Intel Coffee Lake vs. AMD Ryzen: This is Intel’s answer to Ryzen

Note: This article was first published on 5th October 2017 and republished again as it's our Tech Awards 2018 winner of the Best Desktop CPU category.

More cores, again

Is there even anything new in Intel’s Coffee Lake processors, you ask? The simple answer is that they have more cores, so if you deal often with workloads that can make use of these additional threads, you should see a boost in performance.

Last month, Intel announced its 8th-generation desktop processors, codenamed Coffee Lake. Unlike the earlier reveal of the 8th-generation Core processors for mobile, which were based on the older Kaby Lake design, the new desktop CPUs feature a new Coffee Lake architecture and are manufactured on the more refined 14nm++ process.

That said, there actually aren’t any major architectural changes, and Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake are very similar for the most part. Other than the tweaked 14nm++ process, the key changes include more cores and threads across the entire line-up (which also enables larger cache sizes), additional overclocking controls, and supposedly better overclocking headroom.

A further minor change is the slightly improved integrated graphics, which has now been rebranded as Intel UHD Graphics 630. This is purely a branding change though, and it is only the clock speed that sees a small increase to 1,200MHz, up from 1,150MHz on Kaby Lake’s HD Graphics 630.

This marks the fourth CPU generation that Intel has stuck with a 14nm lithography process, and no matter how many pluses you add behind a number, the fact remains that the chipmaker has run into plenty of difficulties in moving on to 10nm (nevertheless, Intel has already said that the successor to its 8th-generation chips will be the 10nm+ Ice Lake).

But in the meantime, what’s Intel to do when it is pressed by the limitations of physics and growing competition from AMD’s Ryzen processors?

Even with its Core X chips, Intel didn’t really have a proper response to the Ryzen 1800X, as the former was still quite a bit more pricey.

Enter the Intel Core i7-8700K (3.7GHz, 12MB L3 cache), Santa Clara’s first ever mainstream chip to feature six physical cores. Ryzen upended the status quo, and instead of a more iterative update in the form of still higher base clocks, Intel is now adding more cores to its mainstream offerings.

To our eyes, the new flagship Core i7 CPU could be Intel’s answer to the 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 1800X (3.6GHz, 16MB L3 cache). AMD still has the core count advantage, but the chip helps Intel close the gap in terms of multi-threaded performance at this price point, while still maintaining better single-threaded performance and an instructions per cycle (IPC) advantage.

The extra cores don’t come free though, and the Core i7-8700K’s TDP is up slightly to 95W, from 91W on its predecessor. That’s a small jump on paper, but you’re likely to see a larger difference while overclocking or even when just stressing the CPU.

New-ish motherboards

These Coffee Lake processors will require a new Intel Z370 motherboard (see here, here, and here), owing to certain changes that have had to be made to accommodate the higher number of cores and overclocking power requirements. This includes an improved power delivery design, tweaks to the CPU package power delivery, as well as tighter memory routing for the higher DDR4-2666 memory specification.

Z370 boards will also feature higher memory multipliers that support up to 8,400MT/s, and real-time memory latency controls so you don’t have to reboot every time. On top of that, you’ll get beefed-up overclocking capabilities, such as per-core overclocking, which was absent on Kaby Lake.

However, more advanced options like per-core voltage or P-State settings are still absent.

One interesting point to note is that there appears to be integrated Thunderbolt 3 support coming off from the chipset on Intel’s slides, but it’s not clear yet if any additional controllers are required to enable this. Judging by their past offerings, we think it's more of an optional drop-in to support Intel's bigger scheme of things as they are staunch supporters of Thunderbolt technology.

But that aside, the Z370 chipset doesn’t really bring any major new changes to the table – the DMI 3.0 interlink is unchanged and you still get 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes from the CPU and 24 lanes from the chipset – which may be a sore point for some. Previously, you could get Kaby Lake to work with a Z170 motherboard with a simple BIOS update, so the lack of compatibility this time may rankle even more, especially since Coffee Lake uses the same LGA 1151 socket.

