Intel Core i5-8400 Review: 8th-Gen Best Value Chip

[Boilerhog146]

Great job Steve! I see why your the reviewer and not some of these guys that.can read.but are having comprehension issues.
We are not stressing a cpu with a low end gpu.is that so hard to comprehend.

give us an 8400 /8500 with an unlocked multiplier.and bye bye Rysen.intel is only playing with you.they obviously have options to compete with.pumping out a lot of confusion though.it seems intel is just labeling and dumping chips in the market.to clear out old stock.

 

[Capaill]

There is no saving the those fooled by AMD's marketing hype.

Can you explain it to me then? I'm not arguing - I'm genuinely curious. Why is a locked i5-8400 better than an overclocked Ryzen 5 1600 ?

 

[ZackL04]

Still thinking about to change my I7 4790k@4.5 to this 8400.
What do u guys think?

Dont do it, trade ur ram in for 2400mhz and max out your overclock to around 4.8 and game on near elite status for the next few years

 

[dirtyferret]

Can you explain it to me then? I'm not arguing - I'm genuinely curious. Why is a locked i5-8400 better than an overclocked Ryzen 5 1600 ?

Most overclocked Ryzen 1600 hit 3.9ghz maybe 4ghz if lucky.

The i5-8400 has an impressively high 4.0GHz turbo, but the base clock of 2.8GHz might scare some away. Rest easy, as the CPU will actually run at 4.0GHz on one core, 3.9GHz with 2-4 cores loaded, and 3.8GHz with all six cores loaded to capacity
http://www.pcgamer.com/intel-i5-8400-review-the-best-new-gaming-cpu-in-years/

So it really depends on what your CPU demands are as to which is better and both are very good CPUs that the average person would not necessarily see a difference without benchmark tools. For people who just surf the web, operate MS office, run the occasional Anti-Virus scan and do some Adobe Photoshop work the higher IPC in the intel 8400 cores make it a clear winner as in the PC gamer tests linked above and TPU tests linked below. Applications like video encoding that can make use of the extra threads on the Ryzen give it leg up.

When averaged over our CPU test suite, which focuses on both single-threaded and multi-threaded workloads, the Core i5-8400 is more than 25% faster than the Core i5-7400 and also beats the 7600K by 15%. Against AMD's offerings, it wins the Ryzen 1600 fight with +5% but loses against the 1600X by a few percent. This puts it in a tight sandwich between AMD's offerings, which, depending on the work load, are faster (multi-threaded load) or slower (single-threaded). This means that it comes down to knowing what applications you use to make an informed buying decision.

For gaming, things are different. Here, the i5-8400 breezes past all AMD Ryzens thanks to its high per-thread performance and the boost clock of 4.0 GHz. I find it surprising that there is very little difference between the i5-8400, i5-8600K, and i7-8700K in gaming, even at the highly CPU-limited scenario of 720p. This suggests that today's games see limited gains from more than four cores. It is good news for gamers on a budget because a Core i5-8400 will be completely sufficient to not bottleneck even the fastest graphics cards....

With a price of $190, the Core i5-8400 is the lowest-priced six-core you can buy from Intel, making it a decent choice for an affordable future-proof CPU that can drive multi-threaded workloads easily. For gamers, it's also an interesting option because at its price point - which is half that of the Core i7-8700K - you can get a six-core CPU that will run your games nearly as fast as the 8700K, with $200 saved to buy a GTX 1080 Ti instead of the GTX 1080 you would have had the money for instead.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Core_i5_8400/19.html

FYI, I noticed the Ryzen 1600 dropped to $170 at Microcenter

 

[LeroN]

I suppose to be deep discounts on Black Friday because the manufacturers have nothing to propose only Z370. Also do not forget that this is 7th day after new Intel's generation release. But even now there are some proposals already like that http://www.canadacomputers.com/gigabyte/z370. Sure for not so cheap motheboards but hey it's happening right now.
And about 4k and the difference that is not noticeable in the frame rate. If to have a look at Anandtech and check the time under 30/60 fps we can see that 8700k is a looser against even the previous gen. So under dynamic loading 8700k is very clumsy with all cores and threads and doesn't brings so smooth frame rate as it could be expected. The gap in GTA V is just too big. This is a paradox but it seems like better to buy i5-8400/8600k or even R5 1600/1600x for 4k than 8700/8700k because you get same FPS but more stable and smooth. Obviously we need more game tests but the current results are not in favor of the King.

