Intel's 8th Gen Coffee Lake Chips Arrive August 21

From PC Mag: Intel promised back in February that we'd be getting 8th generation "Coffee Lake" Core processors in the second half of 2017. Now the chip giant confirmed they will be unveiled at 8am PDT on August 21 via Facebook Live and alongside the Great American Solar Eclipse.

Keeping up with Intel's chip generations has become more difficult since the company dropped its "Tick-tock" model. Coffee Lake actually counts as Intel's fourth refresh of processors using a 14nm process. Broadwell was the first, replacing the 22nm Haswell chips. Then we got Skylake, which counts as the last "tock," and has since been replaced by Kaby Lake.

Intel is, of course, making us wait until August 21 for details, but we are expecting four variants of the Coffee Lake processors: Coffee Lake-U, Coffee Lake-X, Coffee Lake-S, Coffee Lake-H. There will be four and six core chips, and GT2 integrated graphics. In terms of performance, Intel claims it could be as high as a 30 percent improvement over Kaby Lake.

Although August 21 is being viewed as an unveiling, expect Intel to have Coffee Lake processors available soon after. The "holiday season and even before" is referenced in the "Eight Reasons to Tune In" to the reveal. Clearly Intel wants us all buying laptops and desktops running on Coffee Lake as soon as possible.

So where does this leave Kaby Lake? The 7th gen processors don't stop being a great choice, but if Coffee Lake delivers a big performance gain then there's little reason to pick Kaby Lake instead. Also, why choose a four-core Kaby lake when you could have a six-core Coffee Lake chip? Price may be the only deciding factor in answering that question.

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