Still, this may not entirely be Intel’s fault, as the chipmaker has indicated that motherboard vendors expressed a desire for a clean break with the 200-series chipset. After all, ensuring compatibility with Kaby Lake does mean extra work for board makers, who’ve already had to contend with nearly back-to-back launches from AMD and Intel.

How does it stack up against Ryzen?

Having said all that, no processor is released in isolation, and the most pressing question on everyone’s mind is probably just how Coffee Lake stacks up against Ryzen and Intel’s other chips (this may be the final nail in the coffin of the Core i7-7740X).

We’ve managed to get our hands on the Core i7-8700K (3.7GHz, 12MB L3 cache) and Core i5-8600K (3.6GHz, 9MB L3 cache) – both of these are six-core chips, but the Core i5 lacks Hyper-Threading – to compare against the likes of chips from the Kaby Lake, Kaby Lake-X, and Ryzen 7 series.

Are these really the best gaming CPUs you can get, or will their lower base clocks show? Furthermore, can the 6-core/12-thread Core i7-8700K challenge Ryzen in more heavily threaded applications?

Test Setup

The configurations of the test setups we used for the different processors are listed below. However, the CPU cooler used differed between systems due to compatibility issues across the different sockets.

Intel Coffee Lake

• Intel Core i7-8700K (3.7GHz, 12MB L3 cache) / Intel Core i5-8600K (3.6GHz, 9MB L3 cache)
• Cooler Master MasterLiquid 240
• Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Gaming 7
• 2 x 8GB G.Skill Ripjaws V DDR4-3000 at 2,666MHz (Auto timings: CAS 15-15-15-35)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (GeForce Driver Version 385.69)
• Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD
• Windows 10 Home (64-bit)

Intel Kaby Lake

• Intel Core i7-7700K (4.20GHz, 8MB L3 cache)
• Cooler Master MasterLiquid 240
• ASUS ROG Maximus IX Formula
• 4 x 4GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-2666 (Auto timings: CAS 15-17-17-35)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (GeForce Driver Version 384.94)
• Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD
• Windows 10 Home (64-bit)

Intel Kaby Lake-X

• Intel Core i7-7740X (4.3GHz, 8MB L3 cache)
• Cooler Master MasterLiquid 240
• Gigabyte X299 Aorus Gaming 9
• 4 x 4GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-2666 (Auto timings: CAS 15-17-17-35)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (GeForce Driver Version 384.94)
• Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD
• Windows 10 Home (64-bit)

AMD Ryzen

• AMD Ryzen 7 1800X (3.60GHz, 20MB L2+L3 cache)
• Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4
• Gigabyte Aorus AX370 Gaming 5
• 2 x 8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3000 at 2,666MHz (Auto timings: CAS 16-16-16-36)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (GeForce Driver Version 384.94)
• Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD
• Windows 10 Home (64-bit)

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Next, here’s a list of the benchmarks used:

• SYSmark 2014 SE
• PCMark 10
• SPECviewperf 12.1
• Cinebench R15
• Handbrake 1.0.7
• 3DMark (2013)
• VRMark
• Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation
• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Performance results

SYSmark 2014 SE

SYSmark is a general productivity benchmark suite that measures the response times of tasks on a PC using real-world applications like Microsoft Office 2013 and Adobe Photoshop and simulated user input. Task response times are used to generate a performance rating that reflects actual user experience, so the faster a PC responds to application workloads, the higher its score will be. The method of measuring response times can take many forms, such as the time it takes for an application to show a pop-up completion message, or how long it takes a progress dialog to disappear and for a user to regain application control.

The 2014 SE version of SYSmark adds a new Responsiveness usage model, where the system's ability to react quickly to user input affects the overall user experience. This means situations where the system needs to respond smoothly and quickly, such as with application launches, multi-tab web browsing, file copying, and background app installation.

The Intel Core i7-8700K took the overall lead here, likely thanks to its high Turbo Boost 2.0 speed of 4.7GHz and relatively robust multi-threaded capabilities. Compared to the Core i7-7700K, it was roughly 11 per cent faster, a modest improvement for yet another generation of 14nm processors. It also beat out the quad-core Core i7-7740X, a member of Intel's enthusiast Core X family, by a similar amount, further underscoring the uncomfortable position of the latter chip. 