 

[ZackL04]

Should be a real nice chip when using a nice motherboard that allows for locked turbo mode, 6 cores at 4.0 sounds great for under $100

 

[Kenrick]

Nice Steve! This is a quality article worthy to be in techspot and not those articles about politics where they try to prove that russians has something to do why their pet did not win the last election.
.

huh???

Not a typo!!!

 

[Fimbulvetr]

@dirtyferret -"Microcenter discounts it's CPUs more then any other vendor (picked up my i5-7600k for $160)

Indeed, I agree. I just got a Ryzen 1600 for $152 at MicroCenter. Great deal!

 

[Puiu]

Can you explain it to me then? I'm not arguing - I'm genuinely curious. Why is a locked i5-8400 better than an overclocked Ryzen 5 1600 ?

Most overclocked Ryzen 1600 hit 3.9ghz maybe 4ghz if lucky.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Core_i5_8400/19.html

FYI, I noticed the Ryzen 1600 dropped to $170 at Microcenter

Don't copy-paste entire articles just mention the source and do a summary with a quote or 2.
It's simple, at the moment it's too expensive to recommend (if you find it since it's out of stock in most places). Once it's price drops down back MSRP level (or close to it) and has cheaper motherboards available then it's an easy buy... but won't happen until in Q1 2018 when AMD should have 12nm Zen+ ready (~feb 2018).

Here's a summary:
1. multithreaded applications still favor the 1600 even when not OCed
2. applications like Adobe Premiere which are not heavily multithreaded favor the 8400, although an OCed 1600 does close the gap a lot (even regains the lead in some of them)
3. in games we are looking at perf similar to an non OCed 7700k which should put it ~12-15% ahead of an 1600 this means that once you OC the 1600 the perf delta drops under 10% (should be close to 5-7% depending on the max OC you get)

With this kind of small percentages, the price is the only thing you should be looking at right now. At ~250$, the 8400 is just not worth it, especially since you are also forced to buy an expensive motherboard. You can buy an 1600 + B350 mobo with that money and still have a few bucks left for coffee (pun intended). You are saving 100$ to 150$ which is a big difference.

This is to be expected as Intel only did a paper launch in hopes of slowing down the sales of AMD CPUs. Whether that worked or not still remains to be seen. I for one think Intel was really scared of launching Coffee Lake close to Zen+ after already losing a good chunk of it's market share in 2017.

 

[Puiu]

Is the $180 (for the i5-8400 MSRP) a better price than the $220 (for ryzen 5 1600 MSRP)? And did you real the article? Did you look at the data:

https://www.techspot.com/review/1502-intel-core-i5-8400/page3.html

Is the ryzen 5 1600 going to magically overclock and get better performance than the 1800x or 7700k? If anything, the R5-1600 will need to overclock just to get on par to with the i5-8400 and you will likely need to pay more for the privilege. Then again, the price of Ryzen is probably now in flux on the market. Of course AMD can fix the pricing situation right by pricing the 1600x to be less than the 8400. Given that you can get 4 cores of Ryzen with the Ryzen 3 for $100 or less, then 6 core Ryzen 5 should be $150 at best, so the 1600x should be $150, which would be less than the 8400. Which means the 1600 will also be even lower so AMD can get back to being better bang for the buck, but until then, the 8400 is better bang for the buck, while AMD overprices Ryzen like Vega and like they've been doing since the beginning. Why do think the 1800x price never held at $500? It now at $350 and dropping, and it has only been 7 months since the march release. In contrast kabylake prices have basically held steady, oscillating around a $20 delta.

