Specs leaked for upcoming i7-8700K

There has been a swirl of rumors running around the internet over the last few days about the "leaked" specs of the Coffee Lake i7-8700K. One thing that has been consistent is that we can expect a 6-core 12-thread (6C/12T) processor which runs on Socket LGA 1151 with 12 MB of Cache.

What does keep changing in the rumors is the clock speed that we can expect those cores to operate at. The original rumors claimed that it would run at a 3.7 GHz base clock with a 4.3 GHz single core boost clock. As more cores were utilized, the boost clock would step down to 4 GHz. However, a leak from a person named "Sweeper" has clarified that 4.3 GHz is the boost clock for all six cores, with faster speeds achieved as the threaded workload decreases. Overclock3D has collated the frequencies we can expect for the i7-8700K:

• 3.7 GHz Base

• 4.3 GHz 6-core turbo

• 4.4 GHz 4-core turbo

• 4.6 GHz 2-core turbo

• 4.7 GHz 1-core turbo

We suspect that the reason for a 100 MHz jump from 6-core to 4-core and again from 2-core to 1-core is due to power draw requirements needed to hit those frequencies with the respective number of cores in operation. The step between 4-core and 2-core seems to allow a greater 200 MHz jump in clock speed. In comparison to these figures, the 4-core Kaby Lake i7-7700K had a base/turbo of 4.2/4.5 GHz, and the older Skylake i7-6700K had a base/turbo of 4.0/4.2 turbo.

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