Intel confirms Coffee Lake desktop chips require 300 Series Motherboards, Coming This Fall
Intel have revealed their 8th Gen Core processor family, starting off with Kaby Lake Refresh CPUs for low-power notebooks. The company didn’t offer any specifics about 8th Gen Coffee Lake desktop processors, but it did post up retail packaging pictures of Core i5 and Core i7 which confirm a couple of Coffee Lake rumors anyway.
First things first, Intel’s upcoming desktop processors will see a bump in core count to counter the threat from AMD’s disruptive Ryzen processor series. The next-gen Core i7 chips will have 6 cores and 12 threads instead of 4 cores and 8 threads. The Core i5 series is also jumping to 6 cores, though as before, the new chips will not feature hyper-threading capabilities.
RELATED: Intel’s Coffee Lake 6-core CPU On Par with AMD Ryzen 5 1600X in Geekbench Tests
Similarly, the entry-level Core i3 chips may also move from hyper-threaded dual-core design to true quad-core CPUs, as suggested by previous rumors. Intel’s 8th Gen Core i3 chips will take on AMD’s recently launched Ryzen 3 processors, which feature the same number of cores and threads.
The packaging also confirms that the Coffee Lake desktop platform will require a new 300-series chipset to run. Many enthusiasts were hoping the chips would be backwards compatible with Z270-series motherboards, but unfortunately, that is not going to be the case. This should finally put the platform question to rest.
What’s more is that Coffee Lake will be using the same “Intel Graphics 630” graphics core as the current gen Kaby Lake processors. Up until now, Intel’s every new processor generation featured an upgraded graphics core, but the 8th-gen appears to break with that tradition.
Here’s the full list of features as mentioned on the Coffee Lake CPU packaging:
- 6 Cores
- Intel Hyper-Threading Technology For 12 Way Multitasking
- Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0
- Intel Smart Cache Technology
- Supports Intel Optane Memory
- Supports Two-Channel DDR4
- Intel UHD Graphics 630
- Requires Intel 300 Series chipset-based motherboard
Intel 8th Gen Coffee Lake Desktop Lineup:
| CPU Name | Intel Core i3-8100 | Intel Core i3-8300 | Intel Core i3-8350K | Intel Core i5-8400 | Intel Core i5-8600K | Intel Core i7-8700 | Intel Core i7-8700K |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cores/Threads | 4/4 | 4/4 | 4/4 | 6/6 | 6/6 | 6/12 | 6/12 |
| Base Clock | 3.60 GHz | 4.00 GHz | 4.00 GHz | 2.80 GHz | 3.60 GHz | 3.70 GHz | 3.80 GHz |
| Boost Clock (Max) | N/A | N/A | N/A | 3.60 GHz | 4.30 GHz | 4.40 GHz | 4.70 GHz |
| Boost Clock (6 Core) | N/A | N/A | N/A | 3.50 GHz | 4.10 GHz | 4.20 GHz | 4.30 GHz |
| L3 Cache | 6 MB | 8 MB | 8 MB | 9 MB | 9 MB | 12 MB | 12 MB |
| TDP | 65W | 65W | 95W | 65W | 95W | 65W | 95W |
Intel’s Coffee Lake desktop processors are scheduled to hit the market this fall. The chips will use the updated 14nm++ process node, offering at least 15% performance boost over Kaby Lake. Speaking of performance, a recent leak has already revealed the single and multi-threaded benchmarks of the upcoming chips.
READ MORE: Next-Gen Coffee Lake Performance Benchmarks shown by Intel in China
Coffee Lake will be followed by Intel’s first 10nm Core processors, codenamed Cannon Lake. The 10nm CPUs will land in our PCs sometime in 2018.