The reasons why Ryzen CPUs are so cheap right not do not matter. You are making way too many assumptions about both the price and performance without backing up your statements with proper fact.
You want to know how an 1600 performs in BF1 once it is OCed? Here: https://www.techspot.com/review/1450-core-i7-vs-ryzen-5-hexa-core/page5.html (other outlets, for example techpowerup which was linked above, also put the 1600 in the 140-150 or more FPS without an OC)

I would also like you to point me towards that 180$ i5-8400 that is in stock because I can point you towards an 170$ 1600. The cheapest Z370 mobo is also 120$ or more. You and you alone seem to think that AMD overpriced their CPUs when everyone else crying tears of joy for getting amazing 6 and 8 core CPUs for half the price of what Intel was offering and similar performance. Don't tell me... you are in the "gaming the only metric needed to set the price of an CPU" club.

You also mention the fact that AMD slashed prices... the first thing Intel did after (and before) AMD launched Ryzen was to slash prices across the board. You can find the 7700k at ~300$ almost any day of the week (microcenter has it for around 280$ now). In your opinion AMD has a pricing "issue" but Intel does not? Here are a few article titles from around the time AMD launched the R7: Intel Begins Price War With AMD Ryzen (wccftech), Intel rocked to its Core over Ryzen, price drops begin (tweaktown), Intel slash-and-burns processor prices ahead of AMD's Ryzen CPU launch (digitaltrends).

Why the hell are people surprised about price cuts? Why do you guys even consider them to be a bad thing? It's like you've never seen competition before. Hello? Wake up before it's too late! You've gotten so used to Intel setting the price and keeping it high for a long time that you can't even begin to consider price cuts as being a good thing?

 

[J2017]

You forget all i5 procesors whit gpu starting from gtx700 and rx200 !

 

[Puiu]

You forget all i5 procesors whit gpu starting from gtx700 and rx200 !

Yes they have IGPs, but in this case we are ignoring simple office PCs or web browsing PCs. The assumption is that at this price range you'll always buy a video card to have a properly balanced system. (the IGP just isn't good enough beyond browser games and 10 year old games anyway)
Value wise, I would say that the IGP adds about 10-15$ if you intend to use it. Otherwise you are much better off buying something cheap under 50$ from somewhere else (GT 740 or better).

 

[Puiu]

Really saving money does NOT matter. Yep you said it yourself. Actually even at $170 the 1600 is still too expensive. Fact remains AMD priced 1600 MSRP at release at $220, while Intel who is well known for overpricing priced the i5-8400 at $180. Who is signalling to the market that they want to be better bang for the buck? Even the 7600K at release was priced at $200 when there was no competition, but AMD has the gall to overprice from the get go. Being forced by the market to correct their pricing is actually an embarassment for AMD. This is AMD's arrogance and hubris clearly visible for everyone to see.

BTW, the OC-ed performance not withstanding, the simple fact that you can get 4 cores of Ryzen with Ryzen 3 for $100 or less, means that the 1600x should NOT even be over $150. I don't care about your benchamarks, and other excuses. The 1600x is NOT top level performance, and can't compete in that tier, so they must compete on price and they need to substantially cheaper to justify the risks, perceived, real, fair//unfair or otherwise. That is price of being late to game, like being a half decade late just to be on par with Sandybridge. To argue otherwise is about as pointless has shooting guns at the hurricane, howling at the wind. Subsequently, that means the 1600 needs to be even cheaper.

All this talk about z370 mobos being too expensive now, or coffeelake on the market being higer than MSRP is just a red herring for a temporary situation. The conditions for that is not going to hold out for very long. Come january of 2018, there will be plenty of cheap mobos to go with coffeelake SKUs that will be widely available. The only valid complaint is that coffeelake is a paper launch/vaporware. But that is genius of Intel's aggressive defensive play here. Any sane person will respond rationally by delaying purchases in response, and they will certainly choose to avoid overpriced Ryzen options, which means AMD never earned the confidence and/or pricing advantage that it is so easily dispelled by a paper launch. Intel will likely have to cannibalize some their kabylake sales, but this will disrupt and derail Ryzen sales foe Q4 2017, and rightfully, so if AMD doesn't react fast and price accordingly.

