Intel Announces Early 8th Gen Core Processors, Coffee Lake

Intel has rushed up the announcement of their 8th Gen Intel Core desktop processors following a recent leak. We can now confirm that these new Intel CPUs are en route to retailers, they have already arrived for testing, and will be benchmarked under Linux on Phoronix once that secondary embargo expires.

The main highlight of the 8th Gen Intel Core "Coffee Lake" launch is the Core i7 8700K processor that features six cores / 12 threads, is unlocked, and handles 40 PCI Express 3.0 lanes.

These new Intel Coffee Lake CPUs usher in the new Z370 chipset and is not compatible with the existing 200 series Intel chipsets.

With Coffee Lake, Core i3 processors now feature four physical cores, Core i5 and i7 CPUs meanwhile are now up to six physical cores plus Hyper Threading.

Here's the rundown of the new Coffee Lake processors shipping in early October:

The Core i3 8100 through Core i7 8700K line-up is quite interesting given the higher core counts now, obviously now pressured by AMD's Ryzen processors. On the graphics side, the integrated graphics are rebranded as "UHD Graphics" rather than "HD Graphics" but not much in the way of architectural differences besides higher core clocks.

These processors will begin to ship 5 October and we can share our Linux performance benchmark figures and more beginning at that point.