Intel Generation 8 CPUs, new design. More powerful with more cores.

Intel Unveils the 8th Gen Intel Core Processor Family for Desktop, Featuring Intel’s Best Gaming Processor Ever

Newest Processors Deliver Premium Performance, with a Boost in Frame Rate of up to 25% Gen over Gen

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS

• New 8th Gen Intel® Core™ desktop processors and Intel® Z370 chipset are perfect for gamers, content creators and overclockers with a range of unlocked1 “K” processors.
• Includes a new Intel® Core™ i7 desktop processor that is the best gaming processor ever from Intel2, first-ever 6-core Intel® Core™ i5 desktop processor and 4-core Intel® Core™ i3 desktop processor.
• Performance boosts that deliver frame rate improvements of up to 25 percent3 compared with 7th Gen Intel Core for smooth gaming experiences and up to 65 percent faster editing4 in content creation compared with a 3-year-old machine.

Intel has introduced the latest generation, (8th, Coffee Lake) of it's Core Premium performance processors.  This new generation is different from previous chips with more cores.  The entry level Core i3 now has 4 processor cores, up from 2 and the Core i5 & i7s have 6 cores, up from the 4 which have been the standard since the 1st Core chips were introduced.  This increase enables up to 12 threads of data being processed by the i7 at one time.  

You may be thinking wait a minute guy, what does all this mean?  Before multi core processors were introduced, you bought a computer with a CPU that was 1 processor.  Multi-Core. Multi-core technology refers to CPUs that contain two or more processing cores. These cores operate as separate processors within a single chip. By using multiple cores, processor manufacturers can increase the performance of a CPU without raising the processor clock speed.

In addition to the increase in processing power, up to 40 platform PCIe 3.0 lanes supported with the new 370 chipset, this is up from 16 lanes in the Intel Core i7-7700K processor (Kaby Lake family) just a generation ago.  Wait a minute Phil, what does this mean?

Think about these lanes as highways.  Data whether your input or instructions to devices that carry out your computer operations are carried along these lanes.  They can quickly become as congested as I-285 on a workday thus bogging down your performance.  In fact many devices use more than 1 lane.

For example - gaming graphics cards use 16 lanes. Some powerful gaming computers have two graphics cards - that is 32 PCIe lanes (two x16 ports).  Previous generation Intel i7s had less lanes.  They couldn't handle two x16 graphics cards. For some gaming enthusiasts or engineers that would be a serious problem. They would have to choose a different CPU (maybe a more expensive Xeon) if they need more than 4 cores and two 16 graphics cards.

PCIe SSD drives use multiple PCIe lanes too (x4 lanes or x8 lanes).

Many gigabit network adapters use PCIe x4 lanes, there are also 10-gigabit server adapters and they use PCIe x8 lanes.

So as you can see 16 lanes is not that much. If motherboard manufacturer put one x16 slot, one x8 slot and one x4 slot (x28 total) - you can use only 3 devices there and... that's all.


For more details about this exciting new family of processors please read more at;

https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/intel-unveils-8th-gen-intel-core-processor-family-desktop/