Hyperthreading

It has been ten years since Intel introduced quad-core processors into its mainstream product range. It was expected that six-core parts would hit the segment a few years after, however due to process improvements, microarchitecture gains, cost, and a lack of competition, the top-end mainstream processor is still a quad-core a decade later. That changes today, with the new Intel 8th Generation Coffee Lake CPUs now available, with the Core i5 and Core i7 parts having six distinct physical cores. In this review, we cover the top SKU, the Core i7-8700K, with numbers from the Core i5-8400.