The flagship Coffee Lake CPU was also 26 per cent quicker than the Ryzen 7 1800X, despite both chips having relatively similar base clocks. However, discounting the large gap between the maximum speeds that the Core i7-8700K and Ryzen 7 1800X are capable of – 4.7GHz versus 4.2GHz – it's worth noting that the Core i5-8600K also managed to beat the AMD chip by about 9 per cent. 

That's despite having just six cores with no Hyper-Threading, and a Turbo Boost 2.0 speed of 4.3GHz, not that much higher than the 1800X's 4.2GHz. As a result, it would seem that when it comes to the applications used in SYSmark, Intel still has the advantage because of its higher IPC. 

A look at the workload breakdown also hands a clear advantage to the Core i7-8700K over Ryzen in media creation and data and financial analysis-related tasks, even though AMD still has more cores and threads on paper.

PCMark 10 Extended

PCMark 10 Extended assesses the performance of systems in a variety of workloads, including basic computing tasks, productivity applications, digital content creation, and gaming. Compared to PCMark 8, it also adds in new test metrics, such as app startup times, which quantifies how long it takes to launch a variety of real-world apps, and a rendering and visualization workload to simulate professional graphics and engineering applications. In addition, existing workloads have been updated to reflect modern usage

We’ve also added in a graph to reflect the low-level breakdown of scores to give an idea of performance in individual workloads.

The Core i7-8700K took the overall lead here as well, and it was followed by the Core i5-8600K. The former showed particular strength in digital content creation tasks, including the more demanding rendering and visualization workloads. The Ryzen 7 1800X fell behind both 8th-generation Intel processors, coming in around 16 per cent behind the Core i7-8700K in overall scores. 

Intel added more cores and threads on its new processors while not sacrificing on single-threaded performance, and this two-pronged approach serves its new chips quite well here. 

SPECviewperf 12.1

SPECviewperf is used to assess the 3D graphics performance of systems in professional applications. Each individual workload, called a viewset, represents graphics and content from an actual real-world application. SPECviewperf actually runs a total of eight different viewsets, but we’ve picked the four which have the greatest performance variation across CPUs display here.

The 3ds-max viewset comes from traces of the graphics workload generated by 3ds Max 2016, while maya-04 is derived from Autodesk’s Maya 2013 application. The catia-04 viewset involves the numerous rendering modes from the CATIA V6 R2012 application, and includes things like anti-aliasing, depth of field, and ambient occlusion. Finally, the sw-03 viewset comes from SolidWorks 2013 SP1, and involves various rendering modes including environment maps.

The programs used in SPECviewperf 12.1 don't appear to scale very well with a high number of cores and threads. Results were mixed here, with the Core i5-8600K even coming ahead of its Core i7 counterpart in the 3ds-max viewset. That said, the Ryzen 7 1800X still trailed both Intel chips, perhaps another instance of Intel's higher IPC helping it come ahead. 

Cinebench R15

Cinebench R15 is a better indicator of multi-threaded performance because of its ability to utilize up to 256 threads to evaluate a processor’s performance in a photorealistic 3D rendering. We ran both single-core and multi-core benchmarks to evaluate single-threaded performance and multi-threaded scalability here.

Unsurprisingly, the 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 1800X had a field day here, but the 6-core/12-thread Core i7-8700K actually comes quite close in the multi-threaded benchmark. AMD's processor was 14 per cent faster than the Core i7-8700K, a much narrower lead than the 65 per cent advantage it held over the Core i7-7700K. Intel has closed a lot of ground in just a single generation, and it continues to reign supreme in terms of single-threaded performance, where the Core i7-8700K was 23 per cent quicker than the Ryzen 7 1800X. 

The six-core Core i5-8600K also managed to edge out the Core i7-7700K by a hair (just 5 per cent) in the multi-threaded benchmark, which is a nice improvement given that the former doesn't even feature Hyper-Threading. 

Handbrake 1.0.7

Handbrake is a video transcoder that converts videos into a format for use on PCs and portable electronic devices, and is a good indicator of a processor’s video encoding capabilities. YouTube content creators, Twitch streamers, and other video creators will be most interested in this performance metric. For this benchmark, we used a 1.5GB .mkv file. 

