Intel Core i5-8600K: Six mid-range cores

Since Coffee Lake-S is becoming more and more a digital launch and the hardware is not really available in quantities, we could actually take our time. The new Intel Core i5-8600K is also more of a fata morgana, the auc... In the AI test of Civilization IV, all CPUs position themselves in a good way as one might expect from the technical data.

CPU Performance: Workstation

Of course, in the production area, not only 3D graphics performance is important in the application, because many things are calculated by the CPU in parallel within these applications (simulations, compute tasks, preview rendering, etc.). In order to get a truly objective impression, you always have to look at both in context.

Many of the current software packages also contain modules based on pure calculations and simulations, so that you always have to include all possible aspects in productive use. However, software packages such as Solidworks do not fully scale with the large number of possible threads, so that often enough quad-cores with high IPC (and SMT) can exist here. This can also be seen in the direct comparison between the Core i5-7600K and the Core i5-8600K, which can only benefit from the cache at the maximum clock.

At Creo, the pure clock counts as long as 8 threads can run stress-free. Otherwise, the new Core i5-8600K can hardly take advantage of the two additional cores.

With 3ds Max, the clock and core count, whereby the core i5-8600K can now set itself off somewhat from the core i5-7600K.

In the CPU composite, on the other hand, extensive rendering is also included (which we will come to separately) so that the overall rating of the AMD Ryzen 7 provides a slightly different picture. The Ryzen are now the absolute measure of things in the test.

CPU Performance: Photorealistic Rendering

In final rendering, it is no longer so much universality that matters, but the most efficient and fast, parallelized processing. That's why we're looking at this section now. So let's get back to 3ds Max right at the beginning. In pure rendering, the Core i7-8600K only makes a difference in its class with the Ryzen 7 1700. Core count goes ahead with clock, although the performance with the latter also scales beautifully.

The console variant of Luxrender confirms this image, whereby at least the Core i7-8700K can compete with the Ryzen 7 1700. The new Core i5 no longer see any land and the hyper-threading is missing at all corners and edges.

Let us now turn to Blender. The usual workload (but with a sample size of 200 pixels) confirms the image of the previous tests very impressively. The Core i7-8600K is still behind the Ryzen 5 1600X, overclocking.

If we run the blender loop of the SPECwpc, the result looks very similar, even if the task is somewhat different.

If the share of pure rendering power continues to decrease, the non-overclocked Core i7-8700K will also push to the top. The rest looks like it was.

This becomes even clearer when one not only confines oneday to photorealistic image output, but also plays a role in the loop many factors, in which not only the core number is the only decisive factor, but also the IPC. Suddenly, the older four-cores with SMT are back at the front and the Core i5-8600K takes over (overclocked) even the top.

In this part, the new Core i7-8700K and the overclocked ryzen 7 1700 push themselves to the top, since the core number is not unimportant, but the clock also significantly falls into the weight.

Intermediate conclusion

Intel's Core i7-8600K is certainly useful in semi-professional use and not just in gaming. However, the Core i5 lacks hyper-threading when it comes to parallelizable tasks, then very noticeably. This throws the actually potent six-nucleus back exactly where Intel likes it with the current pricing policy. AMD thanks for this in many benchmarks with dominance in computing and rendering.

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