hypocrite doesn't begin to describe this.

[Life-Binder]

Changing your tune to suit the intel narrative I see.

This is exactly the position of Ryzen right now, hypocrite doesn't begin to describe this.

lol, get a life nerd


and Ryzens 4.0 OC vs 4.8+ OC of SKL-X and Coffee isnt a few hundred, its 800+ .. on top of lower IPC .. and its higher CCX latencies, which Intels ringbus doesnt have

Ryzen is great money value, but lets not pretend its some kind of top-tier performance beast, which the 8700K will be

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you Ryzen fanboys are outright toxic tbh to anything non-AMD

can you maybe go into the Ryzen thread ? thats what its for

Infracted - Insults and flaming aren't needed for a discussion

[Deleted]

you Ryzen fanboys are outright toxic tbh to anything non-AMD

can you maybe go into the Ryzen thread ? thats what its for

Do you recall the cpu I have .

[Life-Binder]

no and I dont care

I want you either gone or staying on-topic

[Deleted]

no and I dont care

I want you either gone or staying on-topic

I was very much on topic, its your hypocrisy in this very thread directly with Intel CPUs, the I don't bit care makes me chuckle , worried about your claim being nonsense?