Video transcoding can take advantage of multiple CPU threads quite well, and the Core i7-8700K gave the Ryzen 7 1800X a run for its money here. AMD's chip still took the pole position, but the Coffee Lake flagship is nipping closely at its heels. 

The Core i5-8600K performed closer to the quad-core Core i7-7700K and Core i7-7740X, although to its credit, it again eked out a sliver of a lead over the latter two Hyper-Threaded CPUs.

This time around, Intel is going after so-called "mega-taskers" with its mainstream chips. This refers to those who stream, game, and run multiple CPU-intensive tasks at once. And from the looks of it, the Core i7-8700K is proving itself reasonably adept in this area. At the very least, it's quite a decent improvement over the Core i7-7700K from the previous generation. 

Temperature and power consumption

To test temperature and power consumption, we ran the 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme Stress test and the energy-01 viewset in SPECviewperf 12.1 respectively, taking note of the peak values the chips achieved. For power consumption, this refers to the total system power draw from the power outlet.

It’s difficult to compare temperatures across all the chips given that we used different coolers for the Intel and Ryzen chips, so these figures are better taken as a rough indicator to the temperatures you can expect in a typical gaming scenario (which probably doesn’t stress all the cores anyway).

The higher TDP of the Coffee Lake chips is evident in the power consumption numbers, which reflect the total system power draw from a wall outlet. Both the Core i7 and Core i5 8th-generation processors are 95W parts, and they're proving to be quite a bit more power-hungry than the Ryzen and Kaby Lake CPUs.

Gaming benchmarks and overclocking

3DMark (2013)

The synthetic 3DMark benchmark tests graphics and computational performance at different resolutions, starting at 1080p and going all the way up to 4K. A series of two graphics test, one physics test, and then a combined test stresses your hardware in turn to assess its performance. And because of the physics test that keeps the GPU load low while running gameplay physics simulations on the CPU, all three 3DMark Fire Strike tests scores also include an element of CPU performance.

We’ve also teased out the Physics and CPU scores for the Fire Strike and Time Spy tests and compiled them in separate tables to give a better idea of how each processor performed.

The Core i7-8700K was the winner here, although the Ryzen 7 1800X was right behind it in the more CPU-intensive Time Spy benchmark. Its processing chops become more evident when you zoom in on the Fire Strike physics and Time Spy CPU scores, where it was around 45 and 37 per cent ahead of the Core i5-8600K respectively. Having said that, it was neck-and-neck with the Ryzen 7 1800X, and it's actually quite impressive that it managed to inch ahead despite losing out in terms of core counts and threads. 

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation

Ashes of the Singularity is one of the few CPU-bound games out there, if you’re playing on lower resolutions and settings that is. As a result, it was precisely at these settings that both Coffee Lake chips excelled. In fact, the Core i7-8700K managed a 37 per cent increase over the Core i7-7700K in DirectX 12 mode at a 1080p resolution and High settings. In scenarios like this, the Coffee Lake processors also have quite a large advantage over the Ryzen 7 1800X, once again exposing AMD's glaring weakness when it comes to gaming at 1080p. 

In the DirectX 12 CPU-focused benchmark, the Core i7-8700K was king, beating out even the Ryzen 7 1800X by 24 per cent.

However, once you start turning the graphics settings up and increase the resolution, the GPU starts to come in as a limiting factor, and the differences among the various processors flatten out significantly. In other words, if you're going to be gaming at 4K, don't expect to see much improvement in upgrading.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is one of the most demanding games out there right now, where the GPU is a major limiting factor. All the Intel processors performed quite close to each other, and while there were few significant differences to be teased out, it was disappointing to see the Core i7-8700K fall behind even the Core i5-8600K here, albeit by a barely tangible amount. There could be any number of reasons for this, and perhaps Mankind Divided's Dawn engine just doesn't play well with more cores and threads, but this is one game that doesn't look like you'll see much of a leap from upgrading to Coffee Lake. 

Having said that, the Ryzen 7 1800X's relatively low base and boost clocks also did it no favors, and it trailed quite far behind both Coffee Lake processors.  