And fact remains, it is blatantly obvious that any flavor of Ryzen is only "good for now" for driving the current generation of video cards. Just like how the FX is has long run out of gas even with the GTX970, the same is true with current generation Ryzen with the GTX1080ti. Which means Ryzen must be priced with replacement in mind so, that is why the 1600x can't not be higher than $150 even right now because you need the savings now for the Ryzen+/2 that you will need in a couple of years from now, when 1080ti performance becomes mainstream for mainstream prices.

I'll give AMD credit for driving intel to put out more cores with coffeelake, but they have not been able to force intel to lower prices. That is a fail on AMD's part. And failing that means AMD will have trouble getting market share. And all the parroting of AMD's marketing about moar core is long fallen on deaf ears. The multi-threaded performance is NOT worth a darn to vast majority of end users, but what is apparent to end users is that Intel is not going to leave any bases uncovered, so coffeelake has gotten more cores.

AMD = Always Moar Distractions
- distract with MOAR cores
- distract with MOAR software patchs laters
- distract with MOAR marketing slides and misdirection

Any sane person witll NOT pay for future AMD performance gains with today's dollars. AMD needs to give those future benefits away for free now, and price substantially lower now, to compete. That is how AMD can win and take market share. Buyers should NOT have to feel like we are losing and missing out gaming performance and pay extra or that privilege just to go with Ryzen. AMD has to make up that psychological deficit by letting their customers keep more of their money.

TLDR... It is easy from AMD to reclaim best bang for the buck, price the R5-1600x at less than $150. There will be no argument then.

What you said made no sense dude. If you are going to form a counter argument then at least use the numbers, not just your biased opinion.

Your whole argument that AMD is overpriced falls flat on it's face when you look at the performance numbers and market prices. It's simple math not rocket science... or are you intentionally overlooking this simple fact?

You keep mentioning MSRP... the MSRP can be anything, market price is the only thing that matters. It's why Vega got so much flack at launch (and still does). The high market price that Coffee Lake is 100% Intel's fault because they only did a paper launch. The are no CPUs anywhere for anyone to buy (Amazon is out of stock with the exception of a few I3 CPUs, Newegg is completely out of stock, Microcenter lists 2 overly overpriced CPUs, in Europe the situation is similar -> some of the models I have to import if I want to buy them).

It's baffling how you can still say that Ryzen is too expensive when Coffee Lake is literally selling 50$ to 100$ above it's MSRP and you don't even have access to cheap motherboards until 2018.

It's also baffling how you say that multithreading performance does not matter when it comes to pricing when there are clearly usage scenarios for normal users. For example, just the simple act of installing a game, or any other software, generally involves a lot of decompression and the 1600 soundly beats the 8400 here. (not to mention the fact that nobody just waits for a big game to install, they are usually multitasking).

You are basically ignoring 2 of the 3 pages of benchmarks from this article, ignoring the full gaming benchmark results and cherry picking, ignoring the market price of both the CPUs and mobos, ignoring the obvious.

Until Intel can fix the stock issues and release the cheaper motherboards then I'll keep telling people to just buy the 1600 and put the extra 100 to 150$ into a better GPU .

"But that is genius of Intel's aggressive defensive play here. Any sane person will respond rationally by delaying purchases in response"
First off not everybody can just delay for months and if they did delay for months then what's stopping them from just waiting to see how Zen+ turns out as rumors put it to launch around feb 2018? Or how Ice Lake turns out? or how about Zen2 in 2019?

If Intel had done a proper launch then people would have been praising them for that, but as it stands it's just a kneejerk reaction to the fact fact that AMD has seriously been eating at it's market share since Ryzen launched. As you said, it's a defensive move from intel. If they don't get their act together by December they'll be a lot of trouble in terms of holiday sales. Ryzen has just too many great deals atm.

