The unlocked hex-core i5-8600K from Intel’s latest Coffee Lake generation of processors is the new flagship of the i5 series, succeeding the Kaby Lake quad-core i5-7600K. The 8th generation of processors brings the largest performance uplift since Sandy Bridge by adding more cores at each of the i3, i5 and i7 product lines. Like the other Coffee Lake processors, the i5-8600K is built upon optimized 14nm architecture, marginally improved upon from Kaby Lake and Skylake. The 8600K has a 95W TDP and a nominal stock clock of 3.6 GHz, which boosts to 4.1 GHz for all six cores, 4.2 GHz for dual/quad and 4.3 GHz for single core. Early benchmarks put the i5-8600K’s effective speed 15% ahead of the i5-7600K. A 50% increase in multi-core speed is explained by two additional cores and thanks to the quad-core clock bump from 4 GHz on the 7600K to 4.2 GHz on the 8600K there is also an additional 5% performance boost across all workloads. All Coffee Lake processors require a 300-series chipset, making a straight CPU upgrade unfeasible despite sharing the same socket as their Z270 predecessors. Even though most games still use less than 4 cores simultaneously, the i5-8600K is a great choice for gamers but for $80 less, the 8350K which is
faster than last years 7600K and only marginally weaker for gaming than the 8600K is certainly well worth considering as well. [Oct '17CPUPro]
Ryzen 4000 Mobile CPUs offer benchmark busting multi-core performance on the go, but marketing hype aside, it’s unclear how this will translate to real world performance. Sixteen threads are great for beating benchmarks including UserBenchmark 64-core, Cinebench, Blender-CPU and Handbrake-CPU but gamers need performance in the games that they actually play. At launch, the top GPU available in a 4000 series laptop is the RTX 2060. Since the GPU is largely responsible for overall gaming performance, the Ryzen 4000 laptops will offer mid tier gaming performance at best. Pairing stronger GPUs would be suboptimal because the Zen gaming bottleneck becomes increasingly severe with more powerful GPUs. Streamers and media producers, who may have historically benefited from high core counts, are better off using the GPU (NVENC or QuickSync) for encoding. Leading media creation applications including both DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Premiere Pro are largely GPU bound. With low power consumption and high core counts, the 4000 range, on paper at least, is a perfect fit for the datacenter. AMD should focus on delivering a platform that offers performance where end users actually need it rather than targeting inexperienced gamers with the same old "moar cores" mantra. From a gamer’s perspective, the best feature of the 4000 series laptops is the absence of the equally hyped 5000 series GPUs. Prospective gaming laptop buyers will find lower latency (and therefore better gaming) CPUs combined with faster GPUs at similar price points. [Mar '20CPUPro]
We calculate effective speed which measures real world performance for typical users. Effective speed is adjusted by current prices to yield a value for money rating. Our calculated values are checked against thousands of individual user ratings. The customizable table below combines these factors to bring you the definitive list of top CPUs. [CPUPro]
Welcome to our PC speed test tool. UserBenchmark will test your PC and compare the results to other users with the same components. You can quickly size up your PC, identify hardware problems and explore the best value for money upgrades.