“This is Intel’s 40th anniversary of the original x86 microarchitecture with the 8086 processor, and to celebrate they released the Core i7-8086K, based on Coffee Lake with a turbo up to 5.0 GHz,” Ian Cutress writes for AnandTech. “With only 50,000 parts to be sold worldwide, 8,086 of which are given away for free in regional sweepstakes, Intel is being bold in trying to limit supply and actively promote its new mainstream headline act. As with most processors, it is all in the binning, and this is truly Intel’s highest performance mainstream processor ever. However the 8086K may not be all it’s cracked up to be.”
“Anniversary edition processors, or limited edition processors, have been hit or miss through the years. Back in June 2014, Intel launched the Pentium Anniversary Edition G3258 – an overclockable dual-core processor – to much fanfare, but no matter how much the CPU was overclocked it never performed close to a full quad core,” Cutress writes. “The processor on paper is a slightly higher binned version of the Core i7-8700K, with a +300 MHz bump on the base frequency and the single core turbo frequency, allowing Intel to announce the 8086K as Intel’s first 5 GHz processor in the market”
“My advice? If you are truly deciding between the Core i7-8700K and the Core i7-8086K, then get the i7-8700K. While having an anniversary edition might make you feel proud in the short term, being able to have it in your forum signature or reddit flair for a few years, or having that higher overclock puts a grin on your face, the ultimate difference is minimal and down to perception and placebo effect,” Cutress writes. “Spend the extra on a bigger SSD or more memory. It’s a nice part, but Intel could have done more.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Wah-wah-wah-waaaaah.
is it just me, or does limiting the production of a good design sound as dumb as thinking that an internal CPU is a collector’s item?
Nope. You’re not alone in this regard.