8-Core Intel Coffee Lake CPU Spotted, Takes on AMD Ryzen 2 in H2 2018
Intel could be preparing their very own range of mainstream octa-core processors to combat AMD’s upcoming Ryzen 2 processors. Yes, an 8-core Intel Coffee Lake-S chip has just appeared in the 3DMark database (via VideoCardz). The SKU is expected to land sometime in summer as part of the Coffee Lake refresh platform.
New 8C/16T Intel Chip Spotted in 3DMark database – Set for Summer Launch Along with Z390 Chipset
According to the listing on the 3DMark database, the unnanmed Coffee Lake-S processor has eight CPU cores and supports HyperThreading for a total of 16 threads. Other than that, there’s not much information we can get from this listing, or the ones that are included are pretty light on power.
For example, the benchmark entry indicates a core clock of 2.2GHz that is rather slow in the grand scheme of things, making us think this is likely an early engineering sample being put through its paces.
Further, the motherboard used to run the benchmark is an Intel test platform listed as “Intel Corporation CoffeeLake S82 UDIMM RVP.” Which indicates this Coffee Lake chip might not be ready for AIB seeding yet, so don’t expect it to be with us any time soon.
For now, Intel will launch the remaining Coffee Lake-S processors that will target the budget PC segment. The launch is expected to take place in early April alongside the cheaper 300-series motherboards, but those boards are not going to host a high-end, 8-core Intel CPU. Rather, that’s more what you’d expect from the touted Z390 chipset.
We’ve already seen the new chipset in leaked Intel roadmaps claiming it would sometime in the second half of 2018. Back in last September, a Eurocom rep also revealed their plans to skip the Z370 chipset on their Tornado F5 for the Z390 that supports eight cores and 16 threads.
It’s not clear whether the upcoming 8-core Intel chip will only be compatible with Z390 motherboards, or it will also work in Z370 with a BIOS update. Though I don’t think it would make too much sense to release the Z390 chipset if the current boards did support it.
The new range of octa-core Coffee Lake CPUs is assumed to go one-on-one in courts with AMD’s second-gen Ryzen processors scheduled to launch in a few weeks.
It’s possible that team red already had some inkling of what Intel might have in store since they don’t appear to offer a potential top-end Ryzen 7 2800X as part of the initial launch. They could be keeping their absolute best in reserve to tackle Intel 8-core chip when it appears in H2 2018.