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Coffee Lake 8th gen Intel CPU benchmarks are out: 65 Watt i5-8400 beats i7-7700K

EugW

EugW

macrumors P6
Original poster
Jun 18, 2017
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Things are looking good for the 2018 iMacs. You can get a base model Coffee Lake Intel 8th Generation 6-core i5-8400 that will beat the current top of the line i7-7700K in most tests. And even when it loses to the 7700K, it's usually quite close in performance. Furthermore, the i5-8400 is a 65 Watt chip so it should remain quiet under most usage, unlike the very hot i7-7700K. But if heat and noise don't bother you, you can also go for the i7-8700K, which wipes the floor with the i7-7700K. All of these also include Intel Quick Sync, with full hardware 10-bit 4K HEVC decode, but the 7xxx Kaby Lake series already includes this. (The 6xxx series does not. 8-bit only.)

https://www.anandtech.com/show/11859/the-anandtech-coffee-lake-review-8700k-and-8400-initial-numbers

Too bad I couldn't realistically wait another year. I would have loved to get one of these i5 chips in an iMac.

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I was expecting some other chips like an i5-8600 non-K and/or i5-8500 non-K, but haven't seen any mention of those. There is an i7-8700 non-K, but I suspect Apple would reserve that for the 21.5" iMac or equivalent.
 
redheeler said:
New Mac mini with Coffee Lake quad-core i5, USB-C/Thunderbolt 3, upgradable DDR4 RAM... Ok I'm really dreaming now.
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Yes, I think you're dreaming. But that would be awesome.

Interestingly though, now even the Core i3 models are half decent.
 
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EugW said:
Yes, I think you're dreaming. But that would be awesome.
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Indeed it would be. But the way Apple is behaving, it seems I'm just going to have to stick to my power-hungry Mac Pro 5,1 tower.
[doublepost=1507273473][/doublepost]Interestingly enough, I also use my 2010 iMac occasionally as a display for said Mac Pro. For the 2010 27-inch models it will work with non-Mac graphics cards (such as the one in my 5,1), and Windows PCs. 2011 iMacs started requiring Thunderbolt meaning it was no longer possible to connect either of these.
 
In theory, you can wait forever, but have commit sooner or later. The speed of progress is impressive. There I was, thinking I had the cutting edge(I guess I do, but not for long, lol).
 
These Coffee Lake desktop parts suggest a slaughtering of the 4 core benchmarks. I had assumed i5 would go 4 core 8 threads but 6 cores 6 threads is just as huge. The Anandtech article is well worth a read on this.

It's way too soon for Apple to be refreshing the iMac barely 5 months after the last one brought USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 to the iMac line. And it would seriously dent iMac Pro sales if you could pick up a 6 core/12 thread iMac not long before an 8 core/16 thread Xeon iMac Pro was available.

If these figures translate over to the mobile side of things the 2018 MacBook Pros ought to be very interesting.
 
Nice upgrades for next year, lets hope a little redesign as well with face id and new i5 and i7
 
Looking at the iMac refresh cadence, May/June and Oct/Nov are the typical refresh months. Perhaps we will see a refresh this year with these newer processors. I actually kind of hope not because I'm with the previous poster in terms of wanting FaceID (and a better top-end GPU, and faster RAM, and a FaceTime HD camera), and all of that would be too much for a simple refresh I would imagine.
 
klatox said:
Looking at the iMac refresh cadence, May/June and Oct/Nov are the typical refresh months. Perhaps we will see a refresh this year with these newer processors. I actually kind of hope not because I'm with the previous poster in terms of wanting FaceID (and a better top-end GPU, and faster RAM, and a FaceTime HD camera), and all of that would be too much for a simple refresh I would imagine.
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They would have been developing that in advance for such chips so it could come out anytime. However, I just think for marketing reasons they’ll keep them for 2018.

I suspect that as advertised, the iMac Pro will come out in December, and then several months later or even as late as summer will bring new Coffee Lake iMacs, possibly with a new form factor.

Then with macOS 10.14, Apple will bring 4K iTunes and Netflix will bring 4K as well, to both Coffee Lake and Kaby Lake iMacs, excluding the Skylake Macs or earlier. Skylake does not have the necessary hardware for this, but introducing DRM’d 4K streaming to Macs in 2018 may ease the pain for Skylake owners nonetheless.

PortableLover said:
I wonder if apple would make any i3 imacs now that they are 4 cores. Maybe go for a lower price.
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Maybe i3 for an edu model or entry level 21.5” not other ones. No Turbo Boost for i3.
 
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The next year iMac may be worth waiting. The Coffee Lake processors seem to be a great update over Kaby Lake. Intel is finally introducing six core processors to its mainstream line, and that looks a great improvement in performance.
 
The only thing is I’ve seen a lot of the tech YouTuber’s bench the coffe lake chips and they all run hotter than kaby and the ryzen chips are actually cool jayztwocents actually put an aio water cooler on his coffe lake 8700k as it was hot even on the best air cooler were the ryzen was perfectly fine
 
Assuming Apple doesn't redesign to account for heat a 65w CPU with that much power would be awesome. I would definitely update.
 
The 8400 would be a complementary alternative to the 1600, but there are no budget motherboards.
 
cynics said:
Assuming Apple doesn't redesign to account for heat a 65w CPU with that much power would be awesome. I would definitely update.
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Frankly, if the 65W 8th gen i5 is going to be faster than the current 91W i7, it sounds like the sweet spot for an all-in-one, so dropping the i7 option and re-designing the iMac for 65W max actually starts to look like a sensible option - leaving the field clear for the iMac Pro and Mac Pro,

Otherwise, the 6-core 8700K would be nipping at the heels of the 8-core Xeon, might even beat it on single-core benchmarks (and Xeons tend to get updated less frequently).
 
I wonder, since the i5 8400 is more powerful than the i7 7700k, then they might go with that on the top end and allow for a more powerful GPU as well.
 
klatox said:
I wonder, since the i5 8400 is more powerful than the i7 7700k, then they might go with that on the top end and allow for a more powerful GPU as well.
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Marketing would have an interesting time of it, since everything has to be 'a bit higher' with successive models of iMac. This is why high end models of the 27" iMac use the K series CPUs without utilising the unlocked clock multiplier.
 
sublunar said:
Marketing would have an interesting time of it, since everything has to be 'a bit higher' with successive models of iMac. This is why high end models of the 27" iMac use the K series CPUs without utilising the unlocked clock multiplier.
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Good point.
 
I was hoping that Apple would turn out new high-end iMacs with Coffee Lake when they release the PoweriMacProSupremeDelux in December 2017...

Hope doesn't work with Apple products, though.

They could release them as early as March '18, per general schedules of updates. That's probably hopeful, as well, so in reality, those Coffee Lakes will be here in June '18. Just in time for Intel to release Cannon, or even Ice, Lake.
 
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