 

[Johnnyblaze1957]

Only reason intel are offering cheap CPUs is because of Ryzen otherwise they would still be ripping people off,so as far as I am concerned rot in hell Intel to little to late you parasites.

 

[Sausagemeat]

Why no mention of the fact that these Intel chips have a built in GPU and Ryzen doesn’t? Surely if using for productivity and not gaming that saves a massive amount of money. I also think it’s a bit unfair to punish the value for money score because right now only overclocking boards are available. As soon as the cheaper motherboards are out this review becomes inert. There was limited availability for motherboards when Ryzen released but I didn’t see you basing your review for Ryzen on that. Is it really better advice to recommend users go for the older platform now when the budget motherboards are literally right around the corner?

This feels like a desperate attempt to save AMD. I’m sure you strive to be unbiased etc but most of us probably read other tech sites who have been posting different reviews. For me, almost everyone except Techspot has recommended coffee lake over Ryzen. It makes sense as usually newer tech outperforms older tech. I don’t really understand why your conclusions are so different.

 

[Puiu]

Why no mention of the fact that these Intel chips have a built in GPU and Ryzen doesn’t? Surely if using for productivity and not gaming that saves a massive amount of money. I also think it’s a bit unfair to punish the value for money score because right now only overclocking boards are available. As soon as the cheaper motherboards are out this review becomes inert. There was limited availability for motherboards when Ryzen released but I didn’t see you basing your review for Ryzen on that. Is it really better advice to recommend users go for the older platform now when the budget motherboards are literally right around the corner?

This feels like a desperate attempt to save AMD. I’m sure you strive to be unbiased etc but most of us probably read other tech sites who have been posting different reviews. For me, almost everyone except Techspot has recommended coffee lake over Ryzen. It makes sense as usually newer tech outperforms older tech. I don’t really understand why your conclusions are so different.

There is a big difference between the Ryzen launch and this. AMD had the B350 motherboards available soon after launch for under 100$ (even though it was indeed a rushed launch). Intel's H370, B360 and H310 motherboard chipsets are not coming out this year. This means that they'll launch at the same time as Zen+ or after. Availability was never a big problem with Ryzen and it's mobos.

As for the IGP, if you are going to use it then it should add around 10-15$ extra value which is not bad, but it's outside the scope of these benchmarks. You can make a good case for the i3 8100 which is great for regular office work and web browsing, but almost all systems with an i5 should have a third party GPU (even a sub 50$ one is better is much better).

As a side-note, Ryzen is not an "older" platform, it's a current gen platform that supports current modern technologies and you'll also have access to next gen CPU upgrades after a few years, something not possible with Intel.

For 180$ the 8400 is clearly a great value for gaming and almost matches the 1600 in some productivity benches, but it currently sits at over 200$ (250$ at microcenter) and it only has access to 120$+ mobos which makes it ~120$ more than a R5 1600 + B350 combo. It's just too expensive now and when the B360 mobos come out you can't help but wonder how well it will stack up to Zen+.

 

[Puiu]

Undeniable fact. Ryzen 5 1600 has dropped from MSRP of $220 to $170.
Undeniable fact. Ryzen 7 1800x has dropped from MSRP of $500 to $350.

Ryzen from the get go was overpriced by AMD. The market is correcting them right now. Any sane person seeing a drop like this would be rational enough to hold on to their money and wait. Ryzen prices will only get lower, especially now that they are facing pressure from coffeelake even if it is a paper launch.

Your attempt at distracting with multithreaded benchmarks has fallen on deaf ears. The marker speak far louder. The reality is AMD has been caught being arrogant with their overpricing. Intel is no saint, and Ryzen has failed to punish them, this is a fail on AMD. AMD failed to price low enough to seize market share to get existing Intel installed base to switch. There was very little reason for people with sandybridge, haswell, skylake to switch, and people that went with kabylake certainly had no reason to go ryzen, now with coffeelake that window has been closed by a paper launch no less.



