There's trouble brewing for Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), as Intel reveals its new 8th-generation processor, named Coffee Lake, which it claims can improve gaming performance.
The new Coffee Lake processor line from Intel is reported to give as much as 25 percent improvement in gaming performance for PCs compared to its previous 7th-generation processor, Skylake. The announcement by the central processing unit (CPU) giant caused the market share of graphics processing unit (GPU) manufacturers Nvidia and AMD to drop, most likely because PC owners may now choose to upgrade their CPUs instead of their GPUs to improve gaming performance, as suggested by CNBC.
Nvidia's stocks dropped by 3.8 percent while AMD's lowered by three percent. Patrick Moorhead, the principal technological analyst for Moor Insights & Strategy, said that this may threaten both Nvidia and AMD since users might now be swayed towards Intel for an improvement in their gaming experience instead of relying on GPU upgrades. This is doubly true for AMD since they manufacture both CPUs and GPUs, and they have been in direct competition with Intel since both companies started out.
So far, there are no official benchmarks supporting Intel's 25 percent improvement claim. Potential buyers will have to rely on Intel's promises or wait for official tests before upgrading their CPUs.
Intel is also stepping up its game price-wise following the successful release and reception of its competitor AMD's Ryzen and Ryzen Threadripper processors. The prices of its upcoming 8th-generation Coffee Lake CPUs are reportedly lower and more affordable than AMD's.
Most importantly, the new Coffee Lake processors will mark a huge step forward in CPU power, as the previous dual-core i3 CPUs will now have four cores, and the i5 and the i7 CPU tiers will be getting six cores instead of the previous four cores for the i5.
Coffee Lake will also be significantly more affordable while also being more powerful than its predecessors. Intel's new 8th-generation Coffee Lake processors will be available on Oct. 5 in i3, i5, and i7 versions.
