Intel Coffee Lake Another Rush Job

Handruin

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There should be more chips as the quarter wears on, but don't expect volume until next year, when lower-end motherboards come out.

Someone was complaining (Linus?) that they didn't even make the socket different. You can literally place a chip into the wrong kind of motherboard.

If Threadripper has enough oomph for you, it seems like the obvious choice. I'm certainly considering it just on the merits of more PCIe lanes than I shake a stick at.

Maybe I might consider a Threadripper once AMD and Foxconn fix their socket mounting issues causing problems for their CPUs. They may have rushed the design a little bit to get it out the door.
 

LunarMist

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The chipset supports 24 but an 8700K supports 16.

That's ridiculous! :mad: The 5930K hexacore supported 40 lanes three years ago.
Is everything supposed to use Thunderbowls now? Do the 16 lanes include M.2 or is that separate?
 

Handruin

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That's ridiculous! :mad: The 5930K hexacore supported 40 lanes three years ago.
Is everything supposed to use Thunderbowls now? Do the 16 lanes include M.2 or is that separate?

You are confusing product lines from Intel. The 5930K is a former X99 "Enthusiasts" line of product. The 8700K is the standard desktop core line so they don't ship it with more PCIe lanes. If you want more PCIe lanes, Intel is pushing consumers into the x299 Extreme lineup as seen in this graphic:

x-series.png

Yes, the 16 lanes is system-wide so it would include M.2. This is the exact issue I have with my current CPU and chipset. I want to add a high-speed NVMe which needs x4 PCIe but I have none left because of my two GPUs.
 

LunarMist

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You are confusing product lines from Intel. The 5930K is a former X99 "Enthusiasts" line of product. The 8700K is the standard desktop core line so they don't ship it with more PCIe lanes. If you want more PCIe lanes, Intel is pushing consumers into the x299 Extreme lineup as seen in this graphic:

View attachment 1252

Yes, the 16 lanes is system-wide so it would include M.2. This is the exact issue I have with my current CPU and chipset. I want to add a high-speed NVMe which needs x4 PCIe but I have none left because of my two GPUs.

It seems the newer CPUs are not what I would prefer, a 6-8 core CPU with good O/C and a lot of lanes. The 7900X and up reportedly require massive cooling to O/C. :(
 

Handruin

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Yup, now you're seeing the issues with Intel's new lineup and why AMD can be appealing in some cases. I also wouldn't want to get a 7800X just to get more PCIe lanes under Intel and be pushed into a 140W TDP chip. Ideally I would be fine with a 8700K with 24 lanes but that's not an option. That's where AMD Ryzen 7 fits the bill with 24 PCIe with current chipsets and possibly 32 down the road.
 

Handruin

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In the somewhat near future this issues with having a maximum of 16 lanes in a mainline Intel CPU/Chipset may become less of an issue once the PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 revision finalizes and is part of mainline products and chipsets. This may be beyond Cannonlake but at some point the faster PCIe spec will allow us to use less lanes for similar performance. I can see a future where M.2 storage uses two lanes instead of four and GPUs only need four lanes instead of eight or sixteen. If AMD wanted another leg up on Intel, they will implement PCIE 4.0 first, thereby pushing Intel to adopt it sooner.
 

sechs

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Maybe I might consider a Threadripper once AMD and Foxconn fix their socket mounting issues causing problems for their CPUs. They may have rushed the design a little bit to get it out the door.
Do you have any info on this?

I know that people are having trouble, but it doesn't seem to be a design issue. (Unless you count being a little more complicated than seems necessary a design issue.) TR4 is practically identical to SP3, so I can't imagine that this was a rush job.
 

sechs

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In the somewhat near future this issues with having a maximum of 16 lanes in a mainline Intel CPU/Chipset may become less of an issue once the PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 revision finalizes and is part of mainline products and chipsets. This may be beyond Cannonlake but at some point the faster PCIe spec will allow us to use less lanes for similar performance. I can see a future where M.2 storage uses two lanes instead of four and GPUs only need four lanes instead of eight or sixteen. If AMD wanted another leg up on Intel, they will implement PCIE 4.0 first, thereby pushing Intel to adopt it sooner.
I don't think that the future is near enough.

Peripherals at the faster standards will be hard to find until it's pushed out to motherboards. Since Intel has rehashed Kaby Lake for Coffee Lake, that means at least one more chip generation. And then, for backwards compatibility, the performance products are still going to use four lanes. Motherboards probably aren't going to do the lane switching anyway....

