Intels Skylake-X and Coffee Lake CPUs Discussion

[Amalaric]

When launching Skylake their said that LGA1151 will accept all mainstream 14nm chips. It could've changed though.

Yeah hopefully... whats the point of removing one pin here and adding one pin there on the same socket anyway?

And if I was Intel I would have made (years ago) the line up like this: i9 = 16C/32T, i8 = 14C/28T, i7 = 12C/24T, i6 = 10C/20T, i5 = 8C/16T, i4 = 6C/12T, i3 = 4C/8T, i2 = 2C/4T, i1 = 1C/2T

[Afrospinach]

I think you overestimate AMD, they are not big enough for Intel to go crazy about. Price will be on the same level if not more expensive, just like it goes now. If Intel would feel so threatened they'd cut prices now, but they didn't because ultimately AMD simply can't put up the supply to make them more than a nuisance at the moment.

I don't know mate, it does seem like progress has hit a bit of a wall so we may be in somewhat uncharted territory.

Would still put my money on prices being similar to what they are today for the next release though. Just had a quick squiz through some historical prices and moar cores =/= more price generally as the new generations come in, their mainstream price is their mainstream price. I5 coffee might only be 230$ still.

[Evildeffy]

Intel is weird going from LGA 1160 to LGA 1156 to LGA 1155 to LGA 1150 and finally to LGA 1151 so the next one might be LGA 1152.

There never was an LGA1160, that used to be the starting point for the "first" (technically 2nd generation since LGA1366 was considerably earlier but whatever....) consumer i3/i5/i7 chips but Intel eliminated 4 pins they deemed unnecessary and it became LGA1156.
LGA1160 was only conceptualized but never made practical.

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I don't know mate, it does seem like progress has hit a bit of a wall so we may be in somewhat uncharted territory.

Would still put my money on prices being similar to what they are today for the next release though. Just had a quick squiz through some historical prices and moar cores =/= more price generally as the new generations come in, their mainstream price is their mainstream price. I5 coffee might only be 230$ still.

Like I said, based upon history and relative power of the CPUs (estimated, won't know for sure till launch and reviews) it will likely be the same or ~30 USD higher than their previous brethren.

However that said ... @Amalaric a lower amount split of the cache does not necessarily mean bad things at all, that is fully dependant upon your uArch.
And whilst it is inherently still Skylake origins .. they may have altered it a bit to suit this setup better.

Blindly stating less ways is worse is incorrect.

[Zenny]

I wasn't planning to upgrade (My 6700k I bought almost 1.5 years ago is just fine) but if Intel sells the 8700k for roughly the same price (+- 10%) then previous generations and it can go into my motherboard (Z170) then it makes for a very tempting upgrade path for a lot of people. Especially if it can be OC'd to around 4.6 Ghz or so.

Well here is a rumored 8700k @ 5Ghz, no idea if legit or not:

https://i.redd.it/38cdex7g9ibz.png

[Evildeffy]

I wasn't planning to upgrade (My 6700k I bought almost 1.5 years ago is just fine) but if Intel sells the 8700k for roughly the same price (+- 10%) then previous generations and it can go into my motherboard (Z170) then it makes for a very tempting upgrade path for a lot of people. Especially if it can be OC'd to around 4.6 Ghz or so.

Well here is a rumored 8700k @ 5Ghz, no idea if legit or not:

https://i.redd.it/38cdex7g9ibz.png

You actually took the %-ile median I stated properly... not bad.

But that's what I expect it to be in any case and as far as OCing goes.. I don't think 4,6GHz is too much of a stretch.
They do still uphold the Skylake/Kaby Lake uArch underneath even if complexity is increased.

What I don't really expect is it clocking as high as the 7700K in general unless applying stupid amounts of voltage.

As far as leaks go... you're best off not believing it but keeping it in the back of your mind as a possibility.
Remember that Ryzen 7 leaks from Canard PC stated 5GHz single-core OC.

[Life-Binder]

https://i.redd.it/38cdex7g9ibz.png

whats the source of that ? some chinese forum ? didnt find an article on wccf/guru/videocardz

I wouldnt doubt that 8700K can reach 5.0, just like 7800X .. but it wont be a common OC of course


that single-core CB is impressive, just like on the 7700K

[Zenny]

Yeah, I don't think 5Ghz is going to be too common at all, unless you get a golden chip and great cooling.

[mrgreenthump]

People in this thread call skl-x a disaster while top Overclockers who know what they talk about praise them

Because people on these forums mainly care about gaming, and on that department.. Skylake-X seems to be pretty lackluster, when comparing to Kabylake or even Broadwell-E

[Evildeffy]

Because people on these forums mainly care about gaming, and on that department.. Skylake-X seems to be pretty lackluster, when comparing to Kabylake or even Broadwell-E

You forgot Ryzen as well.

That said it's good in productivity but simply put don't mess with overclocking too much if you are.
And the problem is a little bit exacerbated because of the expected arrival of ThreadRipper.

When you compare it head-to-head ... Skylake-X seems lackluster.

That's the main issue, in itself it's OK.
It just has "issues" with heat and power draw.

[Amalaric]

There never was an LGA1160, that used to be the starting point for the "first" (technically 2nd generation since LGA1366 was considerably earlier but whatever....) consumer i3/i5/i7 chips but Intel eliminated 4 pins they deemed unnecessary and it became LGA1156.
LGA1160 was only conceptualized but never made practical.