It October, by January 2018 that paper launch will become reality, there will be availability along with cheaper mobos. Telling people to make a shortsighted decision like this, is the definition of irresponsibility. This almost makes look like you are a paid sales person, or public relation official for AMD. And with 1600 at $170 vs the 8400 at $180, there is only a $10 saving, and a blatant lie like the extra $100 or $150 is easily seen thru by any objective observer.

So... by your logic people should buy the 250$ i5 8400 now because in 2018 it will be cheaper? Hahahahaha! And you are calling me irresponsible? Damn dude, that's just funny. This pretty much exposes all of the flaws in your logic.

The numbers do not lie. Productivity is important and can't be removed from the product even if you don't care about it. Believe it or not some people also have jobs.

You are also assuming that intel will be able to fix availability issues in time for the holidays and that the B360 mobos will launch in jan 2018 when all we know is that they'll come in Q1 2018 (rumored to). By that time AMD will have Zen+ and even a simple 10-15% increase in single threaded performance will be enough to close the gap in games and widen it in productivity.

"Undeniable fact. Ryzen 5 1600 has dropped from MSRP of $220 to $170." --> well DUH! it's how competition works. Both companies are trying to one up each other with the price and new products. How this makes Ryzen overpriced is beyond me. It's just does not make any sense. It's like you Intel fanboys forgot how a market with more than one player in it actually functions and are using the price drops as an insult to the company that did them. You are also using biased opinions on how a product should be priced.

"All benchmarks be damned, only gaming matters! We don't need Excel or 7-Zip, those are just for nerds! They hold no value!" -- pfff hahahaha

 

[danwat1234]

I am eagerly awaiting the release of the high-end Coffee Lake laptop chips! The 45w TDP variety to be specific, to see the successor to the 6700HQ and 7700HQ CPUs in high end laptops. Perhaps the 8700HQ CPU will have 4.2GHZ of single core turboboost or better?
I am disappointed in Coffee Lake in that, still, there is very little if any single core clock for clock performance improevements. The only thing 2 look forward 2 is more cores and a bit more clock speed.

ARM somehow manages 15%+ single core improvements in every iteration! But Intel, no way. Not for 4 years now!

Funny, that I am the only commenter that has mentioned laptops..

 

[danwat1234]

I think you want to look here:
https://www.techspot.com/review/1500-intel-8th-gen-core-quad-core-ultrabooks/

As for ARM, I am not sure ARM is hitting the limits of silicon yet. As we all know, the end of Moore's law is definitely getting seems to be getting in the way of Intel and AMD. When ARM gets to this point, it will also be hard to keep gettting 15% gains.

I do applaud Intel for having a similar TDP with double the cores. But clock for clock performance improvements have been little, besides AMD's Ryzen and ARM.

I am sure ARM is getting close to the slow-down point. Gut feeling. Maybe the successor to the upcoming 845 flagship CPU will start to see less performance gains.
User 'InvalidError' over at Tomshardware knows the reasons why it is no easy task to increase performance per clock.

 

[Puiu]

The funny thing you think you can just come on these boards and bald face lie about what I wrote. Which part of "Any sane person seeing a drop like this would be rational enough to hold on to their money and wait." equates to spending "250$ i5 8400 now"? Really come now, trying to put fake words in my mouth. Pretty much shows how you have no limits to what ends you'll go to lie for AMD.

BTW if you are impatient now, and you must choose AMD, then you should get the AM4 board with the cheapest Ryzen available, because you want to hedge your bets and wait for Ryzen+/2, so that means the Ryzen 3 at $100 or less. This way the money you save now can go towards a Ryzen+/2, or perhaps when AMD drops the prices on the R7 1700x/1800x to $200, you can jump on that. The situation is very fluid right now, the prices will be changing, there is no reason to commit big money on overpriced Ryzens at this point.

Come on dude, stop it with the "overpriced" comments. It's not fooling anyone that has even half a brain. AMD priced Ryzen exactly where they could hurt Intel the most with CPUs that had clear advantages or disadvantages especially compared to Kaby Lake and Intel's HEDT platform. Just because you don't need the performance that the extra cores and threads give doesn't mean that AMD should price the CPU based on single threaded results alone. That would be just stupid.

