Intel has been gearing up for the release of its 8-core Coffee Lake-S processor for quite some time, with the accompanying Z390 chipset leaked last month. A new listing has since revealed that Intel will be debuting two variants, with one sporting a 2.6GHz base clock.

Rumours surrounding Intel’s continuation of its Coffee Lake line despite the debut of its 10nm Cannon lake processors have been circulating for the best part of half a year, with Intel’s technical documents giving a sneak peek at what’s to come. None of these leaks have yielded much detail on what to expect from the new chips, until now.

SiSoft Sandra released new benchmarks earlier this week that finally shed new light on the desktop 8-core processor, which has showcased backwards compatibility with current LGA 1151 sockets thanks to the tests conducted on the Kaby Lake client system platform.

Boost frequencies remain a mystery, however the test chip was running at 2.6GHz with 16MB of L3 cache (2MB per core) and a TDP of 95W. There’s a possibility that final specifications could change by the time the 8-core/16-thread finally hits shelves, as there is currently no release window.

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The 2.6GHz base clock might seem underwhelming at first, but with a benchmark score of 237.032 GOPS, it already fares better than an i7-8700K running at 4.5 GHz. This could stretch even further once the SKU has been finalised and boost clocks are revealed.

Another processor has been spotted by ComputerBase, which makes reference to a second 8-core/16-thread SKU at a much lower 80W TDP. This hints at a new entry to its power-efficient Xeon line-up sporting the same high core count as its presumed mainstream counterpart.

Intel has yet to address any of these rumours and leaks, meaning that readers should take this information with a pinch of salt. Given the impending nature of Intel’s 10nm Cannon Lake processors, it’s only a matter of time before Coffee Lake-S appears in an official capacity.

KitGuru Says: I can’t imagine Intel doing too much better on single thread performance with its incoming processors, but that clearly isn’t the market given its high core count. For those stuck generations behind, perhaps a Coffee Lake refresh is what’s needed, but I’ll keep looking ahead towards next year’s Cannon Lake CPUs in the meantime.  

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