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Like I said, based upon history and relative power of the CPUs (estimated, won't know for sure till launch and reviews) it will likely be the same or ~30 USD higher than their previous brethren.

However that said ... @Amalaric a lower amount split of the cache does not necessarily mean bad things at all, that is fully dependant upon your uArch.
And whilst it is inherently still Skylake origins .. they may have altered it a bit to suit this setup better.

Blindly stating less ways is worse is incorrect.

Four pins that they deemed unnecessary or purposely gimped by Intel?

Same thing with going from 8-way L2 cache to 4-way L2 cache.

[Evildeffy]

Four pins that they deemed unnecessary or purposely gimped by Intel?

Same thing with going from 8-way L2 cache to 4-way L2 cache.

You know just because we like to rip on Intel for not giving us real performance boosts over the years doesn't mean that everything they do is meant as an evil and/or debilitating act.

Even now a good chunk of LGA1156's contact pins were reserved for possible future expansion, which never occurred .. meaning those 4 pins they removed were irrelevant.

Like the cache split being lowered means nothing on it's own unless you know the EXACT details of uArch, location and interconnects.
That is information we don't have and never will have as those are Intel's trade secrets, we can only guess as to whether that's a boon or not.

That doesn't change the fact however that stating it's worse without knowing the exact design and location is highly incorrect.

[Gray_Matter]

People in this thread call skl-x a disaster while top Overclockers who know what they talk about praise them

Which overclockers? People using air coolers and possibly even water coolers are going to really struggle and the platform cost as a whole is expensive.

Coffee should be a much better option for people on this forum.

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If Intel would feel so threatened they'd cut prices now, but they didn't because ultimately AMD simply can't put up the supply to make them more than a nuisance at the moment.

AMD don't make the chips themselves. The only thing controlling volume is what their internal analyst think the demand will be. The lead time on these sort of things is probably around 6 months. You don't want to make 10 million CPU's and have them sitting on shelves. If the analysts identify a need to 10 million then you can be sure that they will get that many manufactured.

Intel is fortunate in that they run the fabs but that can also be a limitation because AMD can probably ramp up production by choosing extra manufacturers where Intel will have to build new fabs to do the same thing.

[Karon]

Which overclockers? People using air coolers and possibly even water coolers are going to really struggle and the platform cost as a whole is expensive.

Coffee should be a much better option for people on this forum.

Most obvious one would be Der8auer.
Where do all those claims that ppl struggle with cooling come from? I run mine at 4.5GHz with an air cooler since there are no x299 gigabyte monoblocks available yet and it runs just fine =/

[Remilia]

No, no, no, no... more ways is always better than less ways and I'm positive that Intel could fit that 64MB L3 cache if they wanted to.

Could doesn't mean should. Go look up Crystal Well and see how big that is.

[Thunderball]

Could doesn't mean should. Go look up Crystal Well and see how big that is.

It could be 40GB, latency on it is just too high compared to cache.

[Remilia]

I could be 40GB, latency on it is just too high compared to cache.

I have no idea what you just said.
Crystal Well is an L4 cache and it's used as a size comparison.

[Thunderball]

I have no idea what you just said.
Crystal Well is an L4 cache and it's used as a size comparison.

Sorry, edited. Crystal Well is embedded DRAM, which acts as RAM cache and L4 CPU cache. It still has a very high latency compared to "normal" cache (especially L1 and L2), but much lower latency and higher bandwidth than system RAM. Due to high inertia it has to be huge compared to "normal" cache. Intel is pushing similar concept for RAM-storage connectivity with Optane.

[Amalaric]

If there were some actual competition in the CPU market we would right now have (from Intel) eight-core mainstream CPUs and even four threads per core HEDT CPUs.

[Remilia]

Sorry, edited. Crystal Well is embedded DRAM, which acts as RAM cache and L4 CPU cache. It still has a very high latency compared to "normal" cache (especially L1 and L2), but much lower latency and higher bandwidth than system RAM. Due to high inertia it has to be huge compared to "normal" cache. Intel is pushing similar concept for RAM-storage connectivity with Optane.

It's actually not that much bigger.
This is the dieshot of Kabylake 7700k. That's 8MB of L3, now increase that size by 8x or 16x and tell me that isn't big. Cause that's bigger than the CPUs at that point. Looking at it, the Crystal Well 128MB L4$ is smaller than a projected 128MB L3$.

[Gray_Matter]

If there were some actual competition in the CPU market we would right now have (from Intel) eight-core mainstream CPUs and even four threads per core HEDT CPUs.

Four threads per core doesn't make much sense. It's a diminishing returns thing which is why you don't double performance by adding the second thread. You would also have processors that were 30% slower because of the extra heat.

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Most obvious one would be Der8auer.
Where do all those claims that ppl struggle with cooling come from? I run mine at 4.5GHz with an air cooler since there are no x299 gigabyte monoblocks available yet and it runs just fine =/

Most people here aren't anywhere close to Der8auer's league. The heat seems to ramp up quite considerably after your OC for very little gain. I have seen reports from a couple of sites complaining about the heat at while overclocking. I will try and dig them up for you. How much higher can you go without deliding and what sort of heat are you seeing under load at 4.5?

But that's not my biggest issue with the platform. I think it's overpriced.