That Intel bringing 8 cores to the mainstream-desktop (MSDT) platform is more than a rumor now, as a curious-looking SiSoft SANDRA database entry suggests. An anonymous source submitted benchmark results of a processor with 8 cores, 16 threads, 256 KB of L2 cache per core, and 16 MB of L3 cache; clocked at 2.60 GHz (prototypes and engineering-samples are usually clocked low). This can't be i7-5960X or the i7-6900K, because the HEDT chips pack 20 MB of L3 cache. The more recent i7-7820X packs 11 MB of L3 cache, with 1 MB per core of L2 cache. It's conceivable that an MSDT chip could retain the cache hierarchy of the current MSDT processors from Intel, with 2 MB L3 cache slices per core, adding up to 12 MB on the i7-8700, for example, explaining the large 16 MB L3 cache on this chip.

The SANDRA numbers suggest similar IPC to the "Coffee Lake" architecture, while a proportionate increase in performance to the increased core-count. The chip scored 96 points with 237.03 GOPS score; 330.64 GIPS Dhrystone integer, 194.46 GFLOPS Whetstone single-precision floating-point; and 148.47 GFLOPS Whetstone double-precision; and 91.45 GOPS/GHz clocks/performance. Intel is rumored to launch an 8-core/16-thread LGA115x processor, possibly paired with its upcoming Z390 Express chipset, and possibly based on its new 10 nm silicon fabrication process; sometime either in 2H-2018 or Q1-2019.