The Core i7-8086K processor is now on sale to celebrate 40 years of the x86 architecture we enjoy today on most personal computers. To celebrate, Intel raffled off some 40 Core i7-8086K chips, but AMD’s surprise intervention in this contest was not in the cards. It turns out that AMD is offering the 40 winners of the new Intel chip the chance to exchange it for a 1950X Threadripper CPU.
Core i7-8086K for a 1950X Threadipper
No, it’s not a joke, the proposal is real, AMD proposes an exchange of the Core i7-8086K chip for a 1950X Ryzen Threadripper. For anyone wondering why they would want a 1950X Threadripper instead of a Core i7-8086K, the red company said it would “let the numbers speak: 16 cores. 32 threads. 64 PCIe Gen3 lanes. 40 MB cache”.
Threadripper 1950X offers superior specifications compared to the Core i7-8086K, which is a 12-wire, 6-core processor with 12 MB of SmartCache and 16 PCIe lanes. A turbo clock up to 5.0GHz is also available from stock. But if you’re one of the winners, should you accept AMD’s offer?
The Core i7-8086K is basically a Core i7-8700K with a faster clock, so the performance between the two should be pretty close. If you are primarily interested in games, the Threadripper 1950X generally has a low performance in this task, unless you enable the “Game Mode” that would make it a Ryzen 7 1800X (more or less). This requires one reboot to enable and one reboot to disable and is still a slower gaming solution than even a Core i5-8400. In addition, to make use of the powerful AMD CPU, you must purchase a motherboard and memory chord.
The Core i7-8086K is basically a Core i7-8700K with a faster clock, so the performance between the two should be pretty close. If you are primarily interested in games, the Threadripper 1950X generally has a low performance in this task, unless you enable the “Game Mode” that would make it a Ryzen 7 1800X (more or less). This requires one reboot to enable and one reboot to disable and is still a slower gaming solution than even a Core i5-8400. In addition, to make use of the powerful AMD CPU, you must purchase a motherboard and memory chord.
Intel has responded via Twitter in a sardonic way
.@AMDRyzen, if you wanted an Intel Core i7-8086K processor too, you could have just asked us. 🙂 Thanks for helping us celebrate the 8086! pic.twitter.com/ZKKayaws7u
— Intel Gaming (@IntelGaming) June 18, 2018
The offer for this exchange proposed by AMD is open only to the winners of Intel’s U.S. drawings and only to the first 40 winners.