Intel Announces EOL Plan for Kaby Lake-X Processors
by Anton Shilov on May 1, 2018 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- X299
- Kaby Lake-X
Intel this week revealed plans to discontinue its Kaby Lake-X processors. The chips will not be supported by the company’s upcoming X399 platform for high-end desktops, so initialization of their EOL program is not surprising. Interested parties will be able to get their Core i5/Core i7 processors in LGA2066 packaging for about a year, but they will need to order the chips by the end of November.
Intel on Monday announced plans to discontinue all versions (tray and boxed) of its Core i5-7640X and Core i7-7740X CPUs. PC makers and component resellers interested in these processors will have to order them by November 30, 2018. Intel will ship the final codenamed Kaby Lake-X chips by May 31, 2019, so technically interested parties have a year to buy these chips if they need them.
Intel introduced its Core i5-7640X and Core i7-7740X CPUs in mid-2017 in order to enable hardcore enthusiasts and professional overclockers to set overclocking records using quad-core Kaby Lake-X CPUs while taking advantage of the company’s latest HEDT platform. Usage of the X299-based motherboards with LGA2066 form-factor ensures better power supply to processors and thus helps to hit higher clocks. The plan was heavily criticized by product reviewers and motherboard makers since Kaby Lake-X CPUs require different voltages and memory kits than the high core count Skaylake-X CPUs. Furthermore, the launch of Intel’s six-core Coffee Lake processors in October made Kaby Lake-X products considerably less attractive.
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Source: Intel
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MrSpadge - Wednesday, May 2, 2018 - link
+1If you go from a Celeron to an i7 that's a massive upgrade. If you go from a Sandy i7 to an Ivy i7 on the same board, you get the new generation but typically just a few % more performance. Why should that be a legitimate "upgrade" whereas +100 to +200% performance is not? This narrow mindset comes from the single core days, where only new generation could be substantially better. This is simply not true any more.
Eletriarnation - Tuesday, May 1, 2018 - link
Yeah, definitely an upgrade path there - just an expensive one.Death666Angel - Tuesday, May 1, 2018 - link
The whole platform is expensive, that's kind of it's reason d'etre. If you want reasonable prices, get the consumer grade platform. :)Death666Angel - Tuesday, May 1, 2018 - link
*raisonHStewart - Tuesday, May 1, 2018 - link
I can completely understand Upgrading Graphics card - but CPU - I only did that original IBM PC and that was not much upgrade of all. I completely understand to upgrading the lower end i3 and maybe i5 to i7 once they are cheaper.Initially when I purchase a dell dual Pentium Pro machine, I thought I could buy another CPU - but I never did it - but when I got my Xeon 5160 machine, I purchase two but never upgraded them even though bios/motherboard supported it.
phoenix_rizzen - Wednesday, May 2, 2018 - link
We've done it several times at work with our Linux diskless workstations.Start with an AMD Sempron. Upgrade the CPU to an Athlon64. Upgrade some stations to an Athlon64 X2.
Start with an AMD Athlon-II X2, upgrade some stations to an X3 or an X4.
Much less expensive (and less time-consuming) to purchase a CPU and more RAM than a completely new motherboard+CPU+RAM+case, etc. And easier to validate the hardware configuration. It's one of the reasons we've stuck with AMD systems so long.
We've done this a few times with servers as well. Start with a dual-processor motherboard and single-core CPUs. Then upgrade to quad-core CPUs. Or 8-core CPUs. Or 16-core CPUs. The G34 socket help up surprisingly well (so long as you were OK PCIe 2.x, USB 2.x, and DDR3) over the years. Granted, the Bulldozer-based Opterons weren't always an upgrade, but it still made hardware validation a breeze.
mczak - Tuesday, May 1, 2018 - link
There are actually x299 boards out there which say "KBL-X only".They tend to be the cheapest x299 boards around, albeit of course in the end you really got exactly the same as with an ordinary z270 board - neither the chipset nor the cpu is actually really different...
Morawka - Tuesday, May 1, 2018 - link
I dunno about the outperformed by coffee lake claim. The big boys still need x299 to make the world go around (film, industry, finance, engineering, physics)MrSpadge - Wednesday, May 2, 2018 - link
Of course that's true: better process, higher frequency, 2 more cores, bigger cache. X299 gets you twice the memory channels, but Kaby-X can't use them.MrCommunistGen - Tuesday, May 1, 2018 - link
Someone already beat me to it, so I'll second it: "Good riddance."