Overclocking

Even though Coffee Lake now supports per-core overclocking, we decided to just apply the same overclock across all the cores to keep things simple. 

We managed to get the Core i7-8700K to 5.13GHz, which netted a nice 17 per cent increase in Cinebench's multi-threaded benchmark. On the other hand, the Core i5-8600K wouldn't boot with anything over 5.0GHz, and it would clock in at 4.83GHz at the most, which translated into a 13 per cent improvement in Cinebench. That's actually really decent, and Intel wasn't lying when it talked up the overclocking capabilities of its new chips.

The Ryzen 7 1800X paled in comparison, as it wouldn't go over even 4.2GHz, the upper limit of its XFR range. If you're looking for a good chip that you can push to its limits, Intel looks to be the way to go. 

Closing the gap with Ryzen

On paper, Intel's Coffee Lake chips may not seem very interesting. Okay, there are now two additional cores across the entire line-up, but what does that really mean? As it turns out, those two cores can do a lot, and Intel is stepping up its game in terms of multi-threaded performance. 

AMD put Intel on the back foot in recent months with its very competitive Ryzen and Threadripper processors, which led many to proclaim loudly that Intel had dropped the ball and was losing its touch. It's easy to view the addition of extra cores to Coffee Lake as a knee-jerk reaction to the prevailing winds in the CPU market, but given the planning that generally goes into product road maps, it's likely that these chips have been in the works for some time already.

That said, with only Z370 boards available at launch, it's possible that Intel did accelerate its release schedule to respond to the challenge from AMD. 

And responded, it has. Intel is touting the Core i7-8700K as its best gaming CPU yet, which isn't a particularly novel claim in its own right. The Core i7-7700K before it was indeed the best gaming CPU you could buy, and Intel's flagship mainstream chip has always been a better option for gamers than its enthusiast processors anyway. 

Instead, what's interesting about Coffee Lake is the beefier multi-threaded performance it brings to the table. Ryzen's release meant that AMD could hold up its high core and thread count as a key advantage over Intel, and it was perfectly justified in doing so. But the 6-core/12-thread Core i7-8700K narrows the gap with the Ryzen 7 1800X significantly, and it's taken away a large part of AMD's advantage. Now, Intel has a CPU with fairly robust multi-threaded performance, and excellent gaming performance to boot. 

Gaming was always Ryzen's weakness, and it isn't hard to imagine that consumers would be willing to trade off some cores and threads for considerably better performance in games. Because make no mistake, the Core i7-8700K is without doubt the better CPU when it comes to games, especially when the Ryzen 7 1800X continues to struggle at 1080p (an inconvenient fact, as most gamers still play at this resolution). 

The Core i7-8700K costs US$359 (approx. S$489), which is slightly more than the US$339 that the Core i7-7700K debuted at. Clearly, the extra cores don't come free, but the price increase appears fairly reasonable, all things considered. The Core i5-8600K is cheaper still at US$257 (approx. S$350), and it's every bit as capable as the flagship model in games, for the most part at least. 

In comparison, the Ryzen 7 1800X is going on Amazon at US$399 now, and it retails for S$818 locally. The 1800X is more expensive, and it doesn't offer quite as big a leap in multi-threaded performance as it formerly did over the Core i7-7700K. That said, there's no telling how much Coffee Lake will cost locally at this point in time, and it's entirely possible that we'll see a local price closer to what Ryzen is asking for. 

But that doesn't mean that Ryzen just became a bad CPU. Rather, it seems a matter of where your priorities lie. If you're a gamer, streamer, or content creator looking for a reasonably priced chip, the Core i7-8700K looks to be a good bet. On the other hand, if you're just gaming and doing nothing else on the side, the Core i5-8600K is the more sensible choice. Finally, for those whose priority is less about squeezing out more frames in games and more about getting more cores or better multi-threaded performance per dollar, AMD has some cheaper Ryzen processors that may do the job. 

As for Intel's awkward Core i7-7740X? Suffice to say, there no longer seems any reason to even consider it. 

	Click here for rundown of pros/cons
	Click here for rundown of pros/cons

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