Intel is just being stingy/dumb with its PCIe lane counts. "And now with 50% more PCIe lanes" seems like an easy sales pitch, but they just won't do it.
 

Handruin

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Do you have any info on this?

I know that people are having trouble, but it doesn't seem to be a design issue. (Unless you count being a little more complicated than seems necessary a design issue.) TR4 is practically identical to SP3, so I can't imagine that this was a rush job.

This was the most recent video I had heard of this retention issue which is suspect to cause issues with the CPU not posting. There are other references out there with issues regarding the screws not catching.

 

Stereodude

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This was the most recent video I had heard of this retention issue which is suspect to cause issues with the CPU not posting. There are other references out there with issues regarding the screws not catching.

He's about as sharp as a marble. You don't torque the first screw down all the way until you have them all started in the threads. Now granted I haven't built a Threadripper, but this is basic assembly. You get all the screws started before you start tightening any of them.
 

Handruin

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Jay can be special sometimes but overall he has some enjoyable builds. Others have had similar issues with their TR4 mechanism. I can't say if they're all locking down screw #1 all the way but there is a trend related to the Foxconn TR4 socket vs the other manufacturer.
 

Stereodude

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It's hard to say say. My Dad taught me that at a pretty young age. Maybe it's not as common knowledge as I thought, but for me it doesn't matter of I'm putting a wheel on a car or tightening down a HSF in a PC. I always get all the screws/nuts/bolts started before torquing/tightening anything. If it's got more than one screw I get 'em started and then systematically tighten them down. I may even get them all snug before really tightening them down.
 

Handruin

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Same here and maybe he had a moment and forgot. He also has a YouTube section that's car-related where he seems technically inclined for things like tightening down bolts correctly but I can't speak to his abilities there. None the less, I can't imagine even if he turned back screw #1 a couple turns that it would have made much difference. He's also one sample of that board and there's a handful of complaints sprinkled about so maybe it's not a widespread issue as he's making it out to be.
 

LunarMist

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When I was a child we had vacuum tubes with very few pins, not CPUs. :lol: My father would send me to the store to test and replace them.

I've never installed automotive tires, but a good number of CPUs without any damages.
However, everyone may not know how to install a CPU, so I'd expect there to be a diagram with the CPU or mainboard documentation. Is that not the case?
 

Chewy509

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However, everyone may not know how to install a CPU, so I'd expect there to be a diagram with the CPU or mainboard documentation. Is that not the case?
I just installed a new Intel CPU today, both the documentation with the CPU (retail kit with HSF) and motherboard both had diagrams with warnings about common issues...
 

sechs

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This was the most recent video I had heard of this retention issue which is suspect to cause issues with the CPU not posting. There are other references out there with issues regarding the screws not catching.
This is the only direct reference that I've seen, but people keep talking like it's a big thing.

Bad sockets will happen... forcing it is not the solution.
 

snowhiker

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Maybe it's not as common knowledge as I thought, but for me it doesn't matter of I'm putting a wheel on a car or tightening down a HSF in a PC. I always get all the screws/nuts/bolts started before torquing/tightening anything. If it's got more than one screw I get 'em started and then systematically tighten them down. I may even get them all snug before really tightening them down.

This.

I think this is pretty common knowledge. Get all the bolts/nuts started first before tightening them down.

Kyle of Hard|OCP shows the installation on a TR4 socket here.
 

Stereodude

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This.

I think this is pretty common knowledge. Get all the bolts/nuts started first before tightening them down.

Kyle of Hard|OCP shows the installation on a TR4 socket here.
If it was me I'd probably go for more than 1/4 turn of engagement when starting them. Probably a full turn, but he's got the basic principal down.
 

time

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I've now read a ton of test results about Coffee Lake (and Ryzen, of course). It seems to me that the IPC improvement over Kaby Lake is minimal - 5% at best. The rest of the performance lift is down to higher clocks (note the higher turbo clocks, particularly with all cores active) and a couple of very minor architectural tweaks. I thought perhaps this was the generation where Intel improved multi-core efficiency, but if you look carefully, that had already improved with Kaby Lake.

Some of the big changes appear to be badge engineering. i3 is now Pentium. i5 is now i3. I would have though that 50% more cores might have been slated as i9, but circumstances changed ... so now we have i5 and i7 with 6 cores.

