Rumors surfaced earlier this week that Intel is planning to add more SKUs to its 8th Generation Coffee Lake desktop lineup. Beginning with dual-core Celeron variants, Coffee Lake will be officially available at a starting point of $64 in February. The listing comes from an Australian online retailer, so we are looking at AUD not USD here.
Celeron G4900 3.10Ghz 2M LGA1151 —- $64
Celeron G4920 3.20Ghz 2M LGA1151 —- $80
Pentium G5400 3.70Ghz 4M LGA1151 —- $97
Pentium G5500 3.80Ghz 4M LGA1151 —- $142
Core i3-8300 3.70Ghz 8M LGA1151 —- $211
Core i5-8500 3.00Ghz 9M LGA1151 —- $290
Core i5-8600 3.10Ghz 9M LGA1151 —- $329
The Celeron variants come with 2 cores/2 threads while Intel is bumping the Pentium variants to dual cores with hyper-threading enabled, which means that G5400 and G5500 are basically Core i3s from last generation with 2 cores/4 threads. Core i3-8300 will become the intermediate choice between i3-8100 and i3-8350k, and lastly, Core i5-8500 and Core i5-8600 will offer more price points in the six-core category. Core i5-8400 is widely regarded as the best bang for the buck, primarily because it matches performance close to higher-end processors in the lineup including the i7-8700. It doesn’t seem that the 8500 is going to take away that respect, but the 8600 should prove to be an attracting choice for consumers looking to buy a non-K 8600.
The first quarter of 2018 will also see Intel launch its H and B series motherboards, allowing more people to jump to 8th generation who previously only had the expensive Z series option. The lower end Coffee Lake parts will be suited for the lower end chipsets.
Source: VCZ