Now that coffee lake "lunched" AMD dropped the prices to compete with it at exactly where it makes sense. The math is simple and it doesn't lie. You can try to argue that your "opinion" is better but facts are just that... facts.

 

[havok585]

There's no freakin' point to buy any coffee lake cpu at this moment until the greedy Intel decides to seriously decrease the prices of their Z370 mobos! WTF, I have to pay $ 340 for the cheapest mobo I can find right now. (well it's a Gigabyte Gaming 7 ).

@RealityOverHype You clearly are a one-sided intel fanboy and will go into attacking mode if someone says something to upset the balance you dont perceive.

 

[Puiu]

Thank you @havok585 for pointing out the obvious

@RealityOverHype thinks that because Ryzen wasn't topping charts (although it did top charts for multithreading performance - but hey gaming is the only thing he cares about) and that because it didn't launch with a significant lead (in gaming that is) that the Ryzen chips were too "expensive".

"This is not any opinion. Ryzen was overpriced from the start"
This kind of illogical thinking is beyond me. The numbers don't lie. It IS your opinion, nothing more and nothing less.

"Ryzen needs convince people with existing intel builds"
Except that it did do that. Ryzen chips have sold extremely well and do you know why? They offered incredible value. 6900k performance for ~300$ with just a small drop in gaming performance? If that is "overpriced" then you sir are daydreaming.
You must be sick to your stomach when you look at Amazon's best selling CPUs and you see Ryzen chips regularly at the top The 1600 is now no.2 there (it sometimes sits at no.1 dethroning the 7700k) and it also is no.1 in the most gifted category.

 

[dirtyferret]

Except that it did do that. Ryzen chips have sold extremely well and do you know why? They offered incredible value. 6900k performance for ~300$ with just a small drop in gaming performance? If that is "overpriced" then you sir are daydreaming.

Let's remain in the realm of reality. While the 6900k is over priced the $300 Ryzen 1700 hardly offers its performance in many areas.

https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2016?vs=1729

On another thought;

Ryzen fails to beat Intel in MS office, Web performance, Adobe Photoshop, and gaming. Those are facts proven by every single legit review tech site. That pretty much covers 90% of the desktop world. While a much better offering in IPC then the previous AMD bulldozer CPUs, AMD still lacks IPC to Intels top chips and with the "K" ability to OC the small gap widens rather large compared to AMDs chips topping out at 3.9-4ghz regardless of chip. There are obviously those that need the extra cores of Ryzen and have a use for them. As well as some of Ryzen's current offering (someone mentioned the Ryzen 1600 @ $160 at microcenter) are great.

Intel leads in AV test
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Core_i5_8600K/8.html

Leads again in MS office & Adobe
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Core_i5_8600K/7.html

Intel Leads in Web performance
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Core_i5_8600K/10.html

in 720p gaming where the focus is placed directly on the CPU rather then GPU, Intel wins pretty much in each scenario
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Core_i5_8600K/11.html

and gaming in general
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Core_i5_8600K/18.html

And my last thought;

As for future proofing, all of these CPUs will be outdated around the same time. Your wasting your money buying to "future proof"

The Q6600 & Phenom I came out around 2006-2007 (I'm too lazy to look up exact dates). It only took ten years for dual cores to go by the way of the Dodo for gaming PCs (and 2c/4t is still a viable option today). Way too many obstacles for the gaming industry to move that fast forward;

May 2017 is the first time in Steam's Hardware Survey that quad cores outpaced dual core CPUs (currently 59 to 36% in Sept 2017). Prior to May they were dead even. Six core + CPUs barely break 2%. That is a lot of new CPU hardware that the average PC gamer is not about to give up on.

Laptops still outsell desktops two to one and most laptops use dual cores CPUs or 2c/4t.

Improving CPU performance doesn't sell games. No one posts pictures of great looking AI on their web sites for games. Graphics sells games and graphic cards are much easier to upgrade for the average PC gamer.

