Intel Coffee Lake 6-Core CPU Delivers Strong Multi-core Performance In Leaked Geekbench Scores

For the second time in less than a week, leaked benchmarks are giving us a glimpse of what to expect from Coffee Lake, which represents the fourth and latest iteration of Intel's 14-nanometer process. The latest leaked benchmarks come courtesy of Geekbench. On display is a 6-core processor with 12 threads clocked at 3.19GHz. It also has 1.5MB of L2 cache and 12MB of L3 cache.

Let's talk a bit about this processor before we dive into the Geekbench scores. The chip in question is an engineering sample and not necessarily finalized silicon. Engineering samples get sent out to motherboard makers, OEM partners, and sometimes members of the press ahead of an official launch. Depending on early the engineering sample is, it could be have features disabled or otherwise not be 100 percent representative of the final product.


That disclaimer out of the way, the 6-core Coffee Lake chip—incorrectly recognized as a Kaby Lake part in Geekbench—posted a single-core score of 4,619 and multi-core score 20,828. To put that into perspective, we can compare it to AMD's Ryzen 5 1600X, which is also a 6-core processor with 12 threads, but clocked a little higher at 3.6GHz. AMD's chip scored a tad lower—4,574 in single-core performance and 20,769 for the multi-core portion.

One thing to note is that the retail chip of whatever Coffee Lake processor is on display here will probably run faster than the engineering sample. Assuming that is the case, the performance gap between it and the Ryzen 5 1600X should widen a bit further. New motherboards, BIOS tweaks, and driver updates could also help boost performance.

There is no indication of the Turbo clockspeed, though if this is the same processor that recently landed in SiSoft Sandra's benchmark database, then expect it to be 4.2GHz.

Confused about all the different codenames and architectures? That is understandable, given all of the processor updates as of late. The Cliff Notes version is that Coffee Lake will replace Kaby Lake as Intel's mainstream processor line. It will retain the same LGA 1151 socket and should work with motherboards that support Kaby Lake, though a BIOS update will probably be required.

Intel also recently introduced new Kaby Lake-X and Skylake-X processors, both of which comprise its Core-X series. These are intended for enthusiasts who want added performance, which Intel delivers in the form of more cores, more threads, more cache, more PCI-Express lanes, and expanded memory support.
And of course there is Cannon Lake. That is the big one that everyone is waiting for, as it will Intel's first processor family to be built on a 10nm manufacturing process. Cannon Lake will reportedly deliver a 25 percent performance boost compared to Kaby Lake, while offering a 45 percent reduction in power consumption. Cannon Lake processors are expected to arrive by the end of the year.