For its mainstream platform, Intel has released a 6-core processor. And let us all be realistic, we need to thank AMD for releasing the Ryzen CPU to the market and bringing back the competition. AMD’s CPU s have had their share of struggles for much of the past decade just to keep up with Intel’s best processors because going up against a company like Intel is always considered a thankless job. Particularly outside of gaming, Ryzen is definitely a threat though Core i5/i7 is always faster.

The gargantuan of a company like Intel is not going down without a fight. From 2003.2006 AMD has laid claim to the CPU throne, and if you could remember last time, AMD had a clear lead in the CPU realm was in the Pentium 4 versus Athlon 64 days Intel has taken its time to correct their course, however, the result was devastating. Generally using less power Core 2 Duo came out in July 2006 which delivered significantly faster performance than anything AMD had to offer. In the tick-tock era for Intel, Core Duo has ushered the company when the new processor architectures started coming on a  yearly schedule; and by 2006 onward, Intel has reigned as the CPU champion.

You are not alone if you feel that for the past several CPU generations, Intel had been the one coasting. Three or four years ago, we would have had something like the AMD’s Bulldozer or Coffee Lake family of processors if they had been more competitive. And from the enthusiast sector and into the mainstream, Ryzen has effectively forced Intel to go 6-core down.

Intel Core i7 moves to 6C12T or 6-core / 12-threads, and this goes to Intel’s 8^th Gen Core desktop processors. Then for the Intel Core i5, it has 6C6T, and Intel Core i3 becomes 4C4T. On an easier way of looking at things, the Intel Core i3’s parts are almost the same as the previous generations of the Intel Core i5’ parts without the Turbo Boost. Speaking of the next generation of Pentium and Celeron parts, Intel has yet to officially reveal their specifications. However, Koby Lake Pentiums has already moved into Core i3’s 2C4T territory, and will most likely to stay there for now.

On some of he performance tiers, the prices to creep up slightly, so the i7-8700K checks in at $359 compared to the outgoiong i7-7700K’s official price of $350, and for the i5-8600K it is $257 compared to the $243 on the i5-7600K and that goes without any sort of cooler included. Now, considering that clockspeeds are slightly higher in most cases and we’re getting 50% more cores, the small price premium is not a major concern. Priced to move at just $182, the Intel Core i5-8400 is potentially the most interesting of the current models, and Intel knows it. So, rather than the usual unlocked K-series part, Intel sent along that chip for the launch party. Later today, I will have a separate review of the i5-8400, however, you can see the performance in the charts that follow.

There is at least one fly in the ointment for all the good things about Coffee Lake, and that is the chipset/motherboard requirements. Coffee Lake uses the same LGA1151 socket as Skylake and Kaby Lake, however, it requires a new 300-series chipset (which is currently only Z370). Despite rumors that

Coffee Lakes would work in existing motherboads, it didn’t actually pan out. What’s more is that you cannot bring your existing Kaby Lake or Skylake chip along and put it in a Z370 board. They supposed that it was due to the modified power requirements on Coffee Lake.