Windows Help and Advice - USA (2019-06)

At their heart, all these 8th Generation Coffee Lake chips run the same Skylake microarchitecture, as did

the previous 7th and 6th Generation chips.

produces some impressive raw
benchmarks, but don’t expect miracles
in action – if the processor is busy, it
adds nothing. It comes into its own
when running memory-intensive
content-creation apps and server work,
but on more mundane tasks, there’s not
the huge gain the numbers suggest.
Do you remember EEC (Error Code
Correction)? It was widespread when
RAM modules weren’t quite as reliable
as they are now. You’ll find support is
still baked into older core designs, but
you don’t really need to bother unless
you are running a mission-critical
system, where a single failure causes a
plane crash. You’ll only find this on
server systems now. If you did
remember EEC, you can forget it again.
What else is on a processor wafer?
Apart from general housekeeping jobs,
there’s one important bit left: the input/
output block. Most I/O is handled by
your motherboard chip – it runs the
drives, USB, and whatnot. However, the
processor does have a set of high-speed
I/O, too, and Intel calls it just that: HSIO.
On an Intel chip, these manifest as 16
PCIe lanes, which generally go straight
to the first slot, ready for your graphics
card. AMD’s Zen+ has 20 lanes, but four
of these are used to connect the
processor to the motherboard chipset.
These lanes are precious, since they go

direct to the CPU – no bottlenecks

anywhere. On Coffee Lake, you can

configure these as two x8 lanes, for your

dual graphics cards (dropping to eight

lanes each isn’t much of a deal; there’s a

lot of bandwidth), or one x8 and two x4,

to run NVMe. If you want more, you

need specialist silicon. Skylake-X has

28 or 44 HSIO lines.

One final point: processors and

motherboards come as a couple.

Support for a feature on the chip

requires support from the motherboard

to implement. All the processor’s

external connections are under the

control ofthemotherboard designer –

they workasa couple,and need to be

chosen asa l

What’s next? Both the main players

(that’s AMD and Intel) are about to

release new microarchitecture designs,

which should see a real rise in IPC

power. AMD’s Zen 2 will appear this

year, ahead of a big push next year.

Intel’s Sunny Cove is also scheduled for

2019, although its record of hitting

deadlines recently has been poor. This is

a momentous move for Intel; it’s been

using Skylake in everything for years.

We are about to see a switch from

competition between Skylake and

Zen-based chips to Sunny Cove

and Zen 2 ones.

Thingsaregoingtogetseriously

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needed a graphics card; now,
many processors come with
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you haven’t used a
processor’s on-board
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• they are actually perfectly
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gamers and many reviewers

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you occasionally use

undemanding games, you’ll

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stick to 1080p, although we

have been playing older

games at 1440p without

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AMD has its own Radeon

technology to plunder, so we

can expect it to be good at

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AMD’s strong point, with its

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appears less keen at adding

integrated graphics to its

Zen range – the Zen+ is only

coupled to graphics in the

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sell a couple of desktop

Zen-based Ryzens with

integrated graphics, though,

code-named Raven Ridge,

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an 5;9HJDDQGD5\]HQ

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704 stream processors, and

is good for 1080p gaming

(on reduced detail at times,

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you get both processor and

graphics in one – difficult

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A separate graphics card

is always going to be first

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is good enough at the

desktop, but will struggle

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matter – these are decent

budget gaming chips, and

AMD is the one to watch

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chiplet design leaves lots of

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although this is some

way away yet

All aboard

60 |^ |^ June 2019