They have definitely leapfrogged the first generation of Ryzen. AMD will eventually need to trim its pricing because Intel has been very aggressive with theirs. On the price of the CPUs alone, there is no longer any point in choosing Ryzen 3 and it's hard to make a case for even Ryzen 5 with 2 threads/core (4x2). The i3-8100 is creaming the former and the i5-8400 the latter. The Ryzen 7 is more attractive but is just too expensive when compared with the Coffee Lake alternatives.

EXCEPT you need a completely new chipset for Coffee Lake, and the only incarnation of that chipset is Z370. These motherboards are *at least* US$100 more than a 200 series motherboard. That's about double the difference between a 4-core i3-8100 and a 6-core i5-8400.

What I am trying to figure out is how significant single threaded performance is at this point in time. I know the Intel chips are 20-25% faster at this, but are such tasks so small that hardly anyone would notice? With the motherboard pricing taken into consideration, you can probably buy a Ryzen with 20-25% faster multi-core (i.e. total) performance. Is that where these fairly small speed differences becomes more noticeable?

On top of that, there is the farce with the PCIe lanes and the fact that Intel desktop chipsets do not support ECC RAM.
 

time

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I'm looking at speccing a couple of budget workgroup servers. The only thing I really need (or think I need) is ECC memory. The cheapest possible way to achieve that with Intel is a Xeon E3-1225 (3.3GHz with graphics) and a C236 chipset 'workstation' motherboard. Just 4 lousy cores with no hyperthreading (not that HT is much to write home about anyway).

This is to replace AMD Phenom X6 boxes on Asus desktop motherboards with ECC. So after SIX(!) years, you're paying more in real terms and dropping one third of the cores ...

I would love to use AMD again (these boxes have been way more stable than the Intel desktops bought at the same time), but it is close enough to impossible to find ECC RAM qualified for the motherboards.
 

Handruin

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I agree it's difficult to have a budget system with ECC support. If you wanted to stay with AMD I believe you can build out a Threadripper on an X399 with ECC...I realize this would no longer be considered a budget-conscious build but you'd get a much higher core count over the Xeon E3 series.

Several years ago I was stuck in this same situation when building my NAS. I did end up going with an Xeon E3 and a Supermicro MB to get ECC support.
 

Stereodude

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I bought a few generation old Haswell i7-esque Xeon a few years back when I wanted ECC for my server because I wanted a quad core with ECC. The stuff that was a generation or two behind was cheaper.

BTW, don't i3's, Celerons, & Pentiums support ECC with an enterprise motherboard chipset? Only the i5's and i7's have it disabled so you don't buy them over a Xeon? That's how it was a few years ago. Of course they use more expensive ECC (unbuffered), not the stuff actual servers use (registered/buffered) that you can get cheap on eBay.
 

time

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BTW, don't i3's, Celerons, & Pentiums support ECC with an enterprise motherboard chipset? Only the i5's and i7's have it disabled so you don't buy them over a Xeon?

Yep. Not sure why you would bother with a Celeron or Pentium, though.

There is a thread on Intel's forums where someone is trying to get an i3 to work on an Asus workstation motherboard with ECC. They did not succeed, apparently due to Asus not really trying that hard to support this configuration.

Apart from the as yet unsupported Coffee Lake, the i3 is only dual core with hyperthreading anyway. You would be saving <US$100 and dropping from 4 cores to 2.
 

sechs

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AMD will eventually need to trim its pricing because Intel has been very aggressive with theirs. On the price of the CPUs alone, there is no longer any point in choosing Ryzen 3 and it's hard to make a case for even Ryzen 5 with 2 threads/core (4x2). The i3-8100 is creaming the former and the i5-8400 the latter. The Ryzen 7 is more attractive but is just too expensive when compared with the Coffee Lake alternatives.
Didn't AMD trim it's pricing? And announce that it is replacing R3 with APUs based on Zen+? And doesn't AMD still have a cheaper total system price?
 

sechs

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I agree it's difficult to have a budget system with ECC support. If you wanted to stay with AMD I believe you can build out a Threadripper on an X399 with ECC...I realize this would no longer be considered a budget-conscious build but you'd get a much higher core count over the Xeon E3 series.
Ryzen supports ECC, but it's up to the motherboard manufacturers to qualify it.

I've seen a number of the high-end boards say that they support ECC memory, but it's obviously not a popular choice.
 
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