The PS4 Pro and Xbox One X - (the former launched in late 2016 with the latter launching next month) both are re-using their jaguar CPU (glorified tablet CPU) just with an OC. The AAA titles are all driven by the consoles so they can't push CPU demands to current desktop performance levels with a CPU made for 2012 consoles. New consoles won't launch until holiday season of 2020 (maybe even 2021).

Unless 120 & 144hz monitors just take off as opposed to 2k monitors (or combined with), you are going to see a similar adoption rate of five years for the mainstream PC gamers to adopt six core CPUs and ten for quads to be avoided for new builds.

 

[Capaill]

For my own situation, I'll be buying and building a gaming PC in November. I'm currently on an i5 3570K OC'd to 4.2GHz which has been very good. However I'm giving that PC away and need an alternative. My main bottleneck recently is on the graphics card (GTX 780 on a 1440p monitor) so I want to save money on the CPU and put it towards a GTX 1080. I have chosen to use the Ryzen 5 1600 for a number of reasons:
1) It's a good CPU and I like supporting the underdog when they bring out good products, especially when they scare the prevailing monopoly. Perhaps foolish but it's how I roll. There's a reason I have stayed on the 3570K - none of the newer Intel chips offered a dramatically improved performance worthy of their additional cost. Intel had become disappointing and I wasn't willing to spend enough money to buy my way into a better gaming system.
2) Prior to the release of Coffee Lake, the Ryzen chip was comparable to all but the most powerful Intel K chips in gaming. At half the price.
3) Now that the 8400 is out, it is a very worthy alternative. Honestly it's better for gaming in general (although it can depend on monitor resolution, refresh rate, the graphics card used, use of DirectX12 - there are scenarios where the Ryzen chip wins). But...
4) Availability: The 8400 is not currently available. Intel did a paper launch. It's out of stock in all major retailers right now, expected to be in stock in 2-4 weeks but even then only in very small quantities. It is not expected to be widely available until at least January. Whereas Ryzen is widely available now.
5) Affordability: Where the 8400 is available, it's being sold for in excess of $250. Then there is the motherboard situation. The only motherboards supporting it this year are expensive Z370s that support overclocking - for a CPU that cannot be overclocked. I have seen some motherboards (like the Asrock) on sale for ~$150 but there are no reviews available yet and most motherboards are over $200.
6) Future proofing: @dirtyferret is completely right - the extra threads in Ryzen are largely irrelevant for gaming and will remain so for many years until the console manufacturers catch up. However, going with Ryzen gives options that Intel doesn't. Namely that AMD has committed to the AM4 platform for the next 3-4 years, so I can get a Ryzen 2 or 3 in a few years at a minimal price. Whereas Intel changes its chipset every 9 months on average so any new CPU purchase requires a new motherboard.
For me, the Ryzen 5 1600 is the most sensible option available to me within the next month (I'm specifically thinking Cyber Monday). If I had the luxury of waiting until February or March then I could see how the Ryzen refresh pans out and look at all the glorious cheap motherboards for the widely available i5 8400. For now, and I dare say for the rest of 2018, the Ryzen 5 1600 is the better buying choice. Once the 8400 becomes available and affordable then the current Ryzen ceases to be better.

My apologies if my earlier comments started a war of words. Any claims that any one thing is "best" or "King" are always a personal opinion and our own requirements vary so widely. Clearly both chips are great in different ways. Thank you for providing input, particularly the information of how Turbo works on the new Intel chips. The PCGamer article was quite interesting, as was a recent Gamers Nexus video comparison of the 2 CPUs.

 

[PRupe]

Baaaaaaaaaa Humbug! Say what you will about the greatness of the core i5 8400, but by the time anyone can get their hands on one bigger and better things will be available. Meanwhile, the AMD Ryzen 5 1600 or even the Intel core I3 8350K which is selling for only a few dollars more the the 8400 are comparable and readily available. I for one am tired of waiting and am moving on. Someone